LF: Yes, that is about right.

VKM: What was your background in garden and landscape?

LF: My background in garden and landscape was practically non-existent. I had never lived anywhere that had a garden, and I loved a beautiful garden when I saw one. But I had never studied gardening. My background was as a reference librarian. I had done my undergraduate work in General Studies at the University of Chicago, taken a master’s degree in library science, and I worked as a reference librarian at the University of Chicago until 1961, when we moved to Washington. And then I worked again in a very general collection at the U.S. Information Agency, which in those days – it no longer exists, it’s been folded into the State Department – but it’s job was essentially to do public relations for the United States worldwide. We ran the Voice of America. We had a large publishing collection – publishing operation rather – that we distributed materials very, very widely. And the library here was a backup. It was like a good small university library, or maybe more like a college library with a very up-to-date collection – we collected newspaper clippings daily that would prepare us to answer questions from abroad and publish things about the states that people wanted to know. I did that for about ten years. But in work as a librarian, you begin to understand the importance of little things that most people ignore, like punctuation and consistency in bibliographic citation. And when I – well, things changed at the U.S. Information Agency during the Vietnam War and it became less interesting to me. I had a background – I’d done some editorial work at the University of Chicago for the press there, and my husband was traveling a lot. I just decided I didn’t want to go to an office five days a week. And so I stopped my library work in the ‘60s and started doing copyediting, and that’s what brought me to Dumbarton Oaks.

VKM: So, how did you first become aware of Dumbarton Oaks?

LF: Well, I – we had a good friend named Bates Lowry. I should go back. You can’t live in Washington and not be aware of Dumbarton Oaks. My husband and I had subscribed to the concerts; I had walked frequently in the gardens here. It was a gorgeous place and a place I was drawn back to. But in 1977, a friend of ours named Bates Lowry, who was an architectural historian, came here. He had a project at that time; he and his wife were doing some publishing of microfiche in American art and architecture. He subsequently became very interested in the preservation at the Pension Building downtown, which today is the Building Museum, and he ultimately became the first director and really organizer of the Building Museum. But I think in ’77 he was still working at something called the Dunlap Society. Anyway, he was an old college friend of my husband’s. They moved down here, and I can’t remember at this point whether that was about the time that Betty MacDougall came to Dumbarton Oaks, or whether she was already here.

VKM: I think she started around ’72, so –

LF: Okay, then she was here. But, Bates knew her. They were good friends. And through Bates Lowry, I met Betty MacDougall. My husband and I met her, and we became friendly. And she knew what I was doing. I had at that point just finished five years editing the rare book catalogue of the Lessing Rosenwald Rare Book Collection for the Library of Congress, which was a very demanding assignment. But I had finished it, I’d finished the indexes, I’d done the bibliography, it was at press, and I was looking for other assignments. Betty was about to reissue a symposium on Persian gardens that had been held here, I guess in the early ‘60s. And I think it was out of print. She wanted to have it reprinted, and she hired me to do that job.

VKM: So, you had already seen Dumbarton Oaks before you came to work here. So when you first saw Dumbarton Oaks, or visited, what were your initial impressions of it?

LF: Oh, I was awed. It was very very beautiful and it was – well, one of the joys of having this assignment was that I got into the gardens when they were not necessarily open, and I could wander at leisure. I was – as I recall – I wasn’t working by the hour, so I had time to take breaks and enjoy the gardens, and I had met Mrs. Bliss once.

VKM: Really?

LF: Yes, she was an old lady, but when we first interned – ’61 – she was still on the scene, and not that I had any long conversation with her, but it was kind of fun to be in her home and see what she had created. At that time – and at this point I don’t know to what extent things have changed – but the garden operation, the garden library, and the exhibition space for the rare book collection were all right here, sort of on the 32^nd Street side, and the library was on two levels, the rare books were on the street level and the working collections – the working gardening collections – were underground, down that circular staircase, that you may have seen. Much of my work was done at home because, as I remember it, on the first project, which was the Persian Gardens, I didn’t see it until the galley stage. Now that may not be familiar to someone who has grown up with a computer. But publishing in those days was – there were many parts to it. A manuscript would come in. It would be edited. It would be sent to a printer who would then type in the printed text. It would come back in a first stage of prints, which were called galleys. It wasn’t divided into pages; it was just, you know, line by line. They would be edited and proofread. The manuscript would already have been proofread, but then the galleys would be proofed. Corrections would be made. They would go back to the printer. The corrections would be made, and then the text would come back again in page proof form. You would have to correct – you would have to check that all the corrections had been made, and then at that point any indexing could be done because there would be page numbers related to the text. So you would prepare an index at that point, if there was to be one. And it would then go back to the press. If I remember correctly, I wasn’t around for anything until the galleys came back because I think a copy of the first edition would have been sent to the printer for resetting in type. Oh, and I should also answer that the joy was – I did have to work at home mostly – but when I came in, I could sit at an absolutely gorgeous desk in the garden library, which looked out on the gardens and it really felt good.
VKM: So, you worked on the Persian Garden.

LF: That was the first publication.

VKM: What were your other projects?

LF: Well, following that – I don’t know if it is still the case, I think it is, but the garden library, the garden – I shouldn’t just say library – but the gardening section of Dumbarton Oaks. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called.

VKM: I think they call it Garden and Landscape studies now.

LF: Okay, the Garden and Landscape Studies section would hold an annual symposium, and the papers from that symposium would be published, which again added to the length of time. Papers would come in. The authors would be told that six months later they were supposed to have final copy. They would have delivered them orally at this symposium. Then they were supposed to submit a final typed version of their papers. Some of them would come. Some of them wouldn’t come. It was always a struggle. But probably within six months or so, they would have all appeared. Betty would have decided what order they should appear in. She would, probably by then, have written a forward of some sort, organized it, asked for any major substantive changes that she might have wanted. She might have asked an author to elaborate on some subject. And then, they would come to me – the manuscripts – at that point, after, not Persian Gardens, I think the next one was the sixth colloquium, which was on John Claudius Loudon and the nineteenth century in Great Britain, and at that point I had manuscripts and I would change them for punctuation, spelling. Again, because it was a different world, there was no such thing as spell-check.

VKM: Oh, I can imagine!

LF: And even today, with spell-check, you have to check because “to” is a very different word from “too.” But in those days, the authors would’ve type their own manuscripts because they were all academics and they didn’t have secretaries. And some of them could type, and some of them couldn’t. And typewriters did not make corrections, so the corrections were either made in whiteout or by hand by the authors, before the manuscript would come here – some of them legible, some of them not. And it was my job at that point as a copy editor not only to check for spelling and punctuation and correct grammar, in some cases – because often, not often but sometimes, the authors were foreign and there would be rather awkward translations. But I had to get the manuscript in shape to go for that first stage of typesetting, and I did that for the John Claudius Loudon Colloquium, which finally was published in 1980. And I’ll tell you about another publication that came out in 1980 later, because I want to talk about two of them together, but also the Roman Gardens which came out in 1981. In between I did Beatrix Farrand’s Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks, but that was a very different publication from the symposium – from the colloquium. And then again I worked on the Beatrix Farrand colloquium in 1982. On the Beatrix Farrand books, what I did was more substantive.

VKM: So who did you work with the most during your time at Dumbarton Oaks?

LF: Betty MacDougall, who essentially was my boss. She was the fulltime person in charge of the garden and landscape research effort. I never quite understood it, but I think that at least at that point the staff members here had faculty appointments at Harvard – they may still. I don’t know. She was something like an adjunct professor. She was a very distinguished landscape and architectural historian. I should say architectural historian – I guess in those days – with a specialty in landscape architecture. Italian gardens were her great specialty. Betty was the fulltime person here. She supervised the librarian, Laura Byers, with whom I worked a lot because I had to check references and things down in the reference library. Betty would have, I gather, made any acquisitions of rare books at that point. Although, I think, I don’t know how much money was left in those days.

VKM: Not very much.

LF: Once Mrs. Bliss died – actually once the property was transferred to Harvard – the rare book library may have stopped making additions.

VKM: I think what basically happened was they had to sell the books that weren’t related to the gardens in order to afford to buy new books.

LF: Could be. I don’t know that. I had never heard that. So that could have been a later development.

VKM: It was. There was a lot of stuff in the records about how Harvard felt about Dumbarton Oaks selling books that maybe weren’t related to their collection, but Harvard wanted.

LF: Oh that’s very possible. Yes, but I would imagine that the rare books related to the gardens –

VKM: – Oh, those they kept.

LF: Those they kept. The others might have been sold, if they were duplicates from Harvard, or gone up to the Harvard libraries. Yes, I think, it’s my impression that for all three of the studied collections, the books, rare books even, related to those collections remained here, because they were certainly shelved in the garden library here and exhibited in that entrance – in that long hallway leading to the garden library doors, just as you came in the 32^nd street entrance, where they are exhibited today. Betty would have supervised all of that, anything having to do with the – ah, the garden – oh, but not the gardens themselves. That was a totally different operation. There was a gardener on staff and of course a large staff of gardeners, and he had charge of the gardens. He might have used the library, although I rather doubt it. But, by then those were two entirely separate departments, and that’s where the Beatrix Farrand Plant Book comes in.

VKM: Can you talk about any changes that took place in 1980 when Diane McGuire took over while Betty was on sabbatical?

LF: Yes, and that’s exactly where the plant book comes in, and – Diane McGuire was a landscape designer, landscape architect. She was not an academic. She was a hands-on designer and gardener. She was also an ardent feminist. Feminist – Feminism as a movement was really blossoming just about that time. There were a lot of women in the landscape architect profession interested in the history of women in the profession, and Beatrix Farrand was the first. She had been, I don’t know, should I talk about her background; who she was?

VKM: Beatrix Farrand? Sure.

LF: Yes, Beatrix Farrand.

VKM: I’d be curious to know how much was, you know, common awareness, when because –

LF: No, I mean this, the original research, or most of the major research on Beatrix Farrand was done here at Dumbarton Oaks, and subsequent to the symposium – colloquium. I keep calling it symposium. Sorry about that.

VKM: I get them mixed up too.

LF: Correct the record, please – colloquium. Diane came in. I can’t remember whether she came as a fellow or exactly what. I don’t remember the order in which she was actually employed here. But Diane’s interest was in the Dumbarton Oaks gardens and in Beatrix Farrand, who had designed the Dumbarton Oaks gardens. Beatrix Farrand was a very, very interesting person. She was the first major female landscape architect in this country. She came from a very prominent old New York family. She was Beatrix Jones Farrand and the “Jones” was always part of her signature. The Joneses in New York were the sort of family that looked down on the Astors as nouveau-riche. Beatrix’s father was a Jones of that family. His name was something Cadwalader Jones. These were all New York Dutch and English names. Her mother was an interesting person in her own right. Henry James was one of her mother’s closest friends. She had a kind of salon in New York. The parents separated when Beatrix was twelve, and I think that may have had something to do with Beatrix’s independence of mind, growing up with a mother who didn’t have a lot of money anymore. She had enough to live on properly in New York. But she grew up sort of in that salon, meeting a lot of very interesting people. In the Beatrix Jones Colloquium – there it is – there is a biographical section on Beatrix, and it talks about her background. She – now we’re talking now about the 1880s, ‘90s – she may have been born earlier; I don’t remember the birth date. But like girls of her societal rank, she was homeschooled. She never went to college. But growing up in her mother’s salon, she was well-read. She must have been a good listener, I think. She was certainly brought up with all of the manners that would be required to deal with high society, wherever she went. And I think I failed to mention that her father’s sister was Edith Wharton. Edith Wharton was also well-connected and was also, as you may know if you’ve read any of her history, a very independently-minded woman. She took a great interest in her niece, who was considerably younger, and they were always very close, and indeed Farrand was her executor, after Edith Wharton’s death. At some point, long after the father had left – Beatrix must have been in her late teens – I think I remember reading somewhere that she actually had a coming-out party, which I’m not sure of. I may be wrong about that. But anyway, at some point she was sent, and I made a note here, she was introduced to Charles Sprague Sargent, who was a horticulturist and was at that point the either coming or already director of the Arnold Arboretum in – outside Boston. She was sent up to study with him, to apprentice – although they probably would not use such a low-class term. But she was sent up to work with him, and he took a great interest in her, and she apparently fell in love with plants and planting and really took a great interest in it and was a prized student of his. But at some point, probably under her aunt’s influence, instead of following Sargent, who was basically a horticulturist – he was interested in how plants worked, in naming plants, in the relationships of plants and plantings in a kind of wild landscape. Meanwhile Beatrix had done some traveling, mostly in Italy, where Wharton was living, and had been introduced by her aunt, who was interested in interior decoration and garden design, to the great Italian gardens, and at that point, I think, Beatrix realized that what she wanted to be was a designer of gardens, not a horticulturist. She began her career and was the first female member of the American – I think it’s called – the American Society of Landscape Architects. She was the one woman accepted by all these men, who were designing gardens in those days, like Fredrick Law Olmsted and a number of others whose names just escape me at the moment. But anyway, they invited her to join them in founding this society. So, Diane, who was very interested in gardens, as a designer was also interested in Beatrix Farrand’s history. She came here, I think she may have been assigned, and I’m not sure of this, it would have to be checked. She may have been sent down by Harvard to work with the gardener because in 1970 or before, she was familiar with Beatrix Farrand’s Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks. The Plant Book had been requested, I think, and it’s somewhere here in these books, but I’m not going to look for it now. It’s in the introduction to the Plant Book. I believe Mrs. Bliss, at the time Dumbarton Oaks went over to Harvard –

VKM: I read the introduction. I think it was William Tyler, maybe, who asked her to write up –

LF: Maybe it was Tyler –

VKM: – all the plants she had in the garden

LF: Right. He asked her, probably employed her, to go through section by section of the gardens explaining what her vision had been for that particular garden; how it related to the house, and then list the plants that she had proposed, because even by 1940 some changes had been made, during the war I’m sure the gardens had been neglected – everything else in this country had been neglected. Those were hard times. They wanted a record which hadn’t been here when she could come annually and oversee and work with Mrs. Bliss on the gardens and work with the gardener. And at that point she had prepared a plant book, which existed in manuscript and manuscript only. Diane, working with it and working with the gardeners here, realized that it was a valuable document, and she was very eager to have it published. And she – I guess she must have persuaded Betty to hire me to help her bring out that manuscript, because Diane wasn’t used to writing a lot and this was a pretty – what should I say – Farrand wasn’t a writer. I mean, Farrand gave directions usually orally, or notes, and this was not something that was ready for publication. So, it was much more substantial from my point of view. I really worked on the text, and then Diane taught me, bless her, to identify the – and not just identify – but correct for or research for correctness the plant names and link them up with the popular plant names, because the plant names were give in Latin usually. Sometimes in the text they would be in popular form, and to know the relationship and be sure that it was accurately depicted was a big part of the job, which I really enjoyed. I learned a lot from that particular – I learned from all the assignments – but I learned a great deal about gardening from that one. And then, I would – I can’t remember exactly the dates of Diane’s coming in and substituting for Betty, but Diane also took responsibility for the colloquium on Beatrix Farrand, and I worked very closely with her on that. And, indeed, I think I am given credit on the title page of that one. We had a good time. Well I met her friends and by then I was really interested in Farrand, so I really – I loved doing that book. I subsequently visited as many gardens of hers as I could, and it turned out that she had been the original landscape designer for the University of Chicago, where I had gone to school – something I had never known. But Diane was here and while she was working on the colloquium, she had – she was very very keen to see the gardens returned to the state that Farrand had left them – that they had been on Farrand’s last visit. She wanted them returned to where they had been designed. Well, over the years there’ve been many different gardeners, many changes made, that beautiful Italian pool, reflecting pool, had been added. Diane always said that Farrand would have been very upset to have seen that happen. But, and of course that could not be removed at that point. But, Farrand had – Farrand – well first of all there was no air conditioning when Dumbarton Oaks was built. There was no such thing as an air conditioned interior. This house was designed for – to be lived in and entertained in by the Blisses in the spring and the fall. They would take residence here in those seasons and do a lot of entertaining, and the gardens, as envisioned by Farrand, were an addition to the house in which entertaining would take place. So, as you may have noticed, as they move away from the house, they get more and more wild, but near the house they are quite formal, almost like rooms. And I’m sure tables would have been set up and entertaining would have been done in many of those rooms, and Diane was very conscious of that, made me conscious of it, and, I think, tried to make the gardeners increasingly conscious of that, and tried to bring the landscape as much as possible back to where they had been. I don’t know how the gardener at that point felt about Diane. I’m sure there were conflicts. I don’t know if Giles Constable is still around, but if there were conflicts, he would be able to tell you about those. Diane would sometimes grumble. The gardener was never anything but nice to me, but I hadn’t of course – there were – Harvard was paying for all of this and I don’t know how Harvard felt about it all, but if Diane had had her way and unlimited funds, the gardens would have been returned to Farrand’s plan, and were returned to a certain degree, I have no doubt. I can’t tell you specifically how much. But and – again that was what 19 – she was here in ’80 –

VKM: 1980,  ’80, ’81?

LF: The book came out in ’82, with again the same process of reading it, the proofs and all of that. But what – it’s thirty years – the gardens today – I would have to go through these gardens with the plant book to tell you whether they still reflect Farrand’s plan or not. I imagine they do, fairly close up. I know that the number of major trees that were fundamental to her plan, that had been preserved from the eighteenth century, maybe early nineteenth century, and on which she had focused various views came down in various storms over the years, subsequent to this work. And I hope that they have been replaced at least by the same kind of tree. But, they can’t possibly be at the same height and majesty that they were when Dumbarton Oaks was at its height, in the Blisses’ days. But I imagine that the gardeners have worked with the plant book now that it is published and have probably followed as much as possible the plan. Anyway, the Beatrix Farrand colloquium was the last book that I edited here at Dumbarton Oaks. Yes, very shortly after that, I think – well I was told – whether I was fired for cause, whether I was fired because there wasn’t any money anymore, I don’t know. I was told the latter.

VKM: I think they were a little short on funds.

LF: Simply that they were short of funds, that they were no longer – that they no longer had funds to pay for editing these things. They were going to hold the authors responsible for seeing that their text was clean, and I suppose Betty must have read the proofs after those years, and I’ve never looked at them to see if I felt they needed editing. But my formal connection with Dumbarton Oaks ended at that point. I should say that I went on to do some work with Betty, with Diane, who edited a book called – or was instrumental in putting out a book called Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes, which has a big section, as you can imagine, on Dumbarton Oaks, and I edited that book when it came out in 1985. So that is really my last formal connection. Anything else you want to ask me?

VKM: Did you say that there was the Beatrix Farrand Colloquium? Did you attend it?

