Institutional History

Ten Years of Tyler Fellowships

Reflecting on a decade of fellowships supporting dissertations and professional development for early-career humanists

A Century in the Gardens

GLS Director Thaïsa Way reflects on our multifaceted centennial celebrations of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

The Garden and Landscape Studies Program (1992–2022)

Expanding ways of studying how landscape and culture shape one another

Photography and the Garden

Snapshots from a hundred years of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

Music at Dumbarton Oaks, Then and Now

2022 is the 75th anniversary of the music program at Dumbarton Oaks

Keeping Time with Nature

Telling the story and restoration of Dumbarton Oaks Park

The Formation of the Garden and Landscape Studies Program (1952–1991)

Transforming Mildred Bliss’s vision into an academic program

Nurturing the Gardens: The Dumbarton Oaks Greenhouse

Cultivating and caring for plants year-round

Dumbarton Oaks Gardens: winter and summer scenes, approximately 1920s–1940s

The combined footage illustrates Dumbarton Oaks when it was still a private residence, as well as when it became an institute of Harvard University in 1940.

Choreographing Moments of Repose in the Gardens

Preserving historic furniture designs, from sketches to 3D computer models

The Mirror Wisdom of Dumbarton Oaks

Reflections on the role of women in landscape architecture and the garden

Exhibiting the Gardens

Preparing for in-person centennial celebrations

Not Just a Pretty Place: Developing the Garden Tour Program

Correspondence in Garden Archives sheds light on the early days of garden tours

Sustaining the Gardens

Celebrating those who steward our gardens

Land and Labor: Dumbarton Oaks prior to 1920

A landscape history

Gardens as Anniversary

Celebrating the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future

The Dumbarton Oaks Gardens as Archive

Beginning a year of celebration

The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library: Ten Years of Translations

From dragons to monks, a medieval book for every reader

Singers and Lesser-Known Premieres at Dumbarton Oaks

Daniel Boomhower discusses the 1950 premieres of two compositions by Samuel Barber, and the links between Dumbarton Oaks and the New York Metropolitan Opera

Last Words

James N. Carder (September 2018)

Dumbarton Oaks Wartime Poster, 1945

James N. Carder (August 2018)

The United Nations Club at Dumbarton Oaks

James N. Carder (June 2018)

New Ephemera Exhibition: Italian Villa Gardens in America, 1900–1940

James N. Carder (May 2018)

Autumn Leaves and Mums

James N. Carder (November 2017)

Unexpected Finds

James N. Carder (October 2017)

Dumbarton Oaks – First Postcards, 1945

James N. Carder (September 2017)

Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going? (Part 2)

Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going? (Part 1)

“Good as Gold”: Kurt Weitzmann at Dumbarton Oaks

For All to See: The Interim Years of the Pre-Columbian Collection

The Friends of Music

Established in 1946 as the Friends of Music, the concert program presents some of the most celebrated and promising musicians to Georgetown in the splendor of the Blisses’ former estate.

Giles Constable, “Dumbarton Oaks and the Future of Byzantine Studies”

Paul Atkins Underwood: Building Knowledge

Then and Now: Accommodating the Fellows

Putting the Art in Artifact: The Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art

“Report of the Committee on the Future of the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1970”

Sowing the First Seeds: The Origin of the Garden Library Rare Book Collection

The First Dumbarton Oaks Landscape Architecture Colloquium

Taxing Issues: Getting Tax Exemption for Dumbarton Oaks

Sirarpie Der Nersessian, First Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology

Milton V. Anastos, “Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Studies, a Personal Account”

Pool Party! Academics Go Aquatic

Preparing for the Transfer to Harvard

The Bliss Collection and the “Exotic Cultural Other”

The Dish on Dining: Bonding over Meals at the Fellows Building

Archibald McLeish on Dumbarton Oaks, 1941

The First Members of the Administrative Committee

The Birthing Figure in the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art

Kurt Weitzmann on the Beginning of Dumbarton Oaks

Albert Mathias Friend Jr. and a “Premier Byzantine Studies Center”

Then and Now: Libraries at Dumbarton Oaks

Commissioning and Performing Contemporary Compositions

Dumbarton Oaks’ mission to foster original research and publication in humanistic studies has found a parallel expression in the Friends of Music commissions and performances of contemporary music.

