dumbarton
oaks
research library and collection
2013–2014
dumbarton
oaks
research library and collection
Annual Report
2013–2014
© 2015 Dumbarton Oaks
Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
issn 0197-9159
frontispiece: R Street Gate to the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
Cover photograph: From the exhibit Seldom Seen: A Selection of
Prints, Drawings, and Decorative Art from the Dumbarton Oaks
House Collection: Mandarin Square; Chinese, silk tapestry weave,
Ming Dynasty, 14th–17th century; HC.T.1923.04.(T). Mandarin
(“bureaucrat”) squares, also known as rank badges, are tapestrywoven or embroidered badges with colorful animal or bird insignia that indicate rank. his Ming Dynasty badge is a silk tapestry
weave representing two peacocks in stylized clouds, the insignia of
a civilian oicer, third rank.
www.doaks.org/publications/annual-reports
Contents
From the Director
Director’s Oice
7
11
Fellowships, Project Grants, and Research Stipends
Fellowship Reports
Byzantine Studies
29
59
Garden and Landscape Studies
Pre-Columbian Studies
Library
77
89
97
Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives
Museum
123
Gardens
137
Publications
Facilities
113
143
Friends of Music
Finance
19
153
159
163
Trustees for Harvard University, Executive Committee,
Honorary Ailiates, Senior Fellows, and Staf
167
From the Director
In the 2013–2014 fellowship year, Dumbarton Oaks, like an athlete in
training for the Olympics, prepared for the completion of construction projects. By far the biggest was the renovation and expansion of
the Fellowship House at 1700 Wisconsin Avenue.
In 2013, Oxford Dictionaries designated “selie” as the word of
the year. Since then, both the word and the action of capturing a
self-portrait by smartphone have been ineluctable. he pervasiveness
of the selie as a meme (another term whose stock has risen steeply
in recent years) should prompt us to consider diferences between
self-centeredness and self-knowing, as well as between narcissism
and altruism.
A hot word in 2014 was “disruption,” especially in discussions
of the economic unease sufered by companies not adapting switly
enough to new technologies and market changes. Let me be philologically disruptive by pointing out that disruption is a pleonasm: “ruption” by itself would signify bursting. Disruption would be “bursting
apart.” Nothing bursts together, unless we mean “together” in the
sense of simultaneity—and that leads to corruption.
To put aside speculation about etymology and semantics, a happy
reality is that Dumbarton Oaks was founded as a reaction and as an
antidote to disruption. In fact, it was intended to achieve continuity.
In the process, it was conceived as a paradisiacal haven where past cultures and values would be preserved as the world prepared to descend
into all the horriic novelties of World War II in the twentieth century.
he donors wanted Dumbarton Oaks to serve as a home of the
humanities, and as such it has functioned in equal measures for
conservation and innovation. To achieve that delicate equipoise, we
must constantly reexamine ourselves so that we can resolve what in
Hallway in the Main House at Dumbarton Oaks.
7
our activities and aspirations we should resolve to abandon, what to
adapt, and what to reairm. For an institution, such self-examination
presupposes the determination of institutional mission.
he concept and name of the mission statement have taken root
only over the past half century, but missions themselves are as old as
humankind. In my mind’s eye, I can picture early hominids sitting
around the ire, scratching out org charts in ashes on the loor or walls
of their cave and setting as objectives hunting and gathering. For
many organizations in the arts and humanities, the correlatives today
would be tracking down big donors and collecting small amounts in
annual dues and admissions.
At Dumbarton Oaks, we pursue a quadripartite mission, which
obliges us to bear in mind constantly four categories of objects. First,
we exist to maintain what we were entrusted to preserve by Robert
and Mildred Bliss. hat points to books, artworks, documents, buildings, gardens, funds, and, less tangibly but no less signiicantly, a
spirit and values.
Second, and building upon the last remark, all of those resources
were bequeathed with the goal of serving the world of learning, in
a focused way within Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and Garden and
Landscape Studies in particular, and in a more inclusive way within
the humanities writ more largely. he bequest ofered the git of
Dumbarton Oaks, with its grounds, buildings, library, art collections, and other contents, and stated the Blisses’ expectation and
desire that it “be used for study and research in the Humanities
and Fine Arts, with especial emphasis upon Byzantine art and the
history and culture of the Eastern Empire in all its aspects.” hey
envisioned “Dumbarton Oaks as a vital center of distinguished and
productive scholarship, a useful ornament to Harvard University,
and a continuing haven for seekers ater Truth.” he vitality presupposed building and rebuilding to accord with changes and developments across time: the Blisses also wrote of their expectation that the
administration of the institution would maintain a commitment “to
award scholarships in the above ield of learning to deserving and
qualiied scholars and also to add to the library and to the collection and to provide for the publication of papers, monographs, and
books in connection with the collections and research work done at
Dumbarton Oaks or elsewhere.”
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dumbarton oaks
hird, the bequest of Dumbarton Oaks was made to Harvard
University. To quote from the bequest once again, Dumbarton Oaks
was designed to be “maintained by Harvard University as a place of
residence for such instructors, scholars and students, whether graduate or undergraduate, and for such artists or other persons connected with the study of the Fine Arts and the Humanities and the
difusion of knowledge.” At present, our institution claims as formal
logo an old-fashioned and even stodgy blazon of two shields, one
the Blisses’ family crest and the other the Harvard seal, surrounded
by the motto “Trustees for Harvard University.” One of my tasks as
director is to igure out how to tie together Dumbarton Oaks and
Harvard University to the greatest mutual advantage. Along the axis
from Cambridge to Washington, we have stays by faculty members,
class visits, awards to facilitate student attendance at symposia and
lectures, and summer internships.
Finally, we are supposed to serve the public through the museum,
gardens, and Friends of Music. his purpose too goes back to the
desires of the donors, who wanted their collection of art and gardens
to be accessible to the public, and who established an annual series
of concerts.
From my admittedly biased perspective, we are doing an amazingly good job in all four of the endeavors with which we have
been tasked. Despite retaining our partly involuntary status as
Georgetown’s best-kept secret, we have become better known than
in decades, and we serve a larger and more diverse body than ever
before. hat brings advantages to the world—and it beneits us too.
Our long, methodical, and enthusiastic project to shit housing
for fellows from 30th Street to 1700 Wisconsin Avenue will create
a residential component to round out the research portion of the
campus that was completed in 2007–2008. Although aiming to project ourselves outward through ventures as traditional as producing
and collecting paper-and-ink publications, and as innovative as digital libraries and online exhibitions, we remain very much a community in which face-to-face interactions among students of all ages and
hands-on use of scholarly materials are essential. In sum, Dumbarton
Oaks endeavors to fulill the most promising possibilities of the
twenty-irst century while continuing steadfastly to uphold the best of
the traditional humanities—and of humaneness.
from the dir ector
9
Director’s Oice
Executive Committee Meeting
he Executive Committee met at Dumbarton Oaks on April 24, 2014,
to review the institutional activities and projects that took place
over the past year. he committee toured the new Fellowship House
under renovation at 1700 Wisconsin Avenue, and visited the garden
art installation, he Pool of “Bamboo Counterpoint,” at Lover’s Lane
Pool. On the installation site, the committee met with the artist, Dr.
Hugh Livingston, and heard from Jan Ziolkowski and John Beardsley
on their plans for a new interdisciplinary Urban Landscape Studies
program, funded by a recently awarded Mellon Foundation grant of
$850,000, which will be disbursed over four years.
New Fellowship House and Programs
Renovations of the new Fellowship House, at 1700 Wisconsin Avenue,
progressed throughout 2013 and 2014, with a view to accommodate
fellows in the fall of 2014. he building achieved LEED Gold Standard
and allows for a modest, but strategic, expansion of existing programs
at Dumbarton Oaks.
Among the new programs is an Early-Career Musician Residency
for artists of exceptional promise. he program continues the tradition of musical excellence at Dumbarton Oaks, which began with
commissioned pieces by Robert and Mildred Bliss (including Igor
Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto) and has continued since
1946 with the annual Friends of Music concert series. he recipient
of the inaugural Early-Career Musician Residency is the composer
Pebble Garden in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
11
Fellowship House at 1700 Wisconsin Avenue.
Caroline Shaw. In 2013, Shaw became the youngest winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition “Partita for 8 Voices.”
he completion of the new Fellowship House, and the inauguration
of the music residency program, was celebrated with two concerts by
Roomful of Teeth, a vocal ensemble that counts Shaw as one of its
members and that won a Grammy for its recording of “Partita for 8
Voices.” Shaw was in residence at Dumbarton Oaks in the fall of 2014.
Institutional Visits and Events
On March 7, 2014, the trustees for the Harvard Art Museums, led by
director homas W. Lentz, toured the Dumbarton Oaks Museum and
the Rare Book Library.
On March 23, 2014, the trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, led by
director and chief executive oicer James Cuno, visited Dumbarton
Oaks to attend a presentation by Jan Ziolkowski on the institution’s
history and mission and to tour the galleries with museum director
Gudrun Buehl and her curatorial staf. In addition to Cuno (who was
the former director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University),
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the board of trustees also includes Neil L. Rudenstine, the president of
Harvard University from 1991 to 2001.
On May 2, 2014, Dumbarton Oaks hosted the reception for the
42nd Annual Conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America
(ARLIS/NA), which took place on May 1–5, 2014, in Washington, D.C.
During the reception, three hundred conference guests were able
to explore the institution, including the gardens, library, archives,
and museum.
Director’s Learned Societies Meetings
On June 11–15, 2014, Jan Ziolkowski chaired the meeting of the
International Jury for the START and Wittgenstein Awards in Vienna,
Austria. he meeting was dedicated to interviews with the short-listed
START candidates, to the selection of the Wittgenstein Award recipient, and to discussions with representatives of the Austrian Science
Fund (FWF), which supports Austrian science and research at the
international level.
On May 6–9, 2014, he attended the 50th Anniversary Celebration
of Medieval Latin in Erlangen in Munich, Germany, where he gave
a plenary lecture on “he Brothers Grimm and the Creation of
Medieval Latin in the Nineteenth Century.”
Director’s Visiting Scholars
he director occasionally invites distinguished scholars to come to
Dumbarton Oaks to conduct their own research and to contribute to
the intellectual life of the institution, through their presence in the
academic community and through a seminar or informal talk. Peter
Brown, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus,
at Princeton University, was a visiting scholar at Dumbarton Oaks
from November 1–8, 2013. Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad
Professor of Christian Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, visited
in March 2014. Professors Brown and Hollywood gave informal talks
to the fellows on their current research topics: Brown is examining
attitudes toward wealth and poverty in the later Roman Empire; and
Hollywood is exploring the place of the mystical—oten redescribed
as enthusiasm—within modern philosophy, theology, and poetry.
dir ector’s office
13
Harvard University Class Visits
Undergraduate
On April 18, 2014, Professor Dimiter Angelov visited Dumbarton
Oaks with students from his course on Byzantine Civilization. he
students—Alexandra Tartaglia, Brett Davis, Daniel Lupatkin, and
Diptarka Hait—met with Gudrun Buehl and Jonathan Shea, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in Byzantine history. hey researched and
presented on objects from the Dumbarton Oaks Collections, including the marble rounder with the emperor, the pendant reliquary of
Saint Demetrios, an ivory pyxis, and six seals of Romanos Lekapenos
and Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos.
Graduate
On February 27 and 28, 2014, Dumbarton Oaks hosted ive PhD
candidates from the History Department at Harvard University.
Claire Adams, Nathanael Aschenbrenner, Shane Bobrycki, Patrick
Meehan, and Jake Ransohof presented their research on medieval
and Byzantine topics, toured the library, visited the collections,
and engaged with the curators, research librarians, and fellows at
Dumbarton Oaks. hey also attended, with Margaret Mullett, the
Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
Interdisciplinary Symposium
The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
his two-day symposium, held on October 4–5, 2013, brought together
an international body of scholars working on eighteenth-century
botany against the background of imperial expansion. Perspectives
from eighteenth-century history, art history, history of science, and
the history of the book converged in an interdisciplinary conversation
that broadened the European and Atlantic map to include developments in South Africa, China, Japan, and the Middle East. he symposium was organized by executive director Yota Batsaki and special
projects librarian Sarah Burke Cahalan.
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dumbarton oaks
Speakers at the interdisciplinary symposium “The Botany of Empire in
the Long Eighteenth Century” on October 4–5, 2013.
he eighteenth century saw widespread exploration, a tremendous increase in the traic of botanical specimens, and the signiicant
taxonomic innovations of Linnaeus. Papers investigated the global
trajectories of tea, ginseng, and opium, and they followed the careers
of diferent botanical explorers who sometimes incarnated and sometimes challenged the notion of the eighteenth-century naturalist as an
agent of empire. State-run botanical investigations embarking from
European ports were contrasted with the multiethnic and multilingual contexts of botany in the Ottoman and Qing empires. Case studies included a Mongolian text of materia medica; an illustration of
native plants in William Bartram’s garden against the background of
post-revolutionary Philadelphia; and a map of the Cape locating new
plant and animal discoveries in their speciic ecosystems. he main
themes of discussion centered on the role of formal and informal
networks in plant discovery and transfer; the impact of large-scale
economic botany; and the visual strategies that underpinned the scientiic truth claims of botanical illustration.
he symposium coincided with the itieth anniversary of the
Rare Book Reading Room. In the summer of 2013, two Harvard
dir ector’s office
15
A lowering ginger plant, from Georg Dionysius Ehret, Plantae et
papiliones rariores (1748–1759).
interns, Deirdre Moore and Jasmine Casart, worked under the guidance of Sarah Burke Cahalan to curate a physical and an online exhibit
of botanical publications from the Dumbarton Oaks Collections,
which accompanied the symposium.
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dumbarton oaks
he Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
Organized by Yota Batsaki and Sarah Burke Cahalan
October 4–5, 2013
Daniela Bleichmar, University of Southern California, “Botanical
Conquistadors: Plants and Empire in the Hispanic Enlightenment”
Colin McEwan, Dumbarton Oaks, “Humboldt’s Gits and a
Bountiful Harvest from the Tropical Lowlands of Western
South America”
Romita Ray, Syracuse University, “Ornamental Exotica:
Transplanting the Aesthetics of Tea Consumption”
Shigehisa Kuriyama, Harvard University, “he Geography of
Ginseng and the Strange Alchemy of Needs”
Bianca Maria Rinaldi, University of Camerino, “Metaphors of
Empire: Chinese Gardens in Western Travelers’ Accounts”
Deniz Çalış-Kural, Istanbul Bilgi University, “Bricolage of
Flowers and Gardens: Agents of Early Modernization in
Ottoman Istanbul”
Anatole Tchikine, Dumbarton Oaks, “Echoes of Empire: Redeining
the Botanical Garden in Eighteenth-Century Tuscany”
Rachel Korolof, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “‘In
Imperio Rutheno’: Johann Amman’s Stirpium Rariorum . . . (1739)
and the Foundation of Russia’s Botanical Empire”
Sahar Bazzaz, College of the Holy Cross, “he Politics of Secular
Pilgrimage: Paul-Émile Botta’s Red Sea Expedition 1836–39”
Sarah Easterby-Smith, University of St. Andrews, “On Diplomacy
and the Botanical Git: France and Mysore in 1788”
Carla Nappi, University of British Columbia, “Making ‘Mongolian’
Nature: Medicinal Plants and Qing Empire in the Long
Eighteenth Century”
Amy Meyers, Yale Center for British Art, “William Bartram’s
Drawing of a New Species of Arethusa (1796): Portrait of a Life”
Miranda Mollendorf, Harvard University, “Allegories of Alterity:
Flora’s Children as the Four Continents”
Ian Glenn, University of Cape Town, “François Le Vaillant:
Accidental Botanist?”
dir ector’s office
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Fellowships, Project Grants,
and Research Stipends
Dumbarton Oaks was pleased to receive 246 fellowship applications
in 2013–2014, an almost 20 percent increase from the record-breaking number of applications received in 2012–2013. hirty-ive fellowships were awarded: seventeen in Byzantine Studies, ten in Garden
and Landscape Studies, and eight in Pre-Columbian Studies. All fellowship applications were received and processed through an online
application management system. One visiting scholar in Byzantine
Studies, one visiting scholar in Garden and Landscape Studies, one
director’s visiting scholar, and one Harvard Exchange visiting scholar
contributed to the academic community by being in residence for a
portion of the academic year. Dumbarton Oaks also awarded nine
project grants, twenty-one postdoctoral research stipends, and ten
short-term predoctoral residencies.
Byzantine Studies
Fellows
Ivan Drpić, University of Washington, “Art and Epigram in
Byzantium, 1100–1450”
Dimitris Kastritsis, University of St. Andrews, “Byzantines,
Ottomans, and Others in the Last Century of Byzantium
(1354–1453)”
Ekaterina Nechaeva, American Academy in Rome, “Defection and
Freedom: Long-Term Cross-Border Movements of Individuals in
the Late Antique World”
Dumbarton Oaks Library.
19
Foteini Spingou, University of Oxford, “Anonymous Poems and
Epigrams from Marcianus gr. 524: Edition and Translation”
Tolga Uyar, Centre National de la Recherche Scientiique, “Art and
Society in the Land of Rūm: hirteenth-Century ‘Byzantine’
Paintings in Cappadocia”
Elena Velkova Velkovska, Università di Siena, “he Byzantine
Liturgical Gospel between Constantinople and Jerusalem”
Junior Fellows
Nathan Leidholm, University of Chicago, “Political Families in
Byzantium: he Social and Cultural Signiicance of the Genos as
Kin Group, ca. 900–1150”
Jordan Pickett, University of Pennsylvania, “Water ater Antiquity:
he Transformation of Roman Water Management in the Late
Antique Eastern Mediterranean”
AnnaLinden Weller, Rutgers University, “Imagining Pre-Modern
Imperialism: he Letters of Byzantine Imperial Agents Outside
the Metropole”
Summer Fellows
Maria Doerler, Duke University, “he Death of Strangers and the
Life of the Community in Eastern Christian hought”
Mircea Dulus, Central European University, “he Homilies of
Philagathos of Cerami: Byzantine Culture at the Court of King
Roger II and William I”
Meaghan McEvoy, University of Oxford, “he Politics of
Incompetence? he ‘Feeble’ heodosian Emperors and Why
hey Matter”
Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales,
Madrid, “Byzantium’s Reception of Michael Psellos’ De Omnifaria
Doctrina, as Shown by Its Manuscripts”
Marka Tomic Djuric, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA,
“Displaying Liturgical Poetry: he Church of Marko’s Monastery
near Skopje”
Warren Woodin, Queens College, City University of New York,
“Byzantium and the Kipchaks: Material and Military Contacts”
Nektarios Zarras, University of the Aegean, “Image and
Narration in Byzantium: New Testament Cycles in Palaiologan
Monumental Painting”
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dumbarton oaks
Academic-year fellows with the directors of study, 2013–2014.
Visiting Scholar
Anthony Cutler, he Pennsylvania State University,
February 3–28, 2014
Project Grants
Isabella Baldini, Università di Bologna, “Archaeological
Researches on Byzantine Kos”
Ann Christidou, Central European University, “Recording
Material Culture at the Shen Meri Church, Labovo: An
Unexplored Religious Center of Byzantine Albania”
Jodi Magness, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “he
Huqoq Excavation Project”
Tina Niemi, University of Missouri, Kansas City, “Human
Occupation and the Environment”
Andrew Smith II, he George Washington University, “Bir
Madhkur Project, Wadi Araba, Jordan”
Günder Varinlioğlu, Koç University, “Archaeological Survey of
Bogsak Island and Its Environs”
fellowships, project gr ants, and r esearch stipends
21
One-Month Research Stipends
Alan Cadwallader, Australian Catholic University, “Saint Michael
of Chonai: he Stories, heir Layers, and Historical Contexts”
Horváth Gyöngyvér, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design,
“Kurt Weitzmann’s Ideas on Visual Narratives, His Role as a
Research Organizer and His Legacy”
Rafah Jonejati, McGill University, “A Documentary Review of Early
Christian Mosaics of Syria: Can Birds Be Seen As Martyrs?”
Gierdre Mickunaite, Vilnius Academy of Arts, “Maniera Graeca
in Europe’s Catholic East: Function and Perception of Byzantine
Art in Lithuania”
Andras Nemeth, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,“Byzantine
Remaking of the Past: he Historical Excerpts under
Constantine VII and ater His Death”
Daphne Penna, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, “Investigating the
‘New’ Basilica Scholia: he Case of Constantine Nikaeus”
Vitaly Permiakov, Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, “he
Baptismal Rite in the Church of Jerusalem in Georgian
Recension: Translation and Commentary”
Francesca Tasso, Raccolte Artische Castello Sforzesco, “Collecting
Ivories in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: he
Trivulzio Family Collection and the Grado Chair”
Short-Term Predoctoral Residencies
Elizabeth Agaiby, Maquarie University
Laurent Cases, Pennsylvania State University
Maren Heun, Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena
Michele Orru, Università degli Studi di Caligari
Carolyn Twomey, Boston College
Nikolaos Zagklas, Universität Wein
Garden and Landscape Studies
Fellows
Stephen Bending, University of Southampton, “Pleasure Gardens
and the Use of Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century England, France,
and America”
Daniel Bluestone, Boston University, “Dwelling in Landscape”
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Sarah Cantor, University of Maryland, “he World of the Senses:
Gaspard Dughet and Seventeenth-Century Landscape Painting
in Rome”
Kristof Fatsar, Corvinus University of Budapest, “Professional
Networking and Knowledge Transfer of Gardeners in Europe
Using an Early Nineteenth-Century Example”
Kathleen John-Alder, Rutgers University, “Purposeful Study,
Meaningful Order, and the Aesthetics of the Total Environment”
Junior Fellows
Rachel Korolof, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “Seeds
of Exchange: Russia’s Apothecary and