LF: Oh yes, of course. I attended all the colloquiums that I edited except Persian Gardens, which – I was young. It was the year – actually it was just the year before I came to Washington. But I attended all three colloquiums that I edited. That was always very pleasant. It meant – people would come from all over the country. They all were delighted to see one another because there aren’t that many people – professors – interested in landscape architecture. It’s still – I imagine it’s still a fairly small group and they know one another, and they were thrilled to come. We would have lunch in the gardens, a boxed lunch of some kind, and there were cocktail parties and the papers obviously were delivered, and then there would be question and answer sessions, and that was one reason why the authors went back following the colloquium because often points were raised that they wanted to elaborate on. So, it was a genuinely scholarly meeting and – but it was lovely. Usually your scholarly meetings are at universities in the basement of the library, and to come to Dumbarton Oaks was a very special treat.

VKM: This is maybe a strange question, but you mentioned that Diane McGuire was still very feminist, and there were – I mean, I’ve noticed that there’re a lot of women who worked in garden and landscape studies here, but not so many of the junior fellows were women. It was very male dominated in the records. Did you ever get a feeling that –

LF: The world was male dominated until about 19 – let’s face it, today women still get paid less, not at universities, I am happy to say, but I have watched a tremendous change in the way women are regarded in the world. Let’s face it, Beatrix Farrand would not have been the success she was without her social background. A lot of the women who pushed in the early days – women writers. You know, George Eliot was not that woman’s name. The Brontë sisters had to publish – one of them, I think, published under a man’s name. Women didn’t do things like that, professionally. Farrand had the advantage of a lot of very good social connections and her early work was paid for by friends of the family, who recognized her talent and who gave her the opportunities to work on their gardens, because she needed to make a living, until she married Max Farrand. But she – she could do that early pioneering work. In art history, generally, and architectural history, I’m sure most of the professors at the universities were male, if you start looking at bibliographies. I suspect that they were not awfully interested in gardening; that it was thought of as a woman’s – something the woman did. The man designed the house; maybe the lady of the house designed the gardens or worked on the gardens. So, I would guess that women probably – and I am really talking off the top of my head here – but probably entered academia working on gardens, before men did. Women might take a degree in art history and then study Italian gardens, which meant you had to do your graduate work in Italy. I’m sure that that’s what took Betty over there. I mean, she loved Italy. But her good friend here, Hank Millon, who ran the National Gallery’s Studies program for years – Hank studied sculpture and not gardens. I’m sure that that’s what attracted a lot of women to the profession, and over the years of these colloquiums, when you got distinguished professors, distinguished academics, there would have been more women in this profession than men. Now, I think younger men probably don’t even think twice about it. They don’t think of it as a woman’s profession, which would mean that there would be more fellows today – male – more than thirty years ago.

VKM: You mentioned that you used to attend events here, even before you worked here. Was there – did you do a lot of socializing with people who had worked here at Dumbarton Oaks?

LF: Not a lot. My husband was, in those years, curator of prints and then Chief of the Prints and Photographs division at the Library of Congress. I’m trying to think how we met Mr. Tyler, whether he did research over there, whether we met here. The art world here was much smaller in those days, than it is today. Many museums didn’t exist. My husband ended his career as Director of the Portrait Gallery. There was no such thing until the Johnson administration, until the late ‘60s. I remember meeting Tyler and being invited here to concerts by him. But I don’t remember the particulars of how it happened. It probably happened through my husband. So, I didn’t pay attention. We subscribed at one point to the concert series here, and that was lovely. It would be held in the music room, and would spill out at intermission onto the terrace in the gardens, and that was very special. What I honestly don’t remember is whether that was before or after I worked here. So, I’d have to check in your records as to when the concert series began.

VKM: You know, I actually don’t know.

LF: It was an invitational. You had to wangle an invitation to subscribe, and I imagine Mr. Tyler arranged that for us. And it may have been at one of those concerts that I met Mrs. Bliss. It’s very possible because I don’t remember her coming to any of these colloquia. But I honestly can’t tell you.

VKM: I think the colloquia started after she died, so –

LF: Very possible, yes.

VKM: This is maybe a funny question, but someone mentioned that Dumbarton Oaks used to be a part of the diplomatic social scene.

LF: Oh, of course!

VKM: Was that still going on while –

LF: I mean, after all, it was built by a wealthy diplomat, and in those days diplomacy was very different. At the highest levels of the diplomatic posts, and still to a certain extent – but in those days the posts were filled by people not only with money, but with social connections; good family from usually the east coast. Today, because so much of the entertaining has to be paid for by the ambassador, the government has very small budgets, they’ll pick wealthy people who made their own money. But in those days, it was old family, and the diplomatic community was very socially elite. I would say a lot of diplomats lived in Georgetown. Georgetown was the place to live if you had social connections, when we moved here in 1961. It still is to a certain extent, although there’s – it’s diversified a lot, as the whole world has diversified. But I’m sure that when the Blisses’ entertained personally, a great part of their – a great many of their friends would have served in diplomatic posts, not just as ambassadors, but as chiefs of mission. Many would be ambassadors coming to this country from countries where Mr. Bliss had – where Ambassador Bliss had served. I’m sure he kept up his connections abroad. He would have welcomed new ambassadors. I can’t remember now where he served. But there had to be Latin American ones because that is where he developed his interest in the pre-Columbian part. I didn’t do my homework on the Blisses. But oh yes, I mean it would have been a center for entertaining in the diplomatic community. You could probably check that out just looking at the social pages of the Washington Post during the Bliss years. I’m sure those pages – those parties were covered, probably with guest lists, at least of the most important guests

VKM: Did they still have parties and stuff in the ‘70s when it was just a Harvard institution?

LF: Well, the parties would be in conjunction with the colloquia. I can’t tell you about the Byzantine and the pre-Columbian. Have you spoken with Betty Benson?

VKM: I’m mostly doing garden and landscape. But, I believe someone has.

LF: That’s good. I’m sure that they had parties. As I say, there was the whole entertaining in conjunction with the concerts. I think the director entertained. I would not be surprised if the director entertained Harvard graduates. And I’m sure it was – you know you entertain to raise money, let’s face it. Dumbarton Oaks was, as I understood it – if it couldn’t raise its own, enough money to run it, it was going to revert entirely to Harvard and folded into Harvard. The collections would be folded into the Harvard collections. For all I know, the building would be sold, the building and gardens. I don’t know that. I have not read the documents. But it was always my understanding that Dumbarton Oaks had to stand on its own two feet in terms of budget.

VKM: Yes, I mean –

LF: And believe me, maintaining these gardens costs a lot of money. And the endowment in those days – and it’s even like the Phillips today. I’m sure when Mr. Phillips left his money to the Phillips Collection, he thought that that would ground it in perpetuity. But inflation has been such that those early endowments just do not cover, and I am sure that Giles Constable had to raise money for Dumbarton Oaks, and there would have been parties entertaining people who wanted to support the house and gardens, in those years. And once Mrs. Bliss was dead and Harvard owned the collection – Harvard administered, they didn’t own but they administered Dumbarton Oaks. I would guess that the guest list would change considerably.

VKM: Did you – I don’t know the exact financial details of how Harvard related to Dumbarton Oaks, but did you get a sense of how people here felt about the threat of Harvard maybe taking –

LF: They were all aware of it, because that is where I heard about it – I would have no reason. You know, they paid me; I think the biggest job was $5,000, and mostly it was considerably less than that. Of course, when I was told that they were letting me go or that they couldn’t employ me anymore, they didn’t fire me, they just said next year we’re not going to have an editor, and as far as I knew, they didn’t. It was made clear to me that that was because they were strapped financially. I mean, not strapped – that’s probably much too strong a word. But, they were having to watch their expenditures more than they had in previous years. Whether – I don’t think that Betty MacDougall ever felt that she would lose her job. It may have affected her travel budget. That I don’t know. She never spoke to me about that. She did travel. By the time – well we kept up our relationship until she died. But in the ‘80s, ‘90s she was on a number of UNESCO panels and international panels, and I’m sure that paid for much of her travel in those years. If she was still at Dumbarton Oaks when that happened, they were probably thrilled that somebody else was picking up the tab. But I don’t know. She never spoke to me about feeling that she’d lose her job. But I know that there was a consciousness among the department heads, at least. And it may have happened that they may have had to have fewer and fewer fellows. There was entertaining incidentally for the fellows. Fellows all got free lunches. I don’t know if they still do. The fellows – there were parties for the fellows. It was a very congenial situation, almost like a small college at Oxford, and Tyler was, I’m sure, very eager to keep it that way, which was great because they would all go from here out to colleges and universities all around the country and they’d still know each other from their fellows days. And I’m sure that it was instrumental in making the history of landscape architecture a true profession and in spreading it from east coast schools to universities all around the country. That kind of collegiality is another of the contributions of Dumbarton Oaks.

VKM: So, I have a list of the people who were on the Senior Fellows Committee. I don’t know if you would have known any of them – but, Joseph Alsop, David Coffin, Howard Adams –

LF: Howard, I knew. Alsop, I knew to shake his hand. My husband knew him better because he was involved with the Portrait Gallery. Howard, Adams I knew. Howard was at that point at the National Gallery, I think. I think he was assistant director under Carter, but I – he may have just been heading the education department. I don’t remember exactly. Howard Adams was an Adams of the Adams family. He was a descendant. I can’t tell you exactly how, but his genealogy went way back in American history, and he was very proud of that. He was a really nice guy, and maybe he was the first director of the – no I can’t think what it’s called – Mr. Millon’s program at the National Gallery that brings in fellows and professors, distinguished professors, and it’s got an acronym –

VKM: CASVA.

LF: CASVA, CASVA. Howard may have been involved, if not as first director, in helping to set that up. But I’m not sure. But he would certainly have been – he was a good friend of Betty’s. They were buddies. And I think he’s still alive. You might talk to him about Betty.

VKM: He’s still alive. That was the first interview I read.

LF: Oh, you did.

VKM: That’s how I knew to get in touch with you.

LF: Oh, okay, yes. They were maybe college friends. They went back.

VKM: Did you –

LF: Who else was on the list?

VKM: Peter Hornbeck, Judith Colton, Allen Tate, Wilhelmina Jashemski.

LF: Allen Tate, I knew, but not from this connection. I sailed to Europe with Allen Tate on the Liberte. In 1961 my husband and I – and oh he was fun. He was fun when he was drunk. Don’t – but that should not go in the record. But he loved his – was it a gin? – there was something. And his wife at that time was a niece of – I can’t think of the name. She has a – her house is a gallery in Boston, beside the museum. It’ll come to me in a minute.

VKM: The Gardner Museum?

LF: The Gardner Museum! Isabella Gardner. Thank you, thank you

VKM: It’s a beautiful museum.

LF: And his wife was a niece of Isabella’s.

VKM: Really?

LF: And it – oh they – wonderful stories to tell. But we – a seven day crossing, and we would sit around and drink on the crossing, and that – that was a joy. And he took us up to Forenza. He really knew Italy, and from Florence, he gave us a guided tour of Forenza, which was a day I’ll never forget. And he loved gardens, so I can understand why he was on that committee. But as I say, I had nothing to do with him here at Dumbarton Oaks. It was just a lucky accident.

VKM: It’s still nice to know.

LF: And, of course, I read his poetry. But, we all – in those days he was a really famous poet.

VKM: Did you ever get to meet Wilhelmina Jashemski? Because she –

LF: Yes, I mean I’ve heard –

VKM: – she died before we could – before the project started.

LF: She lived out in Silver Spring. And I was – when I was working on her essay, I had to go to the house once or twice to check things out with her. Very gracious lady! Lovely person. I know Betty was very fond of her. She, if I remember correctly – and now I’m trying to remember her paper, that was just about the time that the horticulturists were discovering that they could – as they were digging up seeds – that they could identify the seeds that were used in Roman gardens, and I think that appears in her paper.

VKM: She did, I think, the gardens of Pompeii.

LF: Yes, oh yes, of course. Those would have been very much buried, and she was able to, you know, tell us what was actually planted in those gardens. So, she had a certain scientific background as well. She was – she really – but, you know, I met her a few times. She was always lovely to me. I heard her deliver her paper. I’m glad you reminded me that that was in it. But, I can’t tell you much about her otherwise.

VKM: Well, I think that’s – do you have any memories of Dumbarton Oaks that are particularly prominent or that you think that we should know about?

LF: Two – well one being Betty – and I’ll talk about her in a minute. The other being – as I mentioned, the garden library was in this west wing, and the research part of the library, as opposed to the rare books, was down in the basement, and there was no elevator. Prominent on the landscape architecture scene in Washington was a man named Charlie McLaughlin. His widow is still living in Chevy Chase. Both Charlie and his wife Ann had been victims of polio, I guess in their teens, and Charlie was paralyzed from, I guess, the hip down. He had no use of his legs at all. Charlie was a great expert on Fredrick Law Olmsted and his gardens. Indeed Charlie was one of the team that was editing the Olmsted papers, which of course are scattered all over the country. And they were editing and publishing the Olmsted papers, and they were based here in Washington, and Charlie’s office was here in Washington, and from time to time he would come to use the library here at Dumbarton Oaks, which was down in the basement, and there was no elevator. And I would watch in horror as Charlie would get up and tighten the braces on his legs and then work himself backwards down the spiral staircase, hanging on to the armrest going arm by arm. It was like you’d go down a rope, if you were going down a fire escape. He would work his way down to the library, where Laura Byers by that time would have brought down his crutches and he could get around. So, that is one of my great visual recollections of Dumbarton Oaks. And the other of course is working with Betty, who was wonderful fun, and very learned, and always willing to share her knowledge, and a good-time-Charlie. She came from Texas. She was not an eastern socialite, although she had gone to Vassar, I think. I believe she’s a Vassar graduate, and then I guess she did her – I think I remember that she did her graduate work at Harvard. But she was a good Texas – I don’t know- she spoke her mind as you would in Texas. And then she was a lot of fun – she was good – lots of fun at parties. I always loved to – she came to dinner a lot. She had been coming to dinner before she hired me, and the Lowrys were good friends, and we used to have a good time together, and we visited her well after her retirement. Up in Vermont she had a country place. It was – we had a good time there. So, I have only fond recollections of Betty. She was a hard worker, and I think very highly respected in her profession. She must have been to get on all those UNESCO panels, and I think she did a lot of good things for Dumbarton Oaks, at least to my mind. She had one daughter down in Texas, and the daughter died before Betty did, which was rather sad. Betty had been divorced – never heard her speak about her husband. And she moved up to Cambridge, where she lived in the winter. She had an apartment. I don’t think I ever saw her apartment there. I knew the building it was in. Bates pointed it out, and she and Bates Lowry were good friends too. I think she died before he did. I can’t remember. That generation is pretty much gone. Not Betty Benson – she’s still around. But there aren’t a lot of people. I guess, if you had to come to me with my short years, there can’t be a lot of people who remember.

VKM: Well, you’ve been really really informative, so –

LF: I hope so. Talking to people, I know, gives you a kind of view that you can’t get from reading the record.

VKM: Yes.

LF: And if any other questions occur to you, feel free to call me.

VKM: Thank you so much!

LF: Are you going to transcribe this? Or does it –?

VKM: Yes.

LF: Well, if questions occur –

VKM: Okay. Thank you very much.

CE: Glad to be here. Now how do we want to start?

EG: Maybe we could start – you could tell us a little about your relationship to Beatrix Farrand.

CE: Good, and I think that probably my big importance here would be the pronunciation of Farrand.

AS/EG: Yes

CE: In any case, my grandmother, May Dalton Carleton Knapp, her sister was Daisy Farrand, Daisy Carleton Farrand, who was married to Livingston Farrand, who was the president of Cornell in the 30s. Livingston’s parents’ brother was Max Farrand. So that makes – that is the circuitous relationship. And I was very friendly with Daisy Farrand’s daughter, Louisa Farrand Wood, who was a gardener. And my aim is to try and keep the women in – the Farrand women who were involved in gardening straight, their connections, namely Daisy Farrand, Livingston Farrand, and Louisa Farrand Wood, as well as to pass along the way I have been trying to teach people how to pronounce “Farrand.” The world would like to pronounce it “Farrand”, which would send the finger nails on the blackboard up the family. And I came up with something years ago for people to remember that it’s “Farrand.” And I say “Beatrix was fair and good”, and that hopefully will give everybody the way to remember. So, I may have accomplished my main goal right now. So, anyhow – do you have any questions?

AS: I was wondering – we understand that you heard through your family connections several stories about Beatrix Farrand.

CE: Yes, I understood from Louisa Farrand Wood that Beatrix was not a stern scary dragon. She may have appeared as a dragon to people. But Louisa said she was a very warm and caring person. The second thing I do – I came across today – is I wrote a review of Diane Kostial McGuire’s book for Arnoldia a number of years ago, and I think it never was published. But apparently one thing I did say is that Beatrix would never have liked to be referred to in today’s way we do it, as “Farrand” – referred to as “Farrand” or refer to me as “Engle.” Because whenever she would be referred to, she would be referred to as “Mrs. Farrand,” because she was of the era, and much as it – in a previous generation, if a woman won an award, she would have it printed in her husband’s name. It would have been “Mrs. Livingston Farrand”, whereas today, you and I would require it to be Beatrix Jones Farrand. So, there’s a change of view on that. Now, since this is an oral history, we have to keep going, talking.

AS: Do you have any Beatrix Farrand memorabilia?

CE: What few papers about Beatrix Farrand I had, I gave to Garland Farms, which is establishing a library, as you know, in Mount Desert. And what I was trying to do was to establish the relationship in American gardening of Beatrix Farrand, Daisy Farrand, the wife of the president of Cornell, who fancied herself quite a gardener and who designed quote “The President’s Garden” behind the president’s house at Cornell. I don’t know if she was trying to keep up with her sister-in-law, but I suspected, if you look at her face, you will see there is a theatricality to her. And her daughter, Louisa Farrand Wood, who was married to William Wood, who was a professor of journalism in Columbia, had a garden in New Canaan, and she fancied herself a gardener too, and she came from the same theatrical bed, which is another story. But, when she and her husband retired to Savannah, Georgia, she had a house on Jones Street and designed a garden behind – and by this time, you understand that she’s imbued with the spirit of garden design and the Farrand legend. And Louisa Farrand Wood is the woman who donated the Beatrix Farrand portrait to Dumbarton Oaks, by the way – I’m sure that’s well documented – but in any case, Louisa got into the spirit of Savannah and decided with all these wonderful small gardens behind the row  houses of downtown Savannah, which was being reclaimed at the time from destruction by people who – by historic Savannah – to do this book Behind the Garden Walls. And she described every garden, had a plan done of the garden, had this wonderful man do the paintings, and then she – I got involved with the book because I knew Thalassa Cruso. Now Thalassa Cruso Hencken was of the same finish as Julia Child on TV. And Julia Child had her cooking program and Thalassa Cruso had her gardening program. These were both – it was in the 70s, and so Thalassa Cruso had a name which my aunt or cousin Louisa Farrand Wood thought would be good to impart to this book. On top of that, we thought it would be wonderful if the nomenclature was gone over, because there were all these wonderful lists of plants in here. So then one of the taxonomists here at the Arnold Arboretum – Dick – his name will come to me. It was Richard, or Dr. Richard Weaver, the horticultural taxonomist at the Arboretum who checked that the nomenclature in the book – it was a job. I didn’t understand how difficult it was because the nomenclature was so bad. But that’s okay. I think most of the plants we could – somehow. That’s the important thing about proper botanical nomenclature, or improper; we know what they were talking about. So that establishes Louisa Farrand Wood, whose garden was also taped by the gardening program on public broadcasting. So, this gets her a place in American gardening, although small. And, her mother, Daisy Farrand – so we now have those Farrands straight. Okay. It’s my understanding, hearing about Beatrix Farrand over the years, because I’ve been involved in gardening, here in the Boston area and with the Garden Club of America, that she, in those days when women had to go to work – and it’s my understanding that she needed to work, as did her aunt Elizabeth – rather – yes Wharton.

