Skip to Content

Dumbarton Oaks Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary

Posted On August 21, 2015 | 11:26 am | by jamesc | Permalink
James N. Carder (September 2015)

 image.jpg

This academic year (September 8, 2015, to May 13, 2016), Dumbarton Oaks celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary. Special events throughout the year—lectures, exhibitions, publications, and online initiatives on our website—will mark the occasion of the November 1st anniversary.

As part of the celebration, the Dumbarton Oaks Archives will publish seventy-five illustrated blog posts throughout the academic year that reminisce about people, places, programs, events, acquisitions, publications, and music associated with Dumbarton Oaks over the past seventy-five years. These posts were researched in the Dumbarton Oaks Archives and were partly written by two Harvard University summer interns, Dominique Luongo and Katie Borrazzo. The posts will be published beginning on September 7, with one post each day that week. A new post will be published on each Monday and Thursday of the academic year, concluding with the seventy-fifth on May 12th. Happy anniversary!

The blog post subjects and their dates of publication are as follows:

1. Dumbarton Oaks: The Backstory (9/7)

2. Dumbarton Oaks at War: Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, 1944 (9/8)

3. Eleanor Roosevelt at Dumbarton Oaks (9/9)

4. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: Ernst Kitzinger, “The Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies” (9/10)

5. In Their Own Words: Jan Ziolkowski Remembers Ned Keenan (9/11)

6. Taking the Plunge: The Dumbarton Oaks Swimming Pool (9/14)

7. The Collection: Acquiring the Miniature Mosaic of the Forty Martyrs (9/17)

8. Byzantine Studies: Wilhelm Koehler—First Senior Fellow in Charge of Research (9/21)

9. Dumbarton Oaks at War: The National Defense Research Committee (9/24)

10. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—Wilhelm Koehler and the Research Archives (9/28)

11. The Collection: 75 Years/75 Objects—Celebrating 75 Years of the Dumbarton Oaks Museum (10/1)

12. Life in the Fellows Building (10/5)

13. The Garden Library Rare Book Collection and the Creation of a Studies Program (10/8)

14. In Their Own Words: Mildred Bliss—In Memoriam Henri Focillon, 1943 (10/12)

15. Byzantine Studies: The First Fellow: Lester Clarence Houck (10/15)

16. Dumbarton Oaks at War: The Victory Garden (10/19)

17. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—John C. Baker, Taking Care of Business (10/22)

18. The Garden and Landscape Studies Program—An Evolving Development (10/26)

19. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: Milton V. Anastos, “Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies, a Personal Account” (10/28)

20. The Musical Art Quartet and the Bliss Stradivarius Viola (11/2)

21. A California Sojourn and the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art (11/5)

22. Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks: From Collection to Research Program (11/9)

23. Then and Now: Staff Offices (11/12)

24. Dumbarton Oaks at War: Collecting During the War Years (11/16)

25. United They Stand—Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (11/19)

26. The First Garden Library Accession Number: Maison Rustique, or The Countrey Farme (11/23)

27. Music at Dumbarton Oaks: Stravinsky, Copland, Tower, and Shaw (11/26)

28. The Collection: Final Touches—The Byzantine Collection and Joseph Brummer, 1940 (11/30)

29. Then and Now: Changes at the Ellipse and Vegetable Garden (12/3)

30. Dumbarton Oaks at War: American Defense—The Harvard Group and Dumbarton Oaks (12/7)

31. Changes at Dumbarton Oaks under Giles Constable, Director 1977–1984 (12/10)

32. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: Kurt Weitzmann, “Byzantine Art and Scholarship in America” (12/14)

33. Music at Dumbarton Oaks: The Performers (12/17)

34. The Collection: The Pre-Columbian Gallery at Dumbarton Oaks (12/21)

35. Byzantine Studies: The 1948 Church of the Holy Apostles Symposium (12/24)

36. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—The Underworld Courier and the Blisses in California (12/28)

37. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: Wilhelm Koehler, “The Dumbarton Oaks Program and the Principle of Collaborative Research” (12/31)

38. The Collection: In Memoriam: Gifts to the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (1/4)

39. Then and Now: Midday Meals at Dumbarton Oaks (1/7)

40. Librarian, Bookbinder, Poet, Patriot: Ethel Burnet Clark (1/11)

41. In Their Own Words: Hans Peter L’Orange Remembers His Year at Dumbarton Oaks, 1950 (1/14)

42. Scholars of Dumbarton Oaks: Irfan Shahîd (1/18)

43. Digger, Curator, Soldier, Spy: Samuel Kirkland Lothrop (1/21)

44. Dumbarton Oaks at War: The Collection Goes Underground (1/25)

45. Beatrix Jones Farrand: Dumbarton Oaks Landscape Gardener (1/28)

46. Music at Dumbarton Oaks: Commissioning and Performing Contemporary Compositions (2/1)

47. Then and Now: Libraries at Dumbarton Oaks (2/4)

48. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—Albert Mathias Friend Jr. and a “Premier Byzantine Studies Center” (2/8)

49. In Their Own Words: Kurt Weitzmann on the Beginning of Dumbarton Oaks (2/11)

50. The Collection: The Birthing Figure in the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art (2/15)

51. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—The Administrative Committee Who’s Who (2/18)

52. In Their Own Words: Archibald McLeish on Dumbarton Oaks, 1941 (2/22)

53. Byzantine Studies: Friend of Dumbarton Oaks (2/25)

54. The Dish on Dining: Bonding over Meals at the Fellows Building (2/29)

55. The Collection: The Bliss Collection and the “Exotic Cultural Other” (3/3)

56. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—Getting Ready (3/7)

57. Scholars of Dumbarton Oaks: John Dixon Hunt (3/10)

58. Dumbarton Oaks at War: A Poem for Dumbarton Oaks during Wartime (3/14)

59. Pool Party!—Academics Go Aquatic (3/17)

60. Paraphenomenal Dumbarton Oaks: Ghosts on the Property (3/21)

61. Byzantine Studies: Sirarpie Der Nersessian—First Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology (3/24)

62. Dumbarton Oaks: The First Decade—Taxing Issues, Getting Tax Exemption for Dumbarton Oaks (3/28)

63. Garden and Landscape Studies: The First Studies in Landscape Architecture Colloquium (3/31)

64. Sowing the First Seeds: The Origin of the Garden Library Rare Book Collection (4/4)

65. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: “Report of the Committee on the Future of the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1970” (4/7)

66. The Collection: Putting the Art in Artifact—The Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art (4/11)

67. Then and Now: Accommodating the Fellows (4/14)

68. Byzantine Studies: Paul Atkins Underwood—Building Knowledge (4/18)

69. Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies: Giles Constable, “Dumbarton Oaks and the Future of Byzantine Studies” (4/21)

66. Music at Dumbarton Oaks—The Friends of Music (4/25)

70. The Collection: For All to See—The Interim Years of the Pre-Columbian Collection (4/28)

71. “Good as Gold”: Kurt Weitzmann at Dumbarton Oaks (5/2)

72. Scholars at Dumbarton Oaks: David Stuart (5/5)

74. Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going? (Part 1) (5/9)

75. Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going? (Part 1) (5/12)