Beatrix Jones Farrand: Dumbarton Oaks Landscape Gardener

The Collection Goes Underground

Pre-Columbian Studies: From Collection to Research Program

A Poem for Dumbarton Oaks during Wartime

Hans Peter L’Orange Remembers His Year at Dumbarton Oaks, 1950

Librarian, Bookbinder, Poet, Patriot: Ethel Burnet Clark

Then and Now: Midday Meals at Dumbarton Oaks

In Memoriam: Gifts to the Dumbarton Oaks Collection

Wilhelm Koehler, “The Dumbarton Oaks Program and the Principle of Collaborative Research”

The Underworld Courier and the Blisses in California

The 1948 Symposium on the Church of the Holy Apostles

The Pre-Columbian Gallery at Dumbarton Oaks

Music at Dumbarton Oaks: The Performers

Many famous or soon-to-be famous musicians performed at Dumbarton Oaks over the years, and several have reminisced fondly about their concertizing there, in both the residential and institutional periods.

Kurt Weitzmann, “Byzantine Art and Scholarship in America”

Changes at Dumbarton Oaks under Giles Constable

American Defense: The Harvard Group and Dumbarton Oaks

Then and Now: Changes to the Ellipse and Kitchen Gardens

Final Touches: The Byzantine Collection and Joseph Brummer, 1940

Stravinsky, Copland, Tower, and Shaw

The Blisses ensured that music was given proper space in their homes, a commitment that was enhanced through their sponsorship of musicians and the commissioning of new works. Dumbarton Oaks continues this commitment through a concert series and commissioning new works from early-career musicians.

The First Garden Library Accession Number: “Maison rustique, or The Countrie Farme”

United They Stand: Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks

Collecting during the War Years

Then and Now: Staff Offices

Digger, Curator, Soldier, Spy: Samuel Kirkland Lothrop

A California Sojourn and the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art

The Musical Art Quartet and the Bliss Stradivarius Viola

Mildred Barnes Bliss was an enthusiastic patron of the Musical Art Quartet. She supported the string quartet from soon after its inception in 1926 until it disbanded in 1944. The quartet performed in the Music Room each year between 1941 and 1944, and it was largely due to the success of these performances that Dumbarton Oaks decided to inaugurate a Friends of Music concert series in 1946.

Paraphenomenal Dumbarton Oaks

Ghosts on the Property

The Garden and Landscape Studies Program: An Evolving Development

John C. Baker, Taking Care of Business

The Victory Garden

The First Fellow: Lester Clarence Houck

Mildred Bliss: In Memoriam Henri Focillon, 1943

The Garden Library Rare Book Collection and the Creation of a Studies Program

Life in the Fellows Building

75 Years/75 Objects: Celebrating 75 Years of the Dumbarton Oaks Museum

Wilhelm Koehler and the Research Archives

The National Defense Research Committee

Wilhelm Koehler: First Senior Fellow in Charge of Research

Acquiring the Miniature Mosaic Icon of the Forty Martyrs

Taking the Plunge: The Dumbarton Oaks Swimming Pool

Jan Ziolkowski Remembers Ned Keenan

Ernst Kitzinger, “The Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies”

Eleanor Roosevelt at Dumbarton Oaks

The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, 1944

Dumbarton Oaks: The Backstory

Dumbarton Oaks Newsletters

James N. Carder (June 2017)

New Acquisition of Photographs of Gardeners

James N. Carder (April 2017)