AS/EG: Edith?

CE: Edith Wharton, yes. That it was alright for women to design gardens or be sculptresses; that this was an acceptable means of earning a living, and being here at the Arnold Arboretum – hanging around here as a groupie of the Arnold Arboretum – I’ve always heard about Beatrix Farrand and her coming here to Boston to study with Charles Sprague Sargent, which I think was really cool. And her legacy here at the Arboretum, which I think is not here anymore, was to plant the azaleas along the main road here in succession of bloom. But my understanding is her importance in American lore, in American history. She was the first woman to be admitted to the Society of American Landscape Architects, and given that we know how male-dominated the world is then, this was pretty important – and also to establish the importance of landscape design in our culture. I mean Dumbarton Oaks – it is not a question of, you know, “Let’s plant something here, let’s plant something there.” She had a vision for every inch of that space, which Dumbarton Oaks has been able to maintain in spite of having to make changes with libraries and things. And, I think it’s – so many of us don’t realize that you can’t take an outdoor space and just start planning – the design element – and she set the bar for all of us to follow. As a matter of fact, my grandmother was part of this, living in Flushing, New York, and she had probably a better garden than her sister, Daisy Farrand, but she had not married so well. And so, she kind of had to keep it together, and she used to garden – I mean, excuse me – lecture during the depression on gardening, and this is, May Carleton Knapp, and it’s reported that she kept the family in food on gardening lectures. But it was her hope to design gardens as well, because this was – I think lecturing was acceptable, because you’re a given expert. And she could also hopefully design gardens, but that didn’t pan out to be a huge source of income. Today, the tradition is certainly carried on. Radcliffe Seminars started the Institute for Landscape Studies back in the 70s, and it was to educate women in landscape design, and mainly at the time – this is all more Harvard law, lore, than anything else – it was to educate us if we were going to be members of conservation commissions or tree-planting committees. But it taught us that, just like Beatrix did, to put everything down on paper and plan it. It became part of the Arnold Arboretum Landscape Studies program when Radcliffe kind of folded everything up. Anyhow, I mean, Beatrix Farrand’s name in landscape design is – she is sort of the pinnacle, the top. She’s kind of the goddess that we all look up to. I mean, there is no other name that I can think of, other than Frederick Law Olmsted, that you – when you mention landscape design – that you think of.

AS: But, I wonder, from what you’ve heard through family, was it just her – well – a combination of talent and the luck of her connections? That’s certainly the sense that her finding the Blisses –

CE: Yes, I think, she was of the manner born, and she did summer in Mount Desert, and Mount Desert is certainly a well-known summer watering-hole. And I think it’s natural, since they all know one another and they spoke the same language, for her to be trusted, because she understood their needs and their tastes. And I think the same thing would happen – happens today, and in probably – unfortunately too many people have trusted people in banking for the wrong reasons, but in – certainly in interior design, all of this, I would say. I don’t think she took advantage of the situation. It just sort of – it was the sort of thing that happened, people needed help, and they knew her, and so they hired her.

EG: And was the Dumbarton Oaks garden one of her most famous projects – one of the biggest gardens?

CE: It is certainly. That and the Abby Rockefeller Garden in Mount Desert are her signature gardens, and the fact that they are still going today is what I think is the most important thing, because we can see what she thought and see how she dealt with – as far as having to move things to put the library in, they’ve had to do that at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum recently, in order to accommodate modern needs, and the people who come to enjoy these places – I don’t know if you’ve heard of that – they had to take down the carriage house in Isabella Stewart Gardner’s palace on the Fenway in order to put in a visitor’s center. So, it was the same sort of screaming hoo-ha that “you can’t change the original!”

AS/EG: Alright.

CE: But I think both of these women would agree that you have to meet the need today. They are practical people. I’m disappointed that she was so cross about the fact they couldn’t start the school of landscape architecture in Reef Point Gardens that she ripped the gardens up and threw them out, but – You know, I can understand that if she couldn’t have it the way she wanted it, she would do that. So.

EG: But you think, for the most part, her vision and, I don’t know, ideas for the garden have remained pretty much intact at Dumbarton Oaks, aside from the library renovations?

CE: I would assume so. I mean, I’m no expert. I’m a plant person, and I’m historically challenged by lack of memory. But from what I see there, it’s been, as much as any generation of caretakers to have properly – there’s always an interpretation within that current generation about how faithful you’re being, or what should be done. A decision has to be made. But to my eye it looks – it makes sense, and certainly leaving the plans that she did to maintain them, to make the changes, she saw what would happen ahead, and things – I mean, she realized that plants grow and they die, and things happen, including libraries.

AS: She must have had a strong viewpoint. I mean, there’s a reason she has that dragon title.

CE: Oh yes. That’s what we call ladies of my generation today who had gotten old enough to become dragons. It’s a sign of achievement. So, I think she must have been a strong force in order to work in the first place, and to work in a man’s world, and to do the planning, and to oversee things. It’s my understanding with planning that she would be out there personally with sticks in the ground too, because sometimes things – I do know myself – things change when your – you plan it on paper but when you get there, it doesn’t work, so you have to rearrange. And she’d be out there in the field going for it, and she looks in her pictures to be a very persistent person, and strong-willed. So.

AS: I think that, if my understanding is correct, she had an idea at that point that she wasn’t really designing a socialite’s garden, but she was also designing a garden that would eventually become part of a research center.

CE: With the Blisses?

AS: Yes.

CE: Oh well, good for her! Maybe her dream did come through – of having a legacy; a living legacy is what she’d hope for at Reef Point Gardens. That’s a very cheery thought because it does persist today, and I don’t know how Dumbarton Oaks must have had to totally replant some areas because things just get out of scale and huge, and that’s perfectly okay in a garden to take something out and redo it. It’s not sacred; it’s alright to kill plants. No I’m serious – people think that you have to save every living thing. So, I would imagine they’ve had to replant things. And then somebody – I have pictures of the swimming pool, or of the –

AS: Oh, the pebble garden.

CE: The pebble garden.

AS: Which was quite different, I think, from its original concept.

CE: But it has happened. I went through a great deal of effort this morning to pull out my slides that are unfiled that I took in 1997. They are much better than my 1987 slides at Dumbarton Oaks. But I do remember the thing about Dumbarton Oaks that just blew my doors off – was the lawn that steps down in stairs and that it looks – the grade is dropping – but if you are standing up in the house, you don’t realize that there’re steps there, and it’s just absolutely brilliant, because it always is one flowing landscape. And I think that was one of my favorite things, as well as, I think, her pleached circle of trees. I can’t –

AS/EG: The Ellipse.

CE: Yes.

AS/EG: It’s beautiful.

CE: Really? Wonderful. I mean, the whole thing is all of these little vignettes all over the place.

AS: And I wonder – we probably should touch on that at some point during the interview – the fact that the gardens draw from such a wide variety of styles and concepts, and what you – the vignettes really sort of are the perfect way to describe it.

CE: Yes, because of gardens, the good gardens I’ve seen are not just one thing, they’re “I have an inspiration; I’m going to do a drawing room here; I’m going to do a sun room over here.” I mean, this is the inside equivalent. I’m going to do something different because I see the space here and design around it. And the good gardens are not just great big flowing things. They have these little things, such as spaces you can enjoy, they literally are rooms that you are in with sides and the ground and the sky as your ceiling, and she must have adopted from a lot of experiences to do that. I realized – I mean, her only other garden I’ve been in that is truly going is the Abby Rockefeller Garden, and she designed that as a room, but it’s a huge room with the perennial garden in the flow of color. It’s magnificent and it’s a totally different thing than Dumbarton Oaks, which has, in my memory, not a whole lot of flowers; it’s plants and plant shapes. The slides I came across this morning of the ‘97 visit – of her use of boxwood. There was one that sort of – pulled together and puffy; it looks sort of like an ice cream sundae with lots of plops of colors, but it’s all in boxwood. There’s a lot of vision there.

AS: Is this the thing that she got, do you think, from her Harvard training, or –?

CE: Well her Harvard training was really Charles Sprague Sargent training because at the time she was here, the Arnold Arboretum was pretty new. It was founded in 1872 and I’m not sure when she was here. But it couldn’t have been, you know, within twenty years, and arboretums, you know, go on forever, and Charles Sprague Sargent lived very close by here, and I imagine it was really plant talk all the time because he was possessed about plants and that’s what she was here for, and to find out how they grew – their forms, their shapes, their flowering periods, their care. And then it was up to her to have this encyclopedic knowledge of, when she was designing a garden, how to use it. And that was the sad thing about losing Reef Point Gardens because that was, sort of, her encyclopedia there of plants. And she had to make the adjustment too of different zones and climates, because she didn’t work out in Berkeley. Her husband, Max, was there. And certainly the climate at Dumbarton Oaks is way different than Boston and Maine. And we sometimes think you can just take anything and move these plants around, and they die, and that’s very disappointing. So. She was very versatile, for sure.

EG: And that love of plants must have also prompted her to the Plant Book that was eventually published.

CE: That is true, I’m sure; I didn’t bring that along. Yes. This is – I also brought along just because it would be nice to have it recorded – there’s a history of Cornell which writes about Livingston Farrand in there. So, he’s – and I had still – I thought I had gotten rid of all my Farrand stuff, but I see there is an article I cut out on Farrand gardens in Connecticut. But I haven’t researched them yet. There are two new books out on Beatrix Farrand: the one by Judith Tankard, which has been published, and there’s another one coming out in the fall by Carmen Pearson, “P-E-A-R-S-O-N”, and she, Carmen, did her research – I mean, I know Judith must have done her research here at the Arboretum too. But these will add to – the other thing I really should mention because I think it’s kind of like the six degrees of separation: Beatrix Farrand was very instrumental within the Garden Club of America. She was a member of the Mount Desert Garden Club, which is a member of the Garden Club of American, and in her day, Beatrix Farrand was awarded the Achievement Medal of the Garden Club of America, and then four years ago, I received the Achievement Medal, which – that kind of blew my doors off to be, you know, walking in the same pathway as she did, with far less achievements than she had or her legacy that she left behind. She did a lot of writing for the Garden Club of America, in the bulletins, which are – there’re bound copies of the bulletins here. I don’t know if they’re at Dumbarton Oaks or not. It might be good to see what there is of the Garden Club of America at Dumbarton Oaks. It’s an institution of women gardeners that was founded about 1913. So, it kind of follows in the same line of what women could do at the time. In this instance, they met in living rooms and organized gardening and organized money and proceeded to grow. But she did a lot of writing for the Garden Club of America in their bulletins. So, I think that association is useful to get in there too. Not necessarily my medal, but it just shows you that life is connected.

AS/EG: Yes.

CE: Let’s see now, what else? I do know that – and you probably have them – Princeton University has published articles about her from time to time because of her work on the campus there. And I think she was the one who felt that you didn’t lay out the paths like in the quad over there in Cambridge, but you find out where the students walk, and then you put the paths down. And she did some wonderful wall plantings at Princeton. The climate down there, I hate to say it, is a little bit more benign. And she did – she planted magnolia virgin – the Southern magnolia, magnolia grandiflora against – and they’re quite famous. I did get one of those trees a few years ago and I said I was going to do a Beatrix Farrand memorial at our new place, but the plant died. They do better in Princeton. And I’m trying to think what other campus job she did. She did work at Yale too. I’ve only been to the Yale campus once, and I think I’ve been to the Princeton campus – lots more the Harvard. So, let’s see. What else can we eke out?

AS: Well, speaking of connections, why don’t we talk about a little bit about what brought you to Dumbarton Oaks in ’87?

CE: In ’85 I first came to Dumbarton Oaks because I was down with my husband and we were kind of touristing, and because there was a garden – I had to go there. And then I came back in 1997. I was Chairman of the Garden History and Design Committee of the Gardener Club of America, and we were having our meetings in Georgetown, and this was natural to meet there and tour the gardens. That’s when I took the good pictures on an overcast day, and it was amazing to, you know, to form your appearance. I mean – these are over a period of 24 years – to go back and see something that sort of stays the same. It doesn’t change. It’s there as a resource. It’s wonderful that it is part of Harvard, but, it’s distinctly a ship on its own bottom, right? How did you all end up there, to digress?

AS: Well, I was a Classics major as an undergrad, and I specialized in reception studies when I was there, and so I guess I had sort of the intellectual connection, or soft spot for Byzantine studies, which sort of started out as the first Classics reception studies. And they needed someone to come down and work on this project, so I said that I would do it for the summer, and they said, well you know, it might be good to get another person, and I said I know a pre-Columbian archaeologist that was an archaeology major. And at the same time some people from the pre-Columbian department there were emailing about and recommending her for the same position. So.

CE: Oh wonderful!

EG: It was sort of good timing on everybody’s part.

CE: Because there is certainly a wonderful collection, as I remember, of pre-Columbian. How is the portrait of Beatrix Farrand doing?

AS/EG: Is it up in the main house?

AS/EG: Yes.

CE: It’s the one that Louisa Farrand Wood donated.

AS: I think it’s well respected. I mean, there’s been a greater effort, as you can tell from projects like this, to maintain a collection related to the individuals who made Dumbarton Oaks come to be, and obviously Beatrix is a huge figure there. I think that there’s a lot of respect among people there for her legacy and a real sorrow that there aren’t more objects. Everything that we do have seems precious because there’s not a lot.

CE: Yes. I’m hoping that with the libraries we’ll all be coming to – that was when I gave the stuff to Garland Farms and the Beatrix Farrand Society up there – the idea that that one day it is going to all be scanned and be online and be available and be part of a bigger collection. I mean, I think it’s within the realm of possibility. Certainly. Is the Dumbarton Oaks library part of the Harvard collection that’s going to be scanned by Google?

AS: I would assume so because there’s a big effort to have everything incorporated into the HOLLIS catalogue.

CE: Yes.

AS: And to really change over even the categories – the cataloguing system in the Dumbarton Oaks library – because originally it was different than the Harvard system. So, I would suspect so. But, there also are – you know, there’s a geographical separation.

CE: Yes, I know, yes sentinels become sentimental, yes.

AS: We understand that you also visited for some of the symposia that took place, is that correct?

CE: I think, that the memory was of me there; the reason I was called was because we were down there with the Garden History and Design Committee of the GCA, and I had more of a voice at that time that could be heard, and I made a distinct jumping-up-and-down to get “Farrand” pronounced correctly. So.

EG: We talked to many scholars who have some interesting pronunciations still.

CE: We used to have a director of the Horticultural Society here. He gave out the awards every year at the flower show, and he would say “The Beatrix Farrand Bowl,” I mean “Farrand Bowl”, and then he would talk about the “Ikebana Society,” and that would, believe me – because it’s “Ikebana.” It’s not “Ikebana.” And the last one he would say was: it was the “Bonsai Study Group.” Now, if we’re into pronunciations, it’s “Bone-sai.” Have you gotten into that? Well “Bonsai” is what the Japanese fighter pilots used to say in the Second World War when they did their suicide missions, was “Bonsai”, and then they would fly their planes into our carriers, and the Japanese word “Bonsai” is literally pronounced “B-O-N-E-S-I-G-H.” So anyhow, now we have taken care of all my nudgy pronunciations. And you will go forth saying “Bonsai”…

AS/EG: Oh yes.

CE: …and people will say, what are you talking about?

AS: Is there a relationship between the Garden Club of America and Dumbarton Oaks? I mean I know –

CE: Wait! Yes, thank you. I came across – those slides are at home – a picture of a – it won a Founders Fund for the woodland garden, there’s a woodland walk and – that was established at Dumbarton Oaks. They have an award every year to give money to a project wherever, and it was at Dumbarton Oaks, and I’m sure there’re other associations that you will find in the library. I don’t know if Mrs. Bliss was a member of a Garden Club of America club or not, but I’m sure that there’s an association. So, you can find that.

AS/EG: Oh yes.

EG: Is there sort of relationship between the Arnold Arboretum and Dumbarton Oaks? I mean, both being associated with Harvard?

CE: That is a very good question. I am sure that, I don’t know what the staff and the horticultural or maintainer staff at Dumbarton Oaks would be. I would assume that they wouldn’t come up here to look at plants but go online, and do – have you visited the Arnold Arboretum website?

AS/EG: Yes.

CE: And you’ve mastered the HOLLIS system?

AS/EG: Eventually.

CE: Eventually, yes. That’s – because I’m trying to see the holdings here, which I will in a minute. But, the Garden Club of America bulletins, which I could not find through the HOLLIS system. I think I found the GCA bulletins in the School of Design.

EG: It’s sort of like searching for a needle in a hay stack.

CE: Yes it is, it is.

AS: I wonder if maybe we could wrap up by – one of, I think, the ideas of doing a project like this is to try to find from authoritative sources a sense of not just of details of the past and personalities, but, you know, also of its relevance, I think, to the future. And so, with that in mind, I wonder if you see a sense of having known, or known of Beatrix Farrand in more detail, a sense of her legacy to Dumbarton Oaks and what it should be. You know, should there be more of a horticultural – of course there’s garden studies and landscape studies there, but I just wonder, knowing what you do of her, what you thought her legacy ought to be there.

CE: Well, I think, her legacy certainly is education, as her wish for Reef Point gardens, and I think Dumbarton Oaks’s legacy – I mean, they’re into education too, since they’re having a living laboratory there of most of the landscape design, and horticulture, and plants, it would point to the future. And it is a laboratory, because things are going to have to be replaced and changed and renewed, and I trust it’s all being documented visually, which is important. My association with the Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian was trying to keep a visual record of gardens, which are so transitory, and that’s one of the many neat things about Dumbarton Oaks that you don’t have to just look at pictures; you can see the real thing. And so, I think it’s really important to keep that in mind for the future, and probably – it’s harder to keep gardens going, than it is buildings. You can – I mean, buildings, you can always fake it, but it’s very hard to fake a plant. So does that make sense?

AS/EG: Yes

CE: Good!

AS: Well, thank you very much.

EG: Yes, thank you for talking with us.

CE: Well, thank you!

The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) hold unique footage of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens. While most of the footage dates to the 1930s and 1940s, some scenes may have been recorded as early as the mid-1920s. Shot in both black and white and in color, the film contains garden views, winter scenes, and summer scenes at the pool, as well as glimpses of Mildred Barnes Bliss and her friends at the Orangery and in the gardens.

The Dumbarton Oaks Gardens film was re-discovered in early 2011 when ICFA staff learned that three film reels in cold storage contained footage of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens. Films were sent to Colorlab for preservation and digitization in October of 2011, and the project was completed in March of 2012. Currently, all of the original films are safely stored in one of the freezers in ICFA’s cold storage area.

As part of the DO/Conversations series, on July 20, 2012 Archives Specialist Rona Razon described the “re-discovery” of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens film and the process of preserving it. Rona’s introduction was followed by a screening of the film with live commentary by James Carder, Archivist and House Collection Manager, and Gail Griffin, Director of Gardens and Grounds.

The presentation, including the film in its entirety, can now be seen online through Vimeo: Part I , Part II , and Part III

For more information about the project and presentation, please visit the DO/Conversations Blog , the ICFA Blog, and the Dumbarton Oaks Library and Archives Facebook page.

EE: Yes, twenty-second.

GB: 2009. And we sit here together in the Fellows Building with former Fellows here in our Guest House. And we have a wonderful special guest here, Elizabeth Ettinghausen, former Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in 1945, ’44–’45. So we were just about to talk about your, at that time, not-yet-husband, Richard Ettinghausen.

EE: Yes, for the opening of Dumbarton Oaks, Mrs. Bliss had a special invitation, the note, whatever it was. And my husband, I mean Richard Ettinghausen, and others were invited, among them Weitzmann, Kurt Weitzmann. And the question was: who would sit to the right of Mrs. Bliss? And I don’t remember the details anymore. I think Kurt Weitzmann was a little older. At first she wanted Richard Ettinghausen to be to her right and then she realized or was told that Kurt Weitzmann was older and therefore he should be to the right, her right. And Richard Ettinghausen was to her left.

GB: Ah. Do you know –

EE: Of course, I wasn’t here.

GB: You weren’t here. And you knew about, of course, the event through your husband.

EE: Yes.

GB: Do you know where this took place?

EE: No.

GB: I guess it was the Music Room, but I’m not sure about that.

EE: I really don’t know.

GB: Yeah. That’s nice – choosing who’s first according to seniority, that’s interesting. Now, Elizabeth, we would be very interested in learning more about your first visit, when you arrived here to come as a Junior Fellow –

EE: Yes.

GB: – and how this came about.

EE: I was told that I should go to Harvard and ask them about it, because somebody had suggested that I go to – that maybe that would be a possibility, to become a Fellow here. So I went to Harvard University, and I was given the names, whom I should interview with. It was, first of all, Professor–Director Paul Sachs, and then Koehler, and also one other person, one other professor. And I’m not sure whether I met Blake there, too, Richard Blake. I did meet him here and I was very much – everyone was very much impressed by him. He was very, very nice, really, and very kind to all the Fellows. What was so exciting about him: he was married to a Georgian princess. But we were told there were a lot of princesses in Georgia.

GB: So you went to Paul Sachs and to Koehler up in Cambridge.

EE: Yes, that’s right, and it was a very nice interview. He was very friendly and I don’t remember anymore what he asked or anything like that. I just told him what I had done and where I had been before, which was in Istanbul.

GB: So, what had you done by then? What was your kind of scholarly –

EE: Well, I had done my MA, which I did on Byzantine tiles from a certain site, which had been excavated by the department where I worked, but it was before me so I never saw the excavation. But I was asked to work on the tiles from – Byzantine tiles from that site. Now, hardly any Byzantine tiles were known or had been excavated before that. At that time, there was a great deal of freedom in the Museum, the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul, and I could go, which would be impossible now, of course, to go through big stacks of material – whatever it was; I mean, of course the tiles, but also look, I could find other tiles or anything like that and nobody supervised me. I felt actually a bit – I was a little bit scared, really, but of course I didn’t do anything wrong; but how could I prove it? Well, it was very nice. I even was then told by the chemist connected with the Museum how to clean them, which I did, not too much, I hope. And then I worked on that and the drawing, the pictures and everything, and then for my PhD thesis I did something quite different. And then later on, many years later, I was asked by André Grabar to write an article on that for the Cahiers archéologiques, which I did. I was – I wrote that when I was, when my elder son was four months old. And I wrote it all, worked on it and wrote it all at night.

GB: And that was later, as you said.

EE: That was in – he was born in ’52, so I worked on it, beginning of ’53. I think it was published a few years later.

GB: Yes. So, if you’ll allow me, we may come back to the interview you had with Paul Sachs and Koehler and to introduce yourself, to present yourself as a young Byzantine art historian and eager, I guess, to continue and to take the opportunity to study at Dumbarton Oaks. What did you know at that time about the Dumbarton Oaks institute?

EE: Nothing.

GB: Nothing. So, soon after you learned that you had been accepted, you arrived. And how was this, kind of, arriving time for you? How, yeah, did you get the whole institute to understand and how was the set-up at that time?

EE: Well there were three other Fellows besides me; we lived upstairs here in this building. Paul Underwood, who was married, lived outside so I met him at the library and for meals here, for lunch here. In fact, he asked me, always, to translate anything in Italian for him, which I didn’t know well. I knew Latin well enough, but somehow I could always satisfy him – it wasn’t too much, but still. They were all very nice, the Fellows.

GB: And you were a Junior Fellow –

EE: I was a Junior Fellow.

GB: – at that time, having finished the Ph.D.

EE: Yes.

GB: And you were a Fellow here, which meant something different from the work the Fellows, Junior Fellows, nowadays do and –

EE: Well, there was one exception. One person didn’t have a Ph.D. yet and worked on this, her thesis, but she had already quite a lot of experience. It just happened that she hadn’t done it yet.

GB: Do you remember her name?

EE: Margaret Ames – Alexander.

GB: Margaret Alexander.

EE: Well, Ames. Ames was her name at that time. She wasn’t married.

GB: Okay, thank you. That’s important. And your co-Fellows: you remember three.

EE: Well, she was one of them.

GB: She was one of them.

EE: And Rosalie Green and Josephine Harris.

GB: And Josephine Harris.

EE: Yes and, of course, we saw – there was a sensation – that we had a nun here, also.

GB: And that is Sister Monica.

EE: Sister Monica Wagner, yes. That’s right. She came a little bit later. She came, I think, in spring.

GB: Aha. So you were –

EE: And she was here, of course, for meals. She was here only for lunchtime, of course. And she had to answer some unusual questions, I would feel, but she was always of good humor and she didn’t mind that, because one person asked, for instance, “Well, which church do you like to go to especially? I mean, one church versus another church,” and she said, of course being Catholic, “They’re all alike.” Actually it was Professor Vasiliev who asked that question.

GB: You were four, five – five young scholars. Young women, which is quite amazing.

EE: Not so amazing during the war. It was still war.

GB: Wow. Okay. That is interesting.

EE: I would say that’s the reason.

GB: Was that a topic of this being, kind of, discussed or mentioned, wanting to work here? Or was that such a, kind of, just everyday life fact that it was not even remarked on?

EE: No, it wasn’t remarked on. And the advantage was – so we were four women upstairs. At that time we couldn’t have had a man there to – now of course this is a different situation.

GB: Yeah, yeah, this is very interesting indeed. Yeah. So Paul Underwood was not living here in this building; it was just the five of you – four of you.

EE: Four, yes. And of course Monica – Sister Monica, of course, didn’t live here.

GB: Oh, she didn’t live here?

EE: Oh, she couldn’t have.

GB: No, she couldn’t have. So she was here in a –

EE: The same way as Paul Underwood, coming to the library to do her work.

GB: That’s interesting. Now, your work when you were here as a Junior Fellow – can you describe this a little bit, what you did, what you researched, and what kind of – what your scholarly life as a Junior Fellow was at the time?

EE: Yes. One was supposed to divide one’s time half, really half and half, for research, one’s own research on the one hand, and working for the archives for Dumbarton Oaks – archives of monuments, all the publications of monuments – and all details, everything within the monuments – of different regions. And each person was assigned to a different region and I, of course, was assigned to where I had been before: to Istanbul, Constantinople.

GB: So you were looking into photos, our photos of –

EE: Not just photos.

GB: Archival material.

EE: The articles, all articles that were published, all photos that were published. And also I had some photos, which I had taken, and I also contributed some of those.

GB: What was the goal of this work? Do you remember having been told a certain project mission or goal, doing this type of archival – how would we describe it nowadays? – maybe a kind of database, to set it up, on Byzantine monuments all over the eastern world, or maybe not just eastern but Byzantine world.

EE: The Byzantine world, yes, because one was doing it for Tunisia, for instance. And it could have been expanded, of course, to all regions. Rosalie Green did it, for instance – she did it for Jerusalem. And Josephine Harris did Egypt, I believe. Yes, definitely she did Egypt.

GB: So you were told to just look into what we had collected already at that time or was there a system?

EE: No, go through it – get the bibliography and except the – what was published. It is a kind of index, like the Index of Christian Art, but with more detail.

GB: Yeah, indeed with all the monuments.

EE: Which one could have updated, of course, if one had continued.

GB: Yes, indeed. Where were you placed? Where was your office and the office of the other Fellows? Where did you work?

EE: We didn’t have offices. We were in the library, on the big table in the center of the library, which was on the second floor of the main building.

GB: The books around you –

EE: Yes, and sometimes one needed interlibrary loan books, which one could get. I remember, for my own research I did some of that. Maybe also otherwise; that I don’t remember. But I remember specifically that I did for my own research.

GB: Mentioning the library, who were the librarians at that time?

EE: I see her in front of me and I can’t think of her name now. She was very good and very nice. Actually, the person really in charge was Barbara Sessions, but the one who was active, you know, helping you with getting the particular book or something like that was the person whose name I can’t think of. She had blonde hair, she was very slim and very nice, very fast always. Everybody was very cooperative. Oh yes, and there, of course, if you had something, for instance, in Russian, there was Mrs. Schafer. And I did something absolutely terrible by having a Bulgarian book – asking her. And she said – she didn’t see the cover, and I didn’t think of it. Of course, Bulgarian is not Russian. It’s similar. And she first said, “Oh but that’s terrible Russian. That’s not proper Russian.” And then, but she was kind enough and she was able to – I didn’t need too much, but I needed a few things.

GB: So there was one librarian. Is that correct? She was the librarian and she was –

EE: Mrs. Schafer was just – this other – well there were more than one but I don’t remember the others.

GB: What do you remember about the acquisition policy? How many books – what was the policy of acquiring books for the Dumbarton Oaks Library? Was there, kind of, a “we would get all books we know of,” or what was the policy?

EE: I don’t know about the policy, but I think certainly all the main books. And every week, and possibly more often, maybe twice a week, books came from the Library of Congress, also.

GB: Aha, so there was an exchange with the Library of Congress.

EE: But also with other libraries, of course.

GB: With other libraries, of course, yes.

EE: But this was more regular. Of course, this was not just for us. This was for the professors as well, or more so, perhaps.

GB: When you found any book, which was not in the library, you would have told the librarian and she would have looked into either first looking into acquiring it, purchasing it, or first looking into where we could get it from a different library?

EE: I only had the experience that she was getting it from interlibrary loan, but there may have been cases when she’d ordered the book – that’s possible, too.

GB: So that was your work for hire, so to speak, and that was half-day. And then there was the other side of your research, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about the research part you conducted at that time and how it was perceived here at Dumbarton Oaks.

EE: Well, I tried to find out more about the, for instance, the representations – I mean the art of designs one finds of tiles and collectibles, where else you find them, and comparisons and so on and how it came about that one had tiles at all. I have developed more interpretations since then, of course.

GB: And was the library and the environment of help – adequate for your study and research? How did you communicate with your co-Fellows about your research? Did this happen at all or was there, kind of, everybody quietly researching?

EE: More or less it was everybody for himself or herself. I mean, you could, of course, if you wanted to especially discuss something, but basically it was each one for himself or herself, while that had been very different before, because there were seminars every week while Professor Koehler was in charge here and in residence here, which was the year before I came here. There were these seminars and working together and reporting about one’s work and one’s questions and interchange. And that was not the case while I was here the first year, not at all, because the professors in residence were not in the field at all. I mean, they were historians and not really interested in art history. And the second year it was Professor Friend, formerly from Princeton. He was interested in some projects – if that fitted in, fine, and if it didn’t fit in then it wasn’t of much interest to him. There was one person who worked with him; it was Rosalie Green, because he was interested in that project, but that was it, really.

GB: So, compared to what we have now: every week a research report; the fellows have to present and the interest, of course, not only in exchanging research ideas and topics; but presenting it to the community is very much, of course, in the foreground today. At least – correct me if I’m wrong. And I’m trying to explain this with my mind. In those years, the primary interest point in Dumbarton Oaks, having you here, was to get to develop a database and to, yeah, get this built up, and to, of course, provide the opportunity, the outstanding opportunity to, beyond that, do research in your specific area. It was more the kind of, almost a position, which – actually I say “position” because I know this structure similarly from the German Archaeological Institute, where I actually was at a time one of those – that’s not the term they use – but a hired staff person to do half-day work for the Institute and half-day I had to do my research, but in a way nobody cared about that research because that was kind of an add-on to the proper hired work. Is that something, that picture I –

EE: Well, I would say it simply was not structured at all. There was no structure. You were here on your own. You could hook up with anybody else if you wanted to and if you felt it would do, it would advance your project or help somebody else to advance his or her project, but otherwise there was no structure, really.

GB: And were there meetings to follow up on the database work, on your proper assignment?

EE: No, none whatsoever.

GB: And how did this kind of –

EE: You simply did what you did and when each project – let’s say working on such-and-such a church – was finished, you handed it over to be typed, because you just – there were no computers, of course. You wrote it by hand, really, and then it was formalized.

GB: I have on this list of 1944–45 another category and that’s “Fellows,” and Fellows here listed are Milton Anastos –

EE: Oh yes, of course. Anastasios. Anastasis, Anastasis. I’m sorry, of course. How could I say that?

GB: Yes, I see it is incorrectly spelled. And Peter Charanis.

EE: Yes, that’s right and he was married to a Belgian.

GB: Can you explain a little bit where the position of being Fellows – what they contributed to the Dumbarton Oaks Harvard community?

EE: Well, they were much more advanced scholars. While the Junior Fellows were at the beginning of any career, Peter and Milton were both in the midst of their career, more or less in their midst. They gave papers at symposia; they worked on the more advanced projects. I remember Mr. Friend asked Peter Charanis to work on a special project of a church that doesn’t exist anymore, but there were some records about it, a poem actually it was, a longer poem, and he worked on that, for instance.

GB: So they had similar assignments to do specific research, the Fellows, Milton and Peter.

EE: Well they – I don’t think it was obligatory for them to do it, but once they were Fellows they were asked and they could agree or maybe they could also disagree. It was a special project, though, what Mr. Friend was interested in, so he asked about that. But I don’t think it was, so to say, the bylaws that he had to designate a particular topic or anything like that. It was just a personal matter.

GB: And they were studying with you in the reader room in the second level of the main house?

EE: No, I think they were somewhere else, because there wasn’t enough space.

GB: So they might have had offices or –

EE: I think there were some other rooms where they could be, but basically there were no offices in that sense and certainly not that everybody had an office to him or herself.

GB: What do you remember about the main house first level at that time? Was the library –

EE: No, no, there was no library. Well, there may have been some books. Yes there were books, of course. In one room downstairs, there were books. But I think there were also more general books, not just something about the early Christian, Byzantine art, but the Blisses’ collection, for a private collection, some of it, I think.

GB: Do you remember the term “Founders’ Room” at that time? And this place—do you remember what was going on in that space or was that a library space? Were there books in there?

EE: Yes. But it was also a kind of reception room.

GB: We will come back to the receptions and the more, kind of, social life, but let me ask you now a little bit about the other scholars, resident scholars at that time now that we have learned about the Junior Fellows, the Fellows, and you have mentioned already Albert Friend. And there were more professors in residence.

EE: Yes, there were Mr. and Mrs. Young, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who had been professor at Wellesley before.

GB: How was the relationship with Sirarpie, she being a young woman as well –

EE: Not so young.

GB: Yeah. Right. Yes.

EE: It was fine and we usually had arranged for dinner – there was no dinner on Sundays here, so we made our own dinner and Miss Der Nersessian usually joined in. We did it together.

GB: Albert Friend – how was – he seemed to have had a major impact regarding the suggestions, regarding the research part. Is that right?

EE: Not for the Junior Fellows. Well, except for he was interested in what Rosalie Green did, but otherwise no. I mean one could, of course, ask him or get advice but one had to specially go and ask for it. He never asked you about it.

GB: And then we have at that time Edward Kennard Rand and Alexander Vasiliev.

EE: Well yes, they were professors in 1944 already and they were not art historians. Professor Rand was particularly interested in Carolingian manuscripts and he did a lot of work – not the pictures, the miniatures, but the text – and he was very much interested in all of the signs, the pinpricks and so on and that he continued to talk about time and again when I was in residence.

GB: And Alexander Vasiliev.

EE: He came a bit later. I don’t remember exactly when. I would say he loosened things up and made it much more lively and interesting, because he was a very interesting person of course and very Russian in a very pleasant way.

GB: Do you remember specific – or specifically –

EE: No, he was interested in, much more interested in music, I mean also in music and so on. Actually Koehler had started that. He got us a record player and records so we could have music, also.

GB: He and the Fellows.

EE: Yes, here. It was right here.

GB: You were listening to records together?

EE: Oh, of course, yes, yes. It might have been right after lunch, for instance, or in the evening, so we could do that. That’s how I got to know some music very well.

GB: Lunch is a good topic.

EE: That was on the big table, and the two professors – La Piana and Rand – were at the ends and the Fellows in between.

GB: So you had to appear, to have lunch and dinner together.

EE: I suppose so. I don’t remember about dinner, but there must have been dinner. And of course, there were servants and one was served. One never got up or anything.

GB: Was there communication going on over lunch? How was that?

EE: Yes. Well it was particularly Professor Rand who spoke and you listened.

GB: Scholarly exchange or everyday small talk?

