Gail Griffin, Director of the Gardens, has received a 2013 Harvard Hero award. This Harvard program celebrates the outstanding achievements of staff at every level and from across the University, especially those who over the past year have demonstrated the highest levels of contribution, impact, and excellence.
There will be a celebration for the 2013 Harvard Heroes, hosted by President Faust, at Sanders Theatre on June 13, at 3:30 p.m.
Below is an excerpt from Gail’s nomination, generously provided by her close collaborator, John Beardsley (Director of the Garden and Landscape Studies Program):
“Gail Griffin is responsible for managing and maintaining one of Harvard’s most valuable cultural treasures: the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks…. Like any gardens, they are dynamic spaces, subject to seasonal transformations and the vicissitudes of time, as plants mature and die and have to be replaced, and as institutional requirements for the uses of the garden change. Managing these changes takes adaptability, strong leadership, a commitment to institutional mission, sensitivity to access and stewardship values, and an awareness of the demands of sustainability. Gail Griffin has these qualities in abundance…. But perhaps best of all, she sustains a vision articulated by Beatrix Farrand and Mildred Bliss that the gardens be part of the intellectual life of the institution…. She is true to the important design and horticultural legacies embodied in gardens, while insuring that they remain alive—physically and intellectually—to each new group of visitors and academic residents. Her efforts are heroic in their attention to both the past and the present in the Dumbarton Oaks gardens.”
Joel Kalvesmaki, Editor in Byzantine Studies, oversaw the development of Athena Ruby, the OpenType font for Byzantine inscriptions that has recently received a Typeface Design award.
Jan Ziolkowski, Director of Dumbarton Oaks, gave a paper on “The Romanatic Range of Romanness” at the Fellows’ Plenary Session of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. The meeting took place from April 4th to April 6th in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was hosted by the University of Tennessee, the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium.
In March, Shalimar Fojas White, Manager of ICFA, presented at the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ annual WebWise conference in Baltimore, MD. She gave a project demonstration for the Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection, describing how ICFA’s interdisciplinary team created an online exhibit of the photographer’s work using the open source web-publishing platform, Omeka. IMLS and Heritage Preservation have invited Fojas White to repeat the Artamonoff presentation as an online webinar, as part of their WebWise Reprise 2013 program. Fojas White’s session, Using Collections Images in Online Exhibits, will be held on June 3, 2013 from 2 to 3:30 PM.