Artful Mapping of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

James N. Carder (January 2017)

The Year Santa Visited DO

James N. Carder (December 2016)

The Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Vivid Black and White

James N. Carder (October 2016)

Dante in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

The History and Design of the Arbor Terrace

75 Years Ago This Month: The Change from Domicile to Institution

James N. Carder (May 2016)

Who Was Who at Dumbarton Oaks, 1940–2015

75 Years Ago this Month: Mildred Bliss and the Maintenance of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

James N. Carder (April 2016)

75 Years Ago this Month: The First Junior Fellows Arrive

James N. Carder (February 2016)

75 Years Ago this Month: The New Dumbarton Oaks Bookplate

James N. Carder (January 2016)

75 Years Ago this Month: The First Month of Official Business

James N. Carder (December 2015)

Seventy-Five Years Ago this Month: The Inauguration of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

James N. Carder (November 2015)

75 Years Ago this Month: An Administrative Structure for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

James N. Carder (October 2015)

Dumbarton Oaks Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary

James N. Carder (September 2015)

Seventy-Five Years in the Garden Library

Still Life with Vase of Flowers

The Swimming Pool

James N. Carder (August 2015)

Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s Visit to Dumbarton Oaks

James N. Carder (June 2015)

Holy Apostles Symposium Redux

James N. Carder (April 2015)

Music Room Leitmotifs at the New Fellowship House

James N. Carder (March 2015)

The Edgar Wind Lectures at Dumbarton Oaks, January 1940

James N. Carder (January 2015)

Happy Anniversary

James N. Carder (November 2014)

Dumbarton Oaks Conversations – 70th Anniversary

James N. Carder (September 2014)

The Oral History 100

James N. Carder (August 2014)

A Serendipitous Cache of Vintage Photographs

James N. Carder (July 2014)

The Analog Photography Era (1944–2004)

James N. Carder (May 2014)

Byzantine Sacred Music

James N. Carder (March 2014)

The Bliss-Tyler Correspondence

Winterreise and the Journey of Wintertime German Lieder at Dumbarton Oaks

James N. Carder (February 2014)

Dressing Up at Dumbarton Oaks – Happy Halloween!

James N. Carder (October 2013)

A Royal Visit to Dumbarton Oaks

James N. Carder (September 2013)

Sirarpie Der Nersessian Papers and Photographs

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Dumbarton Oaks Archives, Washington, D.C.

Valerie Stains

Oral History Interview with Valerie Stains, undertaken by James W. Curtin and Joshua Wilson in the Dumbarton Oaks Study on July 9, 2013. At Dumbarton Oaks, Valerie Stains is the Artistic Director of the Friends of Music and Dumbarton Oaks Music Advisor and Coordinator (since 1989).

Ercüment Atabay

Oral History Interview with Ercüment Atabay, undertaken by Günder Varinlioğlu on May 19, 2011, at Mr. Atabay’s apartment in Istanbul. Mr. Atabay was associated with people and projects in Istanbul that were sponsored by Dumbarton Oaks. The interview was conducted in Turkish, transcribed, and translated into English. English conventions are used in the translation. For example, the English honorifics “Mr.” and “Mrs.” that accompany the Turkish names are an approximation of the Turkish honorifics “Hanım” and “Bey.”

Irène J. Underwood

Oral History Interview with Irène J. Underwood (1913–2011), undertaken by Anna Bonnell-Freidin and Clem Wood, with Joe Mills as audio technician, on July 23, 2008, in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Mrs. Underwood was married to Paul Atkins Underwood (1902–1968). At Dumbarton Oaks, Paul Underwood was a Junior Fellow in Byzantine Studies (1943–1946), a resident Assistant Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology (1946–1951), Associate Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology (1951–1960), and Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology (1960–1968). Paul Underwood was the Field Director of the Byzantine Institute (1951–1961). Mrs. Underwood died in 2011.

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Institutional History