EE: Well, it wasn’t very scholarly. It was not very exciting. Well, I’m sorry, but Mr. Rand was not his former brilliance anymore, and that was the reason.

GB: I see.

EE: And La Piana also talked, but always trying to be very, very nice to Mr. Rand and taking him as the head of it all.

GB: At that time who was the director of Dumbarton Oaks? It was kind of –

EE: It was – oh my God.

GB: It must have been Thacher.

EE: Thacher, yes. He came once in a while. I mean, of course you saw him at the main building.

GB: Why that? You saw him at the main building?

EE: No, well sometimes, because that’s where he was, that’s where his office was, too.

GB: Mhm. Do you remember where his office was? In the main house on the first level, where it is now?

EE: Yes.

GB: And, he being the director of the Dumbarton Oaks institute, filling the specific role, what did you understand of that role at that time? How did you feel about the overall mission if we want to use this word, which is of course not the word you would have used at the time, but what was the, kind of, general mission of the Dumbarton Oaks institute?

EE: Well, he was a very good go-between – the Blisses and the institute, Dumbarton Oaks, and you saw him a great deal with the Blisses. And he understood very well to implement also what Mrs. Bliss really hoped the institute would be like and he was, of course, director of the museum, which was in storage then.

GB: Which was packed, indeed.

EE: Yes, because of the war.

GB: Yes. So you did not get to see an object while you were here – is that correct?

EE: No. Some pictures I saw.

GB: Oh yes, some pictures, but no –

EE: No, it was impossible. And one understood very well why.

GB: Yeah? Why?

EE: Well because of the war, the danger of possibly some problems.

GB: Did you feel this – I mean, being here, I mean, sure we know that at that time there was quite some realistic fear or reason to be afraid. What was the situation in Washington and Dumbarton Oaks besides that the collection was stored, protected, and downstairs in storage, in the basement.

EE: Well I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I did know that the downstairs, the basement, was taboo for anybody in Dumbarton Oaks, at least the Fellows, because there were government projects going on. Well it was really – in fact the president of Harvard was intimately connected with that, and he came for visits from time to time. So I met him that way also because he came to lunch sometimes.

GB: The president of Harvard University?

EE: Yes. Well, it was the Manhattan Project, as I now know, but not then, of course.

GB: The Byzantine galleries being closed, because of the collection being stored – did you ever enter that space? Was it just closed because it was empty, or was there anything – I mean, thinking of the Barberini sarcophagus, for example, which was certainly –

EE: There were a few pieces I knew. I don’t remember details anymore, I must admit.

GB: Well, it was a closed-off area, so it was not of any interest and, of course, it was not really a happy story, to be not up but in protection, in storage. So, Thacher was, well, trying to do the best, to make the best out of the situation and to, of course, as you said, to work with the Blisses closely.

EE: Yes, and also he was very good, I suppose, in spreading the news of Dumbarton Oaks, I assume. I mean, he was very good at parties and so on, so he knew – he met a lot of people and knew a lot of people in Washington. And I’m sure from that point of view he was very useful for spreading the word – what Dumbarton Oaks was.

GB: So there was some interest in connecting to the social life of Washington?

EE: Absolutely. But that was he alone.

GB: But not the Blisses?

EE: Oh, the Blisses, of course, were. Oh yes. But I mean not the people for, not the Fellows or the professors or so.

GB: So let’s talk a little about receptions and the Blisses. At first maybe about your – as a Fellow – your meetings or whenever you had a chance to meet and talk with Robert and Mildred Bliss. Did this happen on a regular basis?

EE: She came to tea. I don’t know whether there still is tea being served, probably not, but then it was de rigueur, one could almost say, to come to tea, and Mrs. Bliss appeared a great many times – not every time, not every day, but most days, or often, let’s say.

GB: Was it once a week, the tea, or –

EE: No, no, every day. I mean, except for weekends. There was tea and cookies or anything. I think rather fancy, too.

GB: So that was kind of a break in the afternoon. Is that what I am to understand?

EE: Yes.

GB: Yeah. Nice. So that everybody came together for a short time I guess – an hour maximum or even two of them.

EE: Probably not as long as that. And Mrs. Bliss talked also to, of course, to the professors and to Fellows, but also to the Junior Fellows.

GB: Was she curious about finding out what you were up to, regarding your research, or was she curious about hearing your opinion about Dumbarton Oaks institute, or –

EE: No, never, no. It was rather what you were doing.

GB: Researching.

EE: What work you were doing.

GB: And do you remember being asked – Mildred Bliss asking you about what your research, what she kind of asked?

EE: No, I must admit I don’t remember, but she did ask, yes. I don’t know how interested she really was in the specifics. She was, I think, more interested in the general and what went on in general. And the sort of policy and strategy.

GB: When she was present, did you talk or did she mention any kind of objects in the sense of collecting, of her passion of collecting art, which we, as we see now, is quite a major part.

EE: Oh yes, yes.

GB: Did she mention this? Did she talk about, “Oh, I have seen recently something coming up?”

EE: No, no I don’t remember that. I don’t think that; it could have happened that she talked about such a thing to somebody, but certainly not to, so to say, everybody present.

GB: Another point which is, of course, very related to Mildred Bliss is the garden. Was that a topic or how did you –

EE: Oh yes, and I do remember, also, for instance, I once looked and said, “Well, I don’t see – whatever it was, a tree or shrub or what and I was told, “No, Mrs. Bliss had changed her mind. She wanted it to be changed.” She was very active in helping with the design for the garden. Of course she had a very well known garden architect.

GB: Beatrix Farrand.

EE: Yes, that’s right. Who also did some work at Princeton, Princeton University, but on a very small scale there.

GB: I do not know, I cannot remember if Beatrix Farrand was – no, she was no more around. She had to agree, setting it up in the very beginning, the twenties, and by the forties, she, I think, was no more around Dumbarton Oaks, but she was certainly –

EE: No, she definitely wasn’t around when I was here. And I think in some cases that Mrs. Bliss did it on her own, and I wouldn’t be surprised, because Mrs. Bliss was extraordinarily intelligent and clever and just as her range of knowledge was amazing, so I’m sure she had learned a great deal from Beatrix –

GB: Farrand.

EE: Farrand, yes. And could design things on her own, too.

GB: Yeah, yeah. We know of many projects where she was really the designer and participated in all kinds of different things with a high interest in every little detail. Do you know how the gardens were administered at that time? How were they maintained? What about the gardeners and the staff?

EE: Well, I don’t remember the name of the head gardener anymore, but he was an important person, of course. We always – we talked to him and so on. And the associate gardeners – I suppose they were the two who lived in this house at the corner there.

GB: The double cottage.

EE: Yes, the double cottage

GB: Which is nowadays security.

EE: And at night I understand there was somebody, a guard; there was a dog going around. I’ve never seen him but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t there, of course.

GB: Could you enter the main house at any time? Was it, so to speak, open to go back to the office or to study?

EE: That I don’t know. I only heard that, you see, and I don’t know anything more about that.

GB: There was one important feature attached to the gardens at that time, as nowadays, and that’s the pool.

EE: Oh yes.

GB: You used the pool? You were allowed to use the pool?

EE: Yes, oh yes, yes.

GB: And everybody shared the pool?

EE: All the members of the – the Fellows and professors, yes.

GB: Was there kind of a senior Fellows hour or –

EE: No, no it was simply whoever wanted to go, whenever, could go there and, I mean, not normally during work hours.

GB: And at that time the pool is – of course the public came to visit the gardens or were the gardens closed as well – I mean specifically in this year were the gardens open to the public? Do you remember?

EE: There were times when they were open, yes. I think it was from two to four or something like that. I think we usually went, you see, after work, so it was a little bit later except for weekends, and I don’t remember how that worked with the public and the – because we certainly couldn’t be there when the public came and there were – and guests could come, too. I mean if they had permission from, I suppose, the director. My – Richard Ettinghausen, for instance, was a friend of the director and therefore he could go and use the pool.

GB: And you met your husband –

EE: I met him, yes. I didn’t meet him at the pool, but I met him at the library and I asked him for some advice. And also it was the head of the library, Barbara Sessions, who was a friend of my future husband, and we were good friends. She was very, very friendly and very nice and, of course, she was a friend of the Blisses, so – and so we went on some outings because she liked to walk, and we both liked to walk, too.

GB: That means, mentioning your future husband, that there were – visiting scholars, we would say nowadays – there were scholars who stopped by, who had a specific period of study time they spent here at Dumbarton Oaks. Is that what I understand?

EE: Yes, there were some.

GB: And they were sitting, then, again, in the library and next to you and the other Junior Fellows or were they at any kind of specific place?

EE: They were in various places, I think.

GB: Various places. And that must have been, then, on that second level, which –

EE: I would think so.

GB: – I understand was at that time the main library research space.

EE: I assume that’s where they were.

GB: Talking about receptions, or the Blisses, Mildred Bliss especially being present in the afternoon for the tea hour or the tea gathering: were there any kind of other specific events you had been invited to?

EE: Lectures.

GB: Lectures. Public lectures? Were they open to the public, as it is nowadays, or was it –

EE: I doubt whether they were open to the public, but to, I suppose, to scholars or friends, of course, of the Blisses.

GB: In the Music Room?

EE: Yes, in the Music Room and those were always very nice events, of course, and then there were concerts also and those were special events and the finest event was, of course, the symposium. Always.

GB: Yes, the annual Byzantine Spring Symposium.

EE: Yes.

GB: Do you remember the symposia you have attended – was it something very outstanding compared to the symposia of the recent past, which you have, of course, attended on some occasions?

EE: Well, I’m –

GB: Can you describe the sort of atmosphere, the set-up, and, of course, the scholarly contributions?

EE: I suppose it would be very hard for me to judge, really, because I was, after all, at the beginning, and it all seemed marvelous, so insofar – perhaps I would say later on it was perhaps not as marvelous, but because I knew more, so no, I don’t think there’s any conference ever which is all tops – I mean every scholar absolutely perfect and so on. And I could, of course, discriminate much more and notice the differences much more than I could at the beginning.

GB: What was the –

EE: But it was – there were outstanding scholars who came.

GB: What was the general atmosphere compared to a nowadays symposium, where we have a lot of discussions and open the floor, of course, and ask the public – nowadays it’s indeed the public – of course, the interested public, who is invited to attend the symposium. What do you remember about that aspect when – the years you were here?

EE: I’m not quite sure how I should answer that.

GB: Was it more – I mean, I, looking at the pictures we have of the symposia and the speakers, it looks to me much more formal and going of course by the appearance of the gentlemen, the speakers, and it’s just that the only way, incorrectly, I guess, you project that into the audience or into the place where it took place and you think that this was probably more, kind of, formal, overall formal event.

EE: Oh, absolutely.

GB: Yeah, we talked about the symposia at that time.

EE: Yes, well, I think especially we Junior Fellows felt that way – that was the apex of the whole year. And the great scholars came and they discussed matters, and that was very interesting, of course, to hear them sometimes agree and sometimes not agree. These semi-gods acting like that, that meant something very special, of course. And the lunches and the dinners and everything – that was wonderful and speaking with those special scholars. And they were all very nice and open. Well, and otherwise you wouldn’t encounter them quite so much, all that easily.

GB: Kurt Weitzmann and Hugo Buchthal, for example, both – did you meet them here at Dumbarton Oaks?

EE: Yes, I met them here first, for the first time. Later on they became friends, but that was when I wasn’t a Fellow anymore.

GB: But you got introduced to Kurt Weitzmann while you were here.

EE: Yes, absolutely. Oh, yes. It was a very nice encounter. He was always very, very jovial and very nice, easy to talk to.

GB: Ernst Kitzinger?

EE: Of course, yes, I met him. Well, I’d met him before because he came once in a while. I mean, he was working for the O.S.S. at that time, Office of Strategic Services, but he came sometimes as a, just, visitor to see the people, and so I met him. And then there was the famous dance, also, yes. And I wasn’t prepared for anything like that. I didn’t have a formal dress, so I had to buy that, and actually the other fellows helped me with that, because I didn’t know where to go or what to do, so – and that was a very nice occasion, too, and of course there were people from outside who came. Oh, yes, there was one other person, who was – he had been a fellow here. He was Greek and so was his wife, and he worked at the embassy, at the Greek embassy.

GB: It was not Milton, no?

EE: No, no, not Milton. Milton was American.

GB: Yeah. Maybe Pelopidas Stephanou?

EE: No.

GB: Um –

EE: I think it was something with “A”, but I’m not quite sure. Very nice person, whom I met that way, also. Now, maybe he hadn’t been a Fellow here, but he was coming to lectures and whatnot, and thus Margaret had met him. That’s all I can think of. There were a number of people who came to the lectures who were not directly connected but were very much interested in early Christian, Byzantine art, I suppose, and that’s how they came here—for lectures and so on.

GB: When you were here, something very specific and nowadays a rare historical moment or, actually, event took place and that is what we would call nowadays the United Nations Conversations.

EE: Well, yes, that happened during the summer and therefore we couldn’t be here. Of course, we didn’t know what was going on, but it was something government, we were told, or so – so we had to leave.

GB: So you were not informed in any detail about that – of course, for security reasons.

EE: Exactly, oh absolutely, and also it wasn’t yet certain what was going to happen – I mean what the result would be. So many people, when one said, “I work in Dumbarton Oaks” – “Oh, you’re connected with the UN.” And I had to inform them, “No, no, no, that happened to take place here, but it had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks; it’s just the place that was handed over to them for the summer.”

GB: And as far as I remember from what I have read about it, it was indeed that the start of the fellowship term had to be postponed, I think. You had to leave, of course, for several – it was, kind of, already booked but then extended – it got into more rounds and additional discussions. And I don’t know if you remember that, but that’s, I think, what I gather from the reports: that the fellows had to be a little bit late, in fact.

EE: Yes, I think, I don’t remember specifically but just very vaguely I remember something for me that was lucky, actually, because I had gotten sick – I had had a very severe case of infectious hepatitis while I was in Turkey and it was a sad thing, because I was told Iran has just a more liquid yogurt, and I didn’t know that it was mixed with water. If I had known that – I was told it’s just more liquid. If I had known that it was mixed with water, I would never have taken it. And I got very sick from that, and I had a relapse at that time. So it was good that it started later. I had to be on a diet for quite a while.

GB: One point I had noted down is about Koehler, and although you said that Koehler was not here – you have heard about that – the event or the years before, about his role –

EE: Yes, and I missed that very much, really.

GB: That is my interest, actually, when you say you missed it: so, is that in retrospect or is it that you had known already at the time when you were here that the earlier years starting in 1940, until 1943, were under a different guidance because of Koehler and how he thought that Fellows at the institute could be built up – was it that you knew?

EE: No, I didn’t know about it at all. I didn’t know that – how it worked before. Koehler had not told me.

GB: How’d you learn about that – do you remember?

EE: It was from, especially, Margaret Ames and also Josephine Harris, who told me.

GB: So, your co-Fellows told you.

EE: Yes, they told me.

GB: And how did they talk about that time? That was a really interesting time.

EE: They loved it. They all thought it was wonderful.

GB: Can you explain what they thought and what it was?

EE: Well, it was a collaboration. I mean, one’s work was being discussed and helped by discussing it not only with Professor Koehler but with the other Fellows also, in an informal but formal way – I mean, by getting together.

GB: And that’s what they called seminars.

EE: Yes.

GB: Was it on a regular basis?

EE: It was on a regular basis, yes. And that – I realized I felt a little bit footloose as a result of it, having heard what it was, because when Professor Koehler came, it was for – oh, I don’t know – two days or something like that, so really he couldn’t do much and you couldn’t get much from that, because he came for other, mainly other purposes.

GB: But he came to visit Dumbarton Oaks when you were here. But, he did not –

EE: He didn’t stay.

GB: And were there any kind of discussions between you and the other Fellows, how to, maybe, get back to this, or why this had stopped, or was there any kind of understanding –

EE: No, it was – that was never being discussed, and I didn’t have the initiative at that time, at all. I was too junior, really. I mean I had to adjust to a new life. Today, yes, I would do something –

GB: It seems –

EE: – or try to do something.

GB: – as if there was a common sense that this was very much appreciated –

EE: But it was something of the past.

GB: Yeah. It was something of the past, which was not – no more the everyday life of the institute. Yeah, that is very interesting. That is very –

EE: And I would say that Margaret Ames and Josephine Harris had gotten all the groundwork done this way, and they had found all the right directions and it wasn’t so important for them to get any help or further directives. But, as far as I am concerned, it would have been a great help.

GB: Were they conducting – no, actually, you had said they all had their Ph.Ds already.

EE: Well, Margaret Ames didn’t.

GB: Margaret Ames didn’t, so she – but you said she was on her own track, so to speak. She did not necessarily need any more guidance –

EE: Well, I suppose she was getting it also when she – where did she get her Ph.D? I forget where she got it, really. But, well, it was – for her, at that stage, it was more cumulative. You see, she had to explore more, other sites, also. But the basic part was already there – of basic directives or direction.

GB: You weren’t able to take that into the next, following year, actually, or following years. I see that both of you left after that year and only Rosalie Beth Green continued to stay so that the only one to benefit was her, I think, she is listed under this ’45-’46 fellowship year. You came to the end of your term – of your years at some point and you – did you know where to go and did you get any kind of support or advice from the co-Fellows –?

EE: Oh no, nothing whatsoever.

GB: – or was it just a, kind of, natural coming-to-the-end of the fellowship?

EE: That was it, yes.

GB: And when you left, what was your, kind of –

EE: Well that was – in May I got engaged, so before I left – not that I told anybody, though.

GB: Oh, yeah? No?

EE: No. Well, Barbara Sessions, I think, knew. But otherwise, no, nobody. And I got married in the fall, September of ’45. And then I helped my husband.

GB: And you moved – well, you lived –

EE: First in Washington, D.C. and then we moved to outside Vienna, Virginia, to the country. And there we did a lot of work for the house, something I’d never done before – but everything. I was a contractor and I did painting and I did woodwork and I did everything. Oh, and garden work.

GB: And while you were here, in Vienna, which is not far away, by – no, actually, it’s –

EE: No, it’s in northwestern Virginia.

GB: Did you come back to Dumbarton Oaks? Sure, I guess, as you continued –

EE: Yes, I did. Not very much.

GB: And your husband was still working here, I mean researching, conducting research here at Dumbarton Oaks?

EE: Here? I don’t think so. I mean, he came before maybe once for research but mainly for just visiting Thacher or some other friends he had.

GB: So when you decided to stay here in D.C., was this because of –

EE: Because my husband was curator at the Freer Gallery, in charge of the Islamic department.

GB: Until when?

EE: Until ’65

GB: So that’s a long time.

EE: Yes. Well, we had moved back then, to Washington. I was very much – I wanted very much to go back, because it was difficult, really, always that long drive and so on.

GB: And I guess you connected, then – through the professional relationship and work relationship – you connected more to the Freer-Sackler Gallery and the landscape at that time – of course, such institutions stood in a different all-around shape, I think, an organization, than nowadays – but particularly your focus shifted toward that.

EE: Well yes, one year we went to the Middle East. That was nineteen fifty-fi – well, oh, before that, one year before that, I worked at the State Department, which was actually a very interesting experience. It was in the research department on the Middle East. The only problem was that I didn’t dare to discuss anything about the Middle East because I wasn’t sure whether I’d read it at documents in the State Department or in the press. So I kept quiet. But I read about some friends of ours, also, who were in the Middle East. It was broadening my experience, I would say. And then, of course, when we went to the Middle East, for one year – actually it was even fourteen months – we went over Europe to the Middle East to countries I’d never been – my husband had never been – to. He knew a great deal about it, but he had never visited there. And we started, from Italy we went to – we flew, for me it was my first flight, to Egypt and the Patriarch, the Patriarch of Cairo, was on the same plane, and it was his first flight and my first flight. There were very few passengers. It was an Alitalia plane. And he would say, “Oh look down here! No look down there!” So we were like two children, really. It was very exciting.

GB: Speaking of this makes me realize that you came, of course, from Europe to America for your fellowship by boat.

EE: By boat.

GB: And not at all by airplane.

EE: No, by boat. It was, it took a month to get here, and my parents and I were the only passengers. It was on a freighter, an American freighter. And it was – well, we saw something; nothing happened, but we saw something of what – of the war, of course. First of all, it was all darkened – or blackened. And it was interesting to learn about the experience of the sailors. They were informed that I was a – well, a fairly young person, of course. They’d have to behave, so to say. So they treated me like a sister, and they told me all kinds of stories of their lives.

GB: How old were you?

EE: Pardon?

GB: How old were you at the time?

EE: I was twenty-four, I think. So it was quite an experience being exposed to American life, not of exactly the type of person I would normally meet. But there were also some, of course, who went rather into the Merchant Marine than joining the regular forces.

GB: How did it come that you were on that boat, on that carrier, as the only family, you said?

EE: Yes. Well, my father had connections, all kinds of connections. He had connections from Istanbul with the British and the Americans.

GB: And you came from Istanbul? That’s where you –

EE: From Istanbul we went to Cairo and from Cairo, then, to – on the boat, on the Liberty Ship.

GB: And you lived in Istanbul.

EE: For almost five years.

GB: Five years.

EE: At first I didn’t continue my studies there, and then I was advised that I could do that and I did. And I learned. I took courses in four languages: in Turkish, in German, French, and English.

GB: At the university?

EE: Yes, Istanbul University. I mean, it was professors from different countries. Of course, it was all translated into Turkish, but I took the original. One of my teachers was Runciman and he taught, of course, history, but also art – Byzantine art.

GB: Was that how you got started, the interest –

EE: Pardon?

GB: Is that how your interest got started or piqued in –

EE: Well, it was, I mean – in Istanbul you can’t avoid it, almost.

GB: Well, you could have had an interest in later, Ottoman art and –

EE: I developed that there, actually, but I was extremely lucky in Vienna, because I – Sedelmeier was the chief of the art history department. He had just come in when I started. And the last term I had with him – he not only did the general history of art course (he did it over four years), but also then special courses in whatever interested him or he had worked on. And that was on St. Sophia. So I knew quite a bit about it, as a result of it. And when I saw it for the first time, in Istanbul then, the amazing thing was, I noticed the chandeliers so much and they bothered me so much that I couldn’t really enjoy and understand the space and the greatness of the church. And I went out again, quite disappointed and went another day, again, and then I didn’t see the chandeliers, but I saw the space and ever since then I’ve seen the space – and of course all the details.

GB: That is amazing to think of Sedelmeier giving a lecture, or a seminar, on Hagia Sophia.

EE: No. He had worked on that.

GB: He had worked on it?

EE: Yes.

GB: I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.

EE: On the baldacchino system, especially, yes.

GB: An architectural component.

EE: Yes, well the domes and the semi-domes and so on. And that’s how he got to it. And that was always very interesting for me, then. I mean, I saw things differently from, probably, what – people who really know structures and so on, of course, too, but for me it was the essence or the most important part. So I saw it differently, probably, from others.

GB: And before Istanbul, you lived in Vienna.

EE: Oh yes, yes I was born in Vienna and went to school in Vienna.

GB: Now of course, you, what – that your life would be directed in quite a – by a marriage of course, and coming – something very important, that you would have, you would have never thought of that, that this was going to be life altering, so to speak, which is of course not true, but one – at the end of the fellowship, so to speak, that was quite amazing to see that you continued your professional interest and found a wonderful husband and together you could manage to work in the area of architecture, and that’s what you do, up to today, which is amazing to think. And looking back and seeing this –

EE: Well, I think, actually, it was very lucky for me that in Istanbul, for instance, the emphasis was really on Near Eastern archaeology, so I also – I mean I took also history of art but also Near Eastern archaeology – so I got a broader vision, which actually Sedelmeier had started for me, because he was very much interested in the broader vision. I know some of my fellow students in Vienna criticized him: “Oh, some details are not right.” But it meant a great deal to me. There were other professors who went into details. So I saw the advantages of the one and the other. But you know there are some who never see the broader picture, which is a pity.

GB: How would you characterize the Dumbarton Oaks tenure and your fellowship here, with this respect, regarding the overall scholarly interest and what you just formulated – you mentioned the broader picture – and cross-cultural exchanges and –

EE: Except for, I would say, except for the lectures and more so the symposium, it didn’t further that. But I think things have changed. I mean, everything has changed. Not here. Life has changed; everything has changed. It’s much more open to other cultures in general. And so, of course it would be also in Dumbarton Oaks.

GB: Yeah, indeed. Very much so and I think that is – it’s good to look at this change.

EE: The broader picture.

GB: Not only the different disciplines, which at that time didn’t even exist here at Dumbarton Oaks. There was no Pre-Columbian Department. There was no Garden-Landscape Department. And not only having these two other – so important – other branches or disciplines at Dumbarton Oaks, but to connect them, to exchange and to see the Fellows exchanging ideas freely across the aisle, so to speak, which is really quite nice. And I understand that this was, indeed – if we again apply this term, which is not correct, because there was no talk about a mission at that time – but if we think of the mission of a research institute, that has very much changed, you know, from an institute which was, at that time, I understand, driven by establishing at such a – I forget the term. There was a term at the time, how they called this database work. I can’t remember, but I read it somewhere. But this was a kind of major point of activity of the institution, to develop this pool of material culture, evidence, records, and with that, of course, to facilitate research and to offer this to other Byzantine scholars and to everybody who’s interested –

EE: I remember Kitzinger once mentioned to me that it was quite helpful for some work he did.

GB: He did. So he took advantage of that.

EE: Yes, because he knew about it, of course. And he took advantage of it.

GB: That’s interesting. Yeah.

EE: If I may say one other thing, I think Mrs. Bliss would be really delighted that the broader vision has been reached, because she was that kind of – just as that quotation –

GB: Yes, indeed. Yeah, that’s interesting, because, I mean, I see this, I read this out of what I know of correspondence we now know about and so on, but that you say this – that is, of course, you with your knowledge of her as a person. You have experience; you have encounters. How would you – why do you – can you expand on this? Can you – when you think of her and how you perceived her, was it because she was just the kind of lady walking into this place and embracing this place by nature of being the owner, previous owner, at least, of that place? That’s what I see – what she has really created, an all-over Bliss creation, the collection they collected, the gardens they built up from scratch, the house they bought but very much remodeled, rebuilt – was that what I – was that what she, kind of – was that her realm when you –

EE: Well, she may not have known it then, but I have the feeling she would be pleased. Sometimes, you don’t know exactly what you want, that is, how you can realize or what you can realize, but I think it would be – not only for Mrs. Bliss but also for Mr. Bliss.

GB: How do you remember the proper introduction? How were they introduced or were you introduced to the Blisses? Like, “This is Mildred and Robert Bliss,” or, “These are the founders of the institution,” or how was that, kind of –?

EE: I don’t know. I only know that I just met them, and I don’t think anything was said, because I was probably told beforehand, so: “May I introduce –”

GB: Because I ask – we know and we learned from various sources that they were very modest, indeed, about their donations, about participating, about funding projects, about supporting artists; often it was done anonymously. They didn’t want to be named on all sorts – so, that’s in a way what I, kind of,  – just, you know, from being told or having read, I think that is very much confirmed through what you – you can’t remember what you, basically –

EE: Of course, times were very different. So, and she was used to – both of them were used to being in certain circles and that there were certain behaviors and formalities and all that – that would be different. And I’m sure, I have the feeling they would understand the difference.

GB: They were very much open-minded regarding the avant-garde. I mean, they were very much – well, it’s maybe wrong to say they were contemporary regarding their living taste of, the set-up of houses – it was very, I think, traditional and very much, of course, according to the Zeitgeist of the time.

EE: Yes, that’s right.

GB: But at the same time we know – not only because they, as I said, supported artists, contemporary artists, but, of course, music – and by the way, which reminds me that you had heard Stravinsky – that you attended the premiere of Stravinsky’s concerto.

EE: Yes. That’s right. I heard it the other day, by the way, on the radio again.

GB: But not conducted by Stravinsky, I guess.

EE: I guess not.

GB: So that was indeed –

EE: Oh yes, indeed.

GB: Do you remember the occasion? It was while you were here on your fellowship?

EE: Yes, I think so.

GB: And you met him. You were introduced to him.

EE: Well yes, I somehow met him. I mean I didn’t talk to him at length.

GB: And you may know – I don’t know if you know – that later on they commissioned a piece by Copland, so again a contemporary.

EE: No, I didn’t know that.

GB: And later on, late, very late, Dumbarton Oaks commissioned a piece for their—well, on the anniversary for the Blisses, 100^th anniversary, and by coincidence it would just be the year we had premiered here at Dumbarton Oaks – it was indeed the year of the opening of the reinstalling there in 2008, which was the 100^th wedding anniversary of the Blisses. It was a kind of nice –

EE: And, uh?

GB: Oh, Joan Tower, the composer, an American contemporary composer—she’s quite known and it’s –

EE: Great, wonderful.

GB: With Stravinsky, the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Copland’s piece, and Joan Tower’s piece, which is, I’ve forgot the title; it’s Dumbarton Oaks Quintet, or something like that – no, actually that’s – I think, the Dumbarton Quintet, if I’m not wrong. And we had all the three pieces.

EE: Wonderful.

GB: And it’s just wonderful to see and to hear the three different pieces and to know about the three different musicians and composers and to link all these to the Blisses as the one couple, who connected so many arts and so many visionary ideas in their life.

EE: I should, perhaps, say something that I was told, true or false – that Mrs. Bliss expected that all the scholars would just go to the garden and they would discuss things like in ancient Athens or so. And, well, we shook our heads over that – that it was not – it doesn’t work that way. But, I think she would have understood that it doesn’t work that way. I mean, it was understandable with her background, her upbringing, and so on – and the time was different – and it has changed and as through scholarly discussions and so on, this was, perhaps, more forward-looking, I mean different, already, formally. And she didn’t know that. But I still think – I mean it’s wonderful what she has done, really. I appreciate it much more now than I did then, to be quite frank.

GB: Yeah, it is again a nice confirmation of what I know only by reading letters and other articles, which have been written in the meantime about the Blisses. She very much understood the gardens as an essential part of the Dumbarton Oaks research institute and she liked the idea of the scholars walking and getting inspired and talking and exchanging ideas by walking and encountering this landscape, this extraordinary space she created, which is kind of an ideal, like, locus amoenus. And it was maybe a paradise, even, what we may call an ivory tower, but the ivory tower very much with an extension, which is indeed this kind of muse temple of thought-provoking ideas – inspiring. And it’s very much what she expressed in her last will, that this scholarship and the lives of the scholars at Dumbarton Oaks should never be de-attached from the gardens and from the trees, not just a nice, green landscape around the house, which is the library and collection. It’s really a part of it and that’s quite interesting.

EE: I didn’t realize that, but I must say, personally, I went through the garden a great deal. I mean, instead of going over the street, I went through the garden, through what then was called the Fellows Building. And, well the gardens meant a great deal to me. So, in being unaware of that, it did help me.

GB: Did you see changes? Did you see changes over the past recent years? Have you looked into the gardens? Is it still the same or is it changed?

EE: No, it’s very different, of course, because of the new buildings – for me, new buildings.

GB: And the public part of the gardens – the rose terrace and the fountain.

EE: There was a fountain before.

GB: Mhm, yeah, I know that. It’s the setting and the park-scape parts that are totally the same, unchanged, but one should not forget that the gardens, the trees, of course, change. So, I say this because only over the past two years we have fought and had many losses, many trees lost to lightning.

EE: Oh, that also. Well, you have those ancient white oaks.

GB: Yeah. They would be interesting to – and I guess you haven’t had a chance to walk –

EE: No, unfortunately not. I mean, I walked in that part [points to her left, east of the Fellows Building/Guest House] and that is, of course, entirely different, because they’re, so to say, formal walks now. Paths, I should say. But that’s, of course, necessary under the circumstances.

GB: That’s so wonderful that you – to have you sharing all these memories with us and –

EE: Well, I hope I contributed something, at least.

GB: Oh yeah, oh yeah, indeed. It is a very, very specific year, or years, here and it’s – yes – a treasure of recollections.

EE: I mean it’s, of course, personal recollections and objectively it may be different, slightly different.

GB: That’s exactly what we all have: personal recollections. And they each piece together, so to speak, and there’s history at the end – it’s history. And that’s very much appreciated. Do you remember the – you remember quite well the year that was your arrival and – because I’m not sure if we are even correct in our documents. When you arrived – and you said in May – your marriage was in the fall of ’45, yeah? And you –

EE: No, no. Yes.

GB: Was it ’45?

EE: No, you see, I was here in ’43-’44 to ’45.

GB: So you arrived in ’43, in fall of ’43?

EE: Yes, in late fall. I didn’t get here at the beginning of the year, because I wasn’t here yet. I mean I wasn’t here yet in this country.

GB: You arrived in this country in ’43.

EE: Yes.

GB: So you were pretty new to the country.

EE: I was quite new. I also experienced Ellis Island for three days, which for me was an interesting experience. It wasn’t the same for my father, of course. But I was young, you know. I could take things like that. I just observed. And actually it’s very good for everybody to once experience being confined. One understands things better, certain things much better that way – [laughs] Well.

GB: Thank you so much. That was really wonderful.

EE: Well it’s a pleasure to be here. And if I can contribute anything, I’m delighted, of course.

GB: Well, whatever memories and recollections you have, please continue to send us an email and share them and maybe some memories will come up and –

EE: Sometimes. It could happen, yes.

GB: This was wonderful, wonderful.

EE: Now perhaps I should say one thing about Professor Friend, because the way I put it sounds, actually, negative, I think, and I don’t want that to be the case. He just was interested in certain things in a, perhaps, different way.

GB: Yeah. So I think that we have covered quite a lot: various aspects, Fellows, research, professors, social life, dancing –

EE: [Laughs] Oh yes.

GB: –lunches, the Blisses, the United Nations –

EE: Perhaps I should – I don’t think that came up, actually, that we were invited also at the Blisses. I mean we Fellows. That may have been at the end of the year, but I don’t remember. Maybe in connection with a symposium or something, which was very nice, of course. So I saw their house and –

GB: Their house in Georgetown. So they really cared. I mean it was – they were present and they were engaged. They were really active.

EE: It was their children.

GB: Yeah, yeah indeed. Yep. Yep. Wonderful.

EE: Well, thank you very much.

GB: Oh, I would – it’s my pleasure.

EE: Do you know how to turn it off?

WHA: Thank you very much.

INT: July 17th.

INT: Oh, I’m sorry, yes, today’s July 17th, 2009.

WHA: Everybody’s in [laughter]. Did you get TJ in over there? [laughter]

INT: Oh yes, and Thomas Jefferson is presiding [laughter]. Which is very appropriate.

WHA: Where’s his computer relay?, hanging on his – I assume my computer works wireless. When they were hooking it up, they said, where we gonna put it, and I said, just hang it around his neck, he’ll love it.

INT: That’s great. We’ll start off with: you were never a junior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks?

WHA: No, no.

INT: So how did you first come to be involved?

WHA: Well, I was trying to remember all of that, how I – my first introduction to the whole Dumbarton Oaks scene was through Walter Muir Whitehill, who was a great friend of the Blisses, and who wrote what was considered the official sponsored history of Dumbarton Oaks. Do you know it?

INT: No, to our knowledge, we’ve been told that there’s never been an official –

WHA: Not true. Walter Muir Whitehill, who was - well, I knew him through Boston connections, and he was a great friend of some of the Adams connections, obviously up there, and he was the head of the Boston Athenaeum, and very much involved, he was on the board of the art museum in Boston and the Massachusetts historical society, he was involved in everything, and at a very early stage in my life somehow I became a part of – I would see the Whitehills in Boston, and so I knew about the Blisses really second-hand but fairly intimately in terms of what they were doing. But his book is a very key document.

INT: I would imagine so. I’m not even sure there’s a –

WHA: And Walter died in the late seventies, I think, so this book would have been done, well obviously before Mildred Bliss died in sixty-nine, but anyway he was very much an intimate. Then when I came to the National Gallery, I’d been living in Princeton and I was working for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund briefly before I came to the National Gallery, and it may have been through some Princeton connection that we then – Mrs. Bliss, though she had just died, was very much a social and cultural presence in Georgetown, which meant basically Washington. And Tom Bayard – does his name ring a bell? You’ve come on to him. He taught at Trinity I think, after he left Dumbarton Oaks, and he was a kind of protégé of Mrs. Bliss, and after she’d moved out of the house, down on Q – we were on P just around the corner – and Tom was a friend of friends of ours in Princeton so there were all these, I suppose not professional, but just sort of these connections, and we became good friends of Tom’s, so I suppose that was really the first behind-the-scenes introduction, because the staff was very, very small.

INT: What year was this?

WHA: Seventy. Mrs. Bliss had just died. We’re told in Washington that they were referred to as the "Three Bs" – Mrs. Bliss, Mrs. Bacon – Virginia Bacon, Mrs. Robert Lowe Bacon – and Mrs. Beale, who lived in Decatur House, opposite the White House – still living privately in that house. Mrs. Bacon was living in I think what had been John Marshall’s house on F Street, pretty extraordinary, they were all contemporary buildings with the White House, and then Mrs. Bliss was out in the country. But those were really the powerhouse figures, and this is social history that has nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks, but it’s part of the texture. But we’re into the transitional period of Dumbarton Oaks throughout the ‘70s. I think through Walter Muir Whitehill I became well acquainted with the Tylers, and it was Bill Tyler who asked me to be a senior fellow. And you know the Tyler connections to the Blisses.

INT: He was the godson, I believe.

WHA: Yes, and he was also the godson of Edith Wharton. And Edith Wharton was a great friend of Mrs. Bliss, and also Beatrix Farrand, and that’s how Beatrix Farrand comes into the story, and I think that it was Royall Tyler, his father, that introduced the Blisses, I mean Mr. Bliss’s mother, to Bliss’s father.

INT: That was Royall Tyler?

WHA: She then became Mrs. Royall Tyler. [NB: It is unclear to whom he is referring.] So Bill – I always loved the fact that he was Edith Wharton’s godson [laughter].

INT: And I think he was heir to all her papers and things.

WHA: He did, which he then negotiated – I think Yale has them now. I think that’s right. I don’t know, the Bliss papers, I suppose they’re at Harvard?

INT: They were moved to Harvard. They originally were at Dumbarton Oaks, but Dumbarton Oaks didn’t really seem to have the space or the resources.

WHA: And that’s not – that kind of archival manuscript maintenance, it’s just like at Monticello; we don’t have any – other than a working library – we don’t keep any manuscript material there. It all goes to the University of Virginia. Anything that has to be taken care of.

INT: We do have the material related to the building of Dumbarton Oaks and the gift –

WHA: You have all of that? But her plans, all of that is out in California.

INT: Oh, I didn’t know that.

WHA: Well, she lived in California near the end of her life. So I know that a lot of the original garden plans, which have – all that’s been documented, published, that’s well-known. Well, anyway, that’s the best of my recollection.

INT: Did you know Mrs. Paul Mellon as well?

WHA: Well, I did know her, and in fact when I was on the board there was discussion even then about the possibility of her giving her collection to Dumbarton Oaks, but it was clear that this was not going to happen in the 1970s, because her interests were clearly very special, and she did not want to have it being institutionalized under either Dumbarton Oaks or Harvard, and we still don’t know where her collection is going to go – and maybe you do – or have not heard.

INT: I know that she’s built a library.

WHA: She has, there, that’s been a number of years ago. But it’s not – it’s fine for that but I can’t imagine that being maintained in perpetuity. I suspect – I’ve heard rumors that there is another institution where maybe it would go, but I don’t know any more than that. But she was never – was she actually ever on the board? I can’t remember.

INT: I believe she was.

WHA: Her name was on it, but she – I think that she was never really active. It was with the idea I think that this would happen, but it was quite clear that this was not – that she was going in her own direction and so on.

INT: Yeah, we tried to speak with her –

WHA: No, I don’t think it would make any sense now. She’s 98. Her stepson is a good friend of mine – pardon me, her son by an earlier marriage – lives in Washington and is a good friend of mine, and I don’t – people around Upperville never see her much. That would be not a productive avenue.

INT: Was Jack Thatcher still around the Washington scene in these years?

WHA: Oh, Jack was around, and he had just retired, I can’t remember when.

INT: Sixty-nine.

WHA: He was very much a gentleman about town and knew everybody.

INT: It seems like there was a great deal of integration between the Dumbarton Oaks collection at that time, or at least the administration, and the Washington social scene.

WHA: Dumbarton Oaks was very much a Georgetown social scene. There were very few people who had any real intellectual interest in what Dumbarton Oaks was doing. It was something of a mystery. I mean, first of all, garden history – people didn’t know what – that was such a new discipline or sub-discipline. Byzantine studies, that was totally off the books, and the pre-Columbian was also, really. That beautiful collection, that jewel collection – too bad you didn’t get to speak to the architect.

INT: Philip Johnson. He passed away, I think.

WHA: Oh, yes.

INT: Did you know him?

WHA: I did, just briefly, when we lived in New York, but through other connections that had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks.

INT: He did leave memoirs or something like that.

WHA: About Dumbarton Oaks? Oh, well then that’s good.

INT: It’s helpful.

WHA: And someone else that I knew who is still I think living is Louis Auchincloss, who’s a novelist and lawyer who lives in New York, who’s in his early 90s now.

INT: What was his connection to Dumbarton Oaks?

WHA: Well, he was a good friend of them. He would have been a much younger friend, but he would have known the Harvard-Dumbarton Oaks scene, and I remember him talking to me about how Harvard had somehow – whether his law firm or somebody that he was involved with – when the Blisses were persuaded to give Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard, and he was rather critical of that. And he felt that Harvard had pushed them into it and used the threat of the war, the possible "invasion" like the war of 1812 – they ought to have – that somehow Cambridge Massachusetts was going to be safer, to own the property would add more stability. This is what I recollect Louis telling me, whether there’s any truth to it I have no idea. But that was inside gossip.

INT: Very helpful to have.

WHA: Mr. Kreeger was also on the board when I was on the board. Another name that you – he’s long since gone, the businessman in Washington. Does his name –?

INT: I don’t think we’ve heard anyone bring him up before.

WHA: Well, he was – they were great art collectors, and he was on the board of the corp., and he was involved in all kinds of positions around culturally, and I guess I knew him through being at the National Gallery and because of his collection. But Bill Tyler got him on the board because he was a Harvard graduate and could stand up to the pressure from Harvard, which – there was a sense of pressure, at least in that period; the rumor was that Harvard would be happy to close the whole thing down and take the all proceeds back to Cambridge.

INT: What was the gossip related to that? Because it seems so explicit in the Bliss will that that is not what they wanted.

WHA: They were very explicit about it, and Louis Auchincloss discussed that with me about that issue, but nevertheless –

INT: Harvard will be Harvard.

WHA: Everyone read Harvard’s ambitions.

INT: Yes, I think they took material from the collection up to – was it the Fogg during this time?

WHA: Yes.

INT: And that was a very big thing.

WHA: Was that during the war, when they took it?

INT: They might have taken it during the war, and then I think again maybe in the early seventies?

WHA: They could have, I don’t remember. And that was not a good idea, it made everyone very nervous. And then also the friction was over the way the money was redistributed. Harvard had its formula dealing with the Bliss bequest, the proceeds didn’t come back to Dumbarton Oaks, they got a fixed percentage.

INT: Really? Where was the other money –?

WHA: It was overhead for Cambridge, as we understood it.

INT: Were these for the Dumbarton Oaks professorships?

WHA: Well, all the operating funds, Dumbarton’s endowment went to Harvard, you see, they would distribute it, they earned 8% and Dumbarton Oaks got maybe 4% – I don’t know that, I’m just saying, that was at least – and Kreeger, who was very much of a finance man on the board, was quite outspoken and critical if ever anyone from Harvard ever came down.

INT: Were there visits from Harvard?

WHA: Well, not very often. The dean of arts and science – he was a very powerful dean, I can’t think of his name.

INT: Bok?

WHA: No, that’s the president. Bok came I think once during my time, and when you think how many institutions Harvard has, the very idea that he might have even come once – but the dean who was very powerful, and I think he was dean of arts and sciences but I can’t remember the names. But the problem at Dumbarton Oaks – Byzantines studies at Harvard, you obviously have a connection at Harvard, but the other two areas did not and do not, and that was always felt to be a weakness in the way the thing’s structured, and that gave the Byzantinists – they were, you know, not equal among equals. But that’s again part of the politics of the thing. But everyone understood all this.

INT: If we could go back for a second to your relationship to Mr. Whitehall.

WHA: Whitehill.

INT: Whitehill, excuse me. You mentioned he had talked to you a little bit about the Blisses, did he have any particular stories that you recall? We’re very interested in –

WHA: Not that I can recall now. I might be able to if I reread his book, but I’m sure anything he told me in the kind of after-dinner, over-scotch conversation would have been in his book and so on. He loved the style of the Blisses in terms of the way they went about supporting music and the whole civilized, really European atmosphere that really prevailed, certainly in the seventies. There was nothing else in Washington that came near that, because of the scale of it, small, intimate. And the Sunday night concerts – you had to be invited, as if Mrs. Bliss was still presiding. So it was very much a – the rituals were all figured out, and certainly carried on, with Jack Thatcher in the wings criticizing if they weren’t.

INT: He was also a godson, I think, of the Blisses. Or at the very least a friend.

WHA: Yeah, he probably was. I don’t remember that. But there was very much this curatorial reverence and caretaking of the image of the Blisses and Dumbarton Oaks as the Blisses related to it. So you had ten years – Giles Constable, maybe his father, who taught at Harvard, in art history I believe, probably knew the Blisses, and there may have been something, a little nepotism there, I don’t know. He surely must have talked about that.

INT: Yes. We didn’t actually get to –

WHA: Do that one.

INT: Well, I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about the European feel. Was it – I assume you must have gotten to know some of the scholars there at the time.

WHA: Oh yes, I did. And there were always European scholars, and we did see them, made a point that they would meet at the National Gallery and there was an atmosphere. Whether that goes on now or not, I don’t know.

INT: We haven’t gotten the sense that there’s as much interaction as you’re talking about.

WHA: Interaction, no. At that period there was, on a very informal level.

INT: Who were the major players there as far as academics, as you recall

WHA: Oh, I can’t remember now the names again. Betty MacDougal, of course, she was somewhat controversial as a director. She was not an easy person to get along with, and people had the impression that she really didn’t want anybody coming in doing research other than the fellows. And that’s fair enough to understand, that it was a limited facility and so on. There was a feeling she was not particularly friendly to scholars who were not – who had a legitimate reason – who were not [fellows]. That’s just a rumor and an impression I had. I think Betty suffered from the fact that while she was an art history major, garden history itself was parvenu, and didn’t have full credentials at Harvard, or certainly at the Fogg. You can understand that.

INT: Well, at that time Dumbarton Oaks was really the only center –

WHA: It was really the only center. There was – the scholarship going on – there was a good deal going on in England in garden history; it has its genesis I think really after the war. And lots of the fellows and people who came up and were influential read at some of the symposia at Dumbarton Oaks. They were all international figures but I think the English garden history crowd – they quite often were members of the symposia; you can read the lists and so on. The Byzantinists, not so much. Not in terms of such a specialized field of study, as you know. With garden history, people – even though they didn’t understand what the discipline was about and how it worked in terms of the collection at Dumbarton Oaks – nevertheless people said, well, you know, I have a garden.

INT: Did you have much interaction with the collection at Dumbarton Oaks?

WHA: Well, I’ve used it, yes. The study that I did on the French garden, I used [it] quite extensively, of course. At that point I had curated an exhibition on Jefferson at the National Gallery called “The Eye of Thomas Jefferson;” my catalog you may know.

INT: Seventy-six.

WHA: In working on Jefferson I did become very much involved in eighteenth-century garden history, because of his travels and interests, when he was in France. And it was actually through that rather narrow avenue that – and I realized at that point that there wasn’t a useful small volume – not a picture book, but a serious book on the history of the French garden. Which has now been translated into French and two or three other – which is interesting, you know. The French consider that an area that they – would not recognize an American scholar. Actually the French edition of that, they did really quite a beautiful job of it.

INT: Do you remember, during that time when you were interacting with it, what the state of the collection was? As you probably know, there still is no museum space for the garden collection.

WHA: No. And there wasn’t any – the museum part of the garden, it was a literary collection. It was works on paper. We never ever thought of it as objects or related to anything other than just seeing it all make perfect sense. Which is the way the Blisses began the collection – what they bought and so on.

INT: So at this point it was mainly the library. Because I know at least over the years they’ve managed to collect some of the prints and paintings that the Blisses originally had, of gardens.

WHA: Of gardens?

INT: Of botanical gardens.

WHA: Is that in the garden studies section?

INT: That’s my understanding. But it sounds like this was not at the time.

WHA: Well, there were things around in the hallways, hanging on the walls, but not in any sense as a part of the study collection.

INT: And in the early sixties things were in the garden library?

WHA: Yes. I didn’t know it until sixty-nine, seventy. I’d been there but I never used the collection at that time. I guess Betty MacDougal was there at that time. There was also Alan Fern’s wife, do you know her? Alan Fern was head of the prints and photographs at the Library of Congress, and then he became director of not the Portrait Gallery, but what we now call the National Collection, the American Collection. His wife was Betty MacDougal’s assistant; she’s in Washington. She’s somebody. She was very much in the working – I knew her very well, but I can’t think of her first name now. Mrs. Alan Fern. I suppose he’s living in Washington; I haven’t seen him in years. But it was very, very intimate and small; there would never be another person or scholar or anybody. The fellows would be in their little cubicles and I got to know some of them.

INT: Who was there, do you recall?

WHA: I’m hard pressed for names. They’d always be in, working on very interesting subjects, I remember.

INT: In your conversations with one another, did they tend to be about garden history, or the literary aspects, or theoretical? What was the tone at that time in the seventies in terms of the field itself, as you recall?

WHA: Mostly they came out of literature as well as art history, or they came out of history; it is a subdivision of history. And garden history wasn’t taught anyplace – what was his name, the head of the garden there; he’s English?

INT: John Dixon Hunt.

WHA: John Dixon Hunt. He’s very prolific in writing; have you talked to him?

INT: Spoke with him on Monday.

WHA: I remember him very well when he was there; I think later he catalogued Mrs. Mellon’s collection, or did two volumes on that collection, which is available to you. But I think that was after he was at – he’s at Pennsylvania I think now. He was a very conspicuous art historian, but he came out of literature. Interesting sort of background. My background is law.

INT: How did you get –?

WHA: Well, I don’t know.

INT: We talked a little earlier about your time at the National Gallery. I wonder if you remember from that experience what the relationship was like between the National Gallery, specifically, and Dumbarton Oaks; you talked a little bit generally about the close interactions between the institutions.

WHA: Well, of course, John Walker – I was there briefly when he was just retiring. I came in with the idea that Carter would become the director and I was to pick up what Carter was doing, which I did, but that overlaps a bit. But certainly the Walkers were the connection with the Blisses, an intimate part of that circle. Those were the two major international cultural institutions in Washington – I mean in the humanities, or art, not the sciences, but I can’t think of any – they were preeminent. No university had international stature in Washington during those years, true? And being both non-political institutions. Those were the two places European visitors would gravitate to, one or both, whatever. And certainly the Blisses were looked upon as major figures and made famous by the Dumbarton Oaks conference, the commissioning of Stravinsky. That was a big time. And far more sophisticated than Washingtonians on a day-to-day basis ever thought of themselves being. Washington then is no different than Washington now, I’m sure, just more people.

INT: It seems like there was a very practical relationship between the two institutions as well, because even when you did the Jefferson exhibit, Dumbarton Oaks I think lent books for that.

WHA: Yes, they loaned things. We had a close working – anything either would need, we were equals.

INT: So you got the sense that during that period Dumbarton Oaks was very generous in lending out the collection.

WHA: Oh, yes, absolutely.

INT: Because we’ve heard different things over different periods.

WHA: Well, it depends on what department they were. There was a special – we used to speak of our special relationship with Great Britain. There was a special relationship with Dumbarton Oaks. Both institutions were sort of latecomers; the National Gallery didn’t open until 1940. The same time as the Blisses, isn’t that true?

INT: Yes, the gift was in forty.

WHA: Were they living in Washington? He’d been in diplomatic service.

INT: They were living at Dumbarton Oaks briefly, but it was for really only about five years, I think, before the gift, and I think the museum and collection and center didn’t really open until forty-six.

WHA: Forty-six? Well, they were putting up all those Renaissance ceilings. Is the ceiling still there?

INT: And it’s been beautifully recently cleaned and renovated and reopened.

WHA: I’ve often wondered how much of that ceiling is original. I never saw a Renaissance ceiling in Italy that big. It’s huge.

INT: But it is lovely.

WHA: It is lovely.

INT: One thing we’ve also touched on, but I think haven’t talked about directly, is of course you got to know Giles Constable very well. He’s known now I think as a bit of a controversial director.

WHA: Is he? I don’t know what the controversy would be or what it was.

INT: There wasn’t a sense of that immediately when you were there?

WHA: Well, Giles – I didn’t know him that well. I don’t think Giles was an easy person to know as a personality. He’s a scholar. I think the Institute was a perfect place for him. I don’t know that he was particularly comfortable with administration. That was an area I don’t know anything about. That’s just my outside/inside reading.

INT: He must have seemed a very different director than Bill Tyler.

WHA: Oh, yes, Bill was a preeminently new administration, the skills of diplomacy. Everything was protocolé, as Mrs. Tyler used to say. And again the foreign service was involved in all the diplomatic – and that played into the diplomatic scene, which should be mentioned, certainly in the seventies, when the diplomatic corps in Washington I think was much more conspicuous and ambassadors played much bigger roles than they do now, with electronics and all the things that have changed their lives and everybody else’s. But then the diplomatic corps was very protocolé as who was senior, and they didn’t change a lot, and the British ambassador was always – even though he wasn’t number one in the pecking order – he was always very much number one on the social scene, and he was usually somebody new, because Washington was always a prime plum slot. But to give you the sense of that, the diplomatic corps really gave the scene around Washington an international feeling. Certainly we were aware of this at the National Gallery because the embassies – we were always being asked for this or that, not loans and so on but just to play some sort of a political role in who was coming to visit, heads of state or the Queen of England or whatever and so on. We had a very close regular relationship with the diplomatic corps. But just take, for instance, the senior diplomat, when we lived in Washington, was the Italian ambassador, and his name was Ambassador Ortona, and he’d been there longer than any other, he’d been through the war; his memory of Washington in terms of diplomacy was extraordinary. But those figures very much were part of the Dumbarton Oaks scene and they were people who knew what Dumbarton Oaks was and what its function was and so on. And that was very important. You usually found the European diplomatic corps in Washington was always of a very high caliber, so you can see how they fitted into the Blisses’ idea of this European salon, which is really what it was. And the salon was Mrs. Bliss and Mrs. Bacon and Mrs. Beale, and they did run them; those houses were big enough, and certainly Mrs. Bacon was the only one still operating when we – and somehow we made her list so went there quite often so we got some sense of what must have been the same thing at the Blisses’ – when they were actually living in the house – in terms of the way the dinner parties were given and the circle that brought them together. None of that exists anymore in Washington – nothing like that, as far as I know.

INT: We’ve read how one of the things that Mr. Bliss had promised Mrs. Bliss if she would come to Washington was that he would create this sense of a country estate in the city, and of course then the gardens are a tremendous part of that. And I wondered, as a specialist, just for our records, how do you see the gardens themselves at Dumbarton Oaks as they sit in terms of their importance as an American garden or the uniqueness or not and just to touch upon that.

WHA: They are very important, and Beatrix Farrand was very, very important in that whole period, one of the real stars, and the close relationship she had with her patron Mildred Bliss was very important. And she was encouraged to do things that were really extraordinary in terms of the way the whole layout was done and how they worked it out. It was a country estate and in fact the house obviously was a country estate when Georgetown was first founded. I don’t know how large it was in the early – again Walter Muir Whitehill I think gives a good history. I was ex-official trustee of the National Trust when I was at the National Gallery, but then I was also on the board of Monticello, of which Walter had been on for long before I went on, and was very much involved in. He was one of the founders of the National Trust, so historic preservation was a part of this whole cultivated cultural scene that was led by people like that, and they all knew each other there, or seemed to. Does this give you any sense of the texture? And I really want to emphasize that the ‘70s were a transition in Washington culturally, politically, and certainly from Dumbarton Oaks’ standpoint.

INT: So people were leaving Washington, or it was just a different generation?

WHA: Just a different [generation]. The atmosphere changes, the power center seemed to shift. Washington always changes. That’s another whole big subject, we won’t go there.

INT: Oh, well, I wonder – probably should have gotten to this a little bit earlier: just for our institutional history, you were a member I think both of the senior fellows committee for garden studies and for the advisory board, and I wonder if you might talk a little about the differences and maybe even the relationship between the two.

WHA: In my earlier comments I overlapped, I really wasn’t making much of a chain. The garden program really was not too active as I remember. It was pretty much Betty’s. She was running it that way; the conferences were her contribution. Speaking of the conferences, I mentioned – she was a very important senior fellow, a scholar – the archaeology/classicist Wilhelmina Jashemski, and she was the leading scholar on the gardens at Pompeii, of all things. She certainly is an international figure, recognized in her field. In fact Mary Beard, who’s at Cambridge – who has a blog by the way.

INT: Yes, she does. I haven’t met her, but she’s come to our Cambridge a couple times.

WHA: Well, I’ve been in touch with her because I’m working on a book, which I managed to get a couple suggestions on, some ideas. She’s been very generous and very funny. Her blog is called “A Don’s Life;” she’s a don, and she’s a brilliant classicist and just gave the lectures at California – what are they called, the famous lectures, out there at Berkeley?

INT: Sather?

WHA: And those lectures are now online. You can hear her; it’s really quite wonderful, there are three of them, they’re marvelous, you can put them on your iPod. But Mary Beard, within the last few – I glance at her blog, and a lot of the time it’s things I have no interest in, and she writes on a lot of things, not about the classics or anything else, but another thing. She’ll really turn up some very interesting – in fact, I cite her in a footnote from her blog, which I thought she will enjoy. Her motto is "bloggo ergo sum". Anyway –

INT: She was never at –?

WHA: Oh no, but she did mention – I think Wilhelmina died or something came up – and she mentioned something in her blog because she knew everyone – and I was so delighted she did. I sent her an email, we’ve just been in touch basically by email.

INT: So she really was a figure from an international –

WHA: You mean Wilhemina? Yes, in fact, I helped her get this published; she had real trouble getting it published, you can imagine, and I’m sure it’s wildly expensive now. But she had a technique; she was particularly interested in biological archaeology, and there was somebody at the Smithsonian that worked with her in terms of identifying plant material, spores, and seeds and all that, and this was really a pioneer work that goes beyond – not a part of Dumbarton Oaks, but nevertheless to me her connection with Dumbarton Oaks was extremely important.

INT: What was your fondest memory or the most exciting project that you were a part of in terms of your time?

WHA: Oh, I don’t know about that. I think the music programs were great, which had nothing to do with anything else other than just the pleasure of it. The quality of the music program was so high.

INT: Was this the Friends of Music program?

WHA: It wasn’t called Friends of Music then, it was Mrs. Bliss’s musicale.

INT: We were told that there was a dress code for these, that if a fellow were to come underdressed –

WHA: Oh yes, absolutely. Oh, there’s no dress code now. But there surely must be at the concert? No. Well, it was on my invitation in those days and everybody knew everybody else, and Virginia Bacon would be sitting on the front row and she would be asleep in the first five minutes after whatever they were playing, snoring.

INT: That still happens!

INT: But a lot of the Blisses’ personal staff stayed on.

WHA: Were still around. I don’t know that the butler was, but he might have been. Wait a minute: somebody used to bring us sherry at the end of board meetings.

INT: We spoke with Tony and Silvia.

WHA: And the gardener, the head gardener was there.

INT: Don Smith.

WHA: Is he still extant?

INT: Yes.

WHA: So you’ve talked to him.

INT: Well, he’s up in Maine, and they’re going to go up and speak with him.

WHA: I think that’s extremely important. I would put him high, put him above Giles – no, not for the record!

INT: We spoke with his son, who of course grew up on the grounds in the gardener’s cottage, and that was very helpful.

WHA: Yes, and that would be another point of view, another level, of course.

INT: And he was interviewed, I think in ninety-three, it must have been, about the time he retired, just because of course he was such a figure that someone wanted to get his thoughts together, but we would like to talk to him. We haven’t heard though that he was Bliss staff.

WHA: Who, Don? He was not? I thought he was on the staff, but I don’t know that. You know, again, could be just loosely referred to.

INT: We’ve heard of an Antonio who was there, who was I guess Mr. Thacher’s butler. I don’t know that he ever worked for the Blisses, though.

WHA: No. And I think that’s probably the one I would have seen.

INT: Alfredo.

INT: Oh, yes, I’m sorry, Alfredo. And Mrs. Aston, who was there in the library. She was rumored to be Bliss staff originally.

WHA: No. She was only very unhappy. But unhappiness was not unusual at Dumbarton Oaks.

INT: We’ve heard she was a very stiff British enforcer of the dress code.

WHA: Oh yes, she was. But she would somehow unburden herself to me, for reasons I had no idea. Yes, of course. But I knew her; she was probably a neighbor, and I don’t really know – she was in a funny way sort of misplaced there; she wasn’t a scholar, and I wasn’t sure what her role really was.

INT: Our understanding is that she was in charge of the Princeton Index in the library.

WHA: The Index? Yes, it was something like that probably. And there was always particularly friction –

INT: In the library?

WHA: In the library.

INT: We’ve heard it was sort of a tumultuous time there, and that the staff dwindled down in the library to the point that –

WHA: Oh yes, there was just maybe one person, and there was curatorial work to be done in the rare book collection and prints.

INT: There was a rare book collection at that time? Because we’ve heard conflicting things really about the formality of that.

WHA: Well, is it not there, the rare book room?

INT: Oh yes, now of course, but we’ve heard in those days – we talked to Henry and Eunice Maguire, Byzantine fellows at the time, and they would talk about pulling – this was a little bit later, when Irene Vaslef came to the library, when she was head librarian – but they talked a lot about the course of the library with the main house; they’ve talked about pulling these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century books off the shelf and taking them I think either to Irene or to Seka Allen, who was also in the library, and that was the beginning of the rare books collection as we understood it, at least for Byzantine.

WHA: Oh, that’s in the Byzantine.

INT: It must have been different for garden.

WHA: Oh yes, totally different. We never went there.

INT: How was the interaction between the programs?

WHA: Oh, absolutely none. Absolutely none. We never even knew where they were. You were talking about the sculpture being put in the garden or something – the thing that really stirred Georgetown up when I was involved there was the plan to build library facilities under the lawn, did you know about this?

INT: No.

WHA: Well this was a whole big –

INT: The North Vista? Yes.

WHA: Yes, and it was going to go – it meant removing one of the trees that had been there even going back before the Blisses, and it was going to be buried under that – what direction are we? North?

INT: Mm-hmm.

WHA: North. The North Vista. And people began to realize how much havoc was going to be wrought, digging this all up and supposedly putting it back. Hugh Jacobson, an architect and an old friend of mine in Princeton, was the architect for it. And I’m sure his plans – you want to talk to Hugh, because he ran into a real buzz saw over this, and he was a good friend of mine but I had grave reservations about the whole thing myself. I didn’t feel it was going to go anywhere, so I wasn’t carrying posters and picketing the place, but the feeling ran very, very high and it really had to do with the integrity of the grounds, just as simple as that. There would have been some irreparable changes if it had gone through.

INT: Were there any other major – you must have heard about the major projects going on at Dumbarton Oaks on the advisory board. Do you recall any other major projects or controversies or just discussions?

WHA: Oh, I can’t think of anything. That one, of course, the extension, it had moved beyond the rumor stage, and the rumors were already pretty horrific around Georgetown, gossip and so on, as to what they were going to do. There were no published plans at the early stage, and I don’t know if there ever were. And I think Giles – I think this comes under his – and it had to do with building facilities really for the Byzantinists, because the garden library wasn’t growing all that fast. I don’t even know now what the size of it is.

INT: I don’t know now. I know that – we looked a little bit into the library in the early ‘70s in our research and it was something like two thousand volumes added in a year for the Byzantine collection and maybe three hundred for the garden.

WHA: Three hundred, yeah. Well, it also has to do with the level of scholarship and so on.

INT: As long as we’re talking about the neighborhood, just very briefly, it’s interesting because we’ve talked about, of course, the great ties between Washington social scene and Dumbarton Oaks at the time. But also the controversy really, and hopefully you can speak to this since you were living on P Street, between the immediate neighborhood and Dumbarton Oaks. We’ve heard things before, particularly about Elizabeth Taylor when she was living in the house on S street.

WHA: On S street?

INT: Senator Warner’s house.

WHA: Oh, John Warner’s house. But that didn’t last very long, though. What was more dramatic was when Johnson appointed the neighbor to the Supreme Court – who am I talking about?, the lawyer in Washington. They lived right on R, just on the next block across the street from Dumbarton Oaks. Oh, famous lawyer, and he had to resign from the Supreme Court but there was some –

INT: Oh, he resigned – this isn’t Bork, is it?

WHA: Oh no no, who never made it to the court. No, this is a famous lawyer. And the press was all up there because – and I remember going up to Dumbarton Oaks for something and the press was all around his house and a streaker came down our street because the press was all there. This was the 1970s.

INT: Oh yes, we’ve heard very many –

WHA: And Elizabeth Taylor, they were really basically I think out in Middleburg.

INT: Oh, really. I know she didn’t like Dumbarton Oaks, you know, the gardeners being about and noisy in the morning.

WHA: Oh, that part I know nothing about; never heard anything about it. I can imagine.

INT: But were the neighbors sort of cantankerous with the center being so close?

WHA: I’ve never really heard anything. You know, being in Georgetown you usually heard those things. No, I think – Dumbarton Oaks kept up – obviously, because of the background of the place, they were very sensitive to its good neighbors’ relationships. Giles can speak to that much better because he would get the letters and the telephone calls or whatever. It’s too bad you didn’t get to speak to Tom Bayard. He was very young, younger than I, and he was very, very like Bill Tyler; he was very, very protective of the Dumbarton Oaks mystique, or the Bliss mystique if you want to call it that, and I remember the first time I was up to see him, because we had mutual friends at Princeton, he said, do you want to see my office. I said, yes, where is it? He said, it’s in Mildred Bliss’s bedroom. Is that still used as an office?

INT: It is. It’s no longer – I’m not entirely sure if Financial is up there –

WHA: Is Financial in the office now? In the bedroom? They haven’t changed anything. This was very much looking like her bedroom.

INT: Really? Did you get the sense that it really was a house?

WHA: Oh yes, that part was. I was very interested in that part of it and how the Blisses expanded it, and all that’s well-known, but I remember Tom taking me around, showing me all the expansion, the drawing room; they really did the whole – talk about a makeover. Big-time. When you see the original pictures of Dumbarton Oaks, that whole facade I think is new, on the south. I’m sure that’s true. You can, if you know the original plans, figure out what they did, but all the grandeur really was brought in by the Bliss hallway and the staircase and all that.

INT: It’s still very lovely.

WHA: It’s beautiful, isn’t it. What do those rooms get used for, the drawing room, anything much?

INT: There’s the director of studies’ office.

WHA: But the director’s office is in that section, but I always thought that was a former utility room or something.

INT: I’m honestly not certain what some of those places used to do. I know when they renovated and they redid the museum and everything some of that must have changed. Because of course the building of the whole library changed everything.

WHA: It’s amazing how dark it is. We’re going to have to light a candle. Do you need a light?

INT: Oh, we’re fine. I just want to make sure I haven’t left anything out. You’ve done quite a good job of answering our questions without our asking them. I wonder if – we’ve asked a little about the beginning of garden studies, but has Dumbarton Oaks played an important role in the development and progression of it?

WHA: I think that’s a very important question. Through its international program, through its fellows it certainly played a – in terms of giving scholars – a base. I never thought the collection was adequate as a real scholarly – when people would say to me, somebody would say, I’m going to apply to Dumbarton Oaks for a junior fellowship, I would say, have you looked at the collection first? Do you know whether it serves your purpose, or what other collections there are in greater Washington, if you look at the larger scene? But in terms of garden history, there was not a lot of energy behind building a larger collection. Excuse me just a moment. It’s such an important question. I never thought that they pushed to really establish a base at Harvard. Betty went up there and taught and she was very unhappy, and I think she left after a year, was that right?

INT: I’m not really sure of the exact timing, but I’ve heard that.

WHA: After she had retired, or left Dumbarton Oaks. It should have been something they were taking a major leadership role, either at Harvard or someplace else, and as far as I know they played no role in the development, say, that John Dixon Hunt has done at the University of Pennsylvania. That’s just larger because of his energy, but he’s singular in the sense that there’s not any others I can think of. Unlike the scene in England, where garden history has a much larger network and resources. Also garden history is built into the whole culture of Great Britain; it’s part of their personality, and they see that. Gardening not only at every level, even at the academic; when you think of the great physical artifacts of gardens, the great Royal Gardens are in England, some of them, and it goes back three hundred years. So you can understand why – and we don’t have anything like that, and there really isn’t, in my opinion, an indigenous American garden style. Not that this had anything to do with Dumbarton Oaks but I’m just saying that we’re no different from Byzantine studies. True?

INT: Absolutely.

WHA: But I never felt that Dumbarton Oaks took the leadership that it might have, professional leadership in terms of helping to build up any comparable academic programs. That may not be a factor.

INT: Do they exist now, or is this still a field that’s developing?

WHA: I don’t know; I’m out of touch with a lot of what’s going on now. But just in looking over journals and things – I’ve given my own garden history library away, I don’t have it here now; it was in another building here. It was a working library solely. I gave it to the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, because my family comes from there. I felt again there were no real resources for anyone interested in the subject in that part of the world. And there aren’t. But I’m just saying Dumbarton Oaks never really saw its role, and there may be a lot of reasons, a lot of political reasons, academic reasons in terms of Harvard. But it seems to me they could have done more. The garden conferences, are they still going on?

INT: Yes.

WHA: I used to get the programs regularly, but I didn’t attend them. I thought the subject matter had gotten somewhat off the track; just looking at it over-all, there wasn’t enough interest for me, but that’s just a personal point of view. The real quality of it, I don’t know.

INT: Well, I think you’ve answered most of our questions. I wonder, unless there’s anything that we’ve left out that you can think of –

WHA: No, I think your last question is one I haven’t said enough, but I’ve just put in my two cents.

INT: I wonder if in closing if you might talk a little bit about what you see, especially from your position as a person in Georgetown in the earlier days of Dumbarton Oaks, what the Bliss and the Farrand legacies are for Dumbarton Oaks.

WHA: Well, the institution itself is obviously their great legacy and I don’t know what one could say beyond that. I didn’t know either the Blisses or Beatrix Farrand – at least her work is a physical document that is studied periodically, and worried over in terms of its conservation and so on, and that’s alive in that sense, and there’s a great deal of academic interest and so on quite apart from the public interest. I don’t know if the Blisses are fading. I doubt if anybody other than – I think it’s so important institutionally to do what you’re doing, for a lot of reasons, though I don’t know who or how it will be made available.

INT: It will be placed in the Archives.

WHA: In the Archives? But I’ve been on a number of boards and I’ve always felt that when board-members come on, they usually have so little historical perception of an institution, just because of the nature – by the time they go off the board it’s too late, and with rotating boards and so on. So I think that having this institutional history is very important; how it’s disseminated or how it can be boiled down and useful, I have no idea. It seems to me there ought to be something that could go into a kind of handbook for directors and staff and any board functionaries – seems to me that would be important. Doesn’t have to be published but it certainly would be something that would be – because otherwise the Blisses are fading. I doubt the staff has any idea now. Is that true?

INT: For the most part. Dumbarton Oaks did found an Archives I guess in the eighties or around that time. So there has been some formal attempt to collect what they call “Blissiana.”

WHA: Blissiana?

INT: Yes. I’ve just noticed, and we work a lot with the Archives, that directors of study will come down for each of the programs quite a bit and take folders. The most major players, I think. There’s an attempt to look back, but whether everyone else at Dumbarton Oaks does, I don’t know.

WHA: No, of course not. Beatrix Farrand is a major figure unto herself, obviously, and her collection should have been there. But nothing can be done about that. Maybe copies of all of her papers should be part of – it seems to me that would be just the normal, natural thing.

INT: Thank you so much, you’ve been very helpful.

Cloud Terrace takes the form of a hand-sculpted wire mesh cloud suspended over the Arbor Terrace and embellished with 10,000 Swarovski elements water-drop crystals mirrored in a reflecting pool.

The Arbor Terrace is one of the most modified spaces in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens. Originally designed by Beatrix Farrand in the early 1930s as a simple rectangular herb garden, bordered on the west by a wisteria-covered arbor and on the east and north by a hedge of Kieffer pears, it was refashioned by Farrand’s former associate Ruth Havey in the 1950s as a pot garden centered on a Rococo-style parterre with low, Doria stone parapet walls. The space can be hot and bright; Cao | Perrot’s installation is a response to these conditions, extending the shade of the arbor across the terrace and animating the space inside the parterre with an oval pool surrounded by bluestone pebbles.

Cao | Perrot studio have a stunning list of projects to their credit, including temporary site-specific installations at the American Academy in Rome, the Potager du Roi, Versailles, the Tuileries, Paris, the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, and many of the world’s leading garden festivals. Cao | Perrot studio are also responsible for the winning design of the 600-acre Guangming New Town Central Park in Shenzhen, China, a collaboration with Lee + Mundwiler Architects, which received an AIA 2009 National Honor Award for Urban Design. For more information on the artists, please visit www.caoperrotstudio.com.

The installation was organized by John Beardsley, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and Gail Griffin, Director of Gardens, with the particular assistance of staff members Jane Padelford and Walter Howell. It is the third in a series of contemporary art installations at Dumbarton Oaks, following projects by Charles Simonds in 2009 and Patrick Dougherty in 2010. The series is intended to provide fresh interpretations and experiences of the Gardens and art collections of Dumbarton Oaks. The project was built with the assistance of twenty-six volunteers and supported by Swarovski Elements, who provided the crystals used for the installation.

The installation has been extended through May 19, 2013. If you wish to volunteer for the de-installation on May 20–24, please send an email to landscape@doaks.org.