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An interview with Dumbarton Oaks museum staff on the making of the All Sides Considered interactive exhibit

Staff activities and accomplishments outside Dumbarton Oaks

John Pohl, UCLA, "Bringing the Pre-Columbian World to Life: The Scholar’s Role in Entertainment Media" | Thursday, February 6, 2014

November 5, 2015, at 6 p.m. | Byzantine Courtyard

Classical Art Historian Will Wootton Speaks at Dumbarton Oaks

This online resource commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Philip Johnson’s Pre-Columbian pavilion at Dumbarton Oaks. Johnson’s architectural masterpiece opened in 1963 and is now seen as a seminal building in his late 1950s’ shift from International Style modernism to Postmodern classicism. Despite this recognition, the Johnson wing has been little discussed or studied. This anniversary year provides an excellent opportunity to commemorate the Pre-Columbian collection’s impressive housing—arguably a work of art in its own right.

To accompany the 2013 Spring Symposium "New Testament in Byzantium," this exhibit presents and discusses several of the rare Byzantine lead seals from the collection that depict New Testament narrative scenes and figures.

Through August 2017 in the Orientation Gallery | Shows how the Byzantine empress captured the public imagination at the end of the nineteenth century.

For over a thousand years the Byzantine Emperor ruled as God’s regent of earth. The decisions of the individuals who sat on the throne had repercussions throughout the Byzantine world and far beyond. Decrees, letters, judgments, and commands left Constantinople every day signed by the emperor in red ink and secured with the imperial seal. The designs of the imperial seals provide an insight into the minds and policies of the rulers whose image they bore; they tell us not only how they wished to be viewed by the recipients of their letters, but also how they viewed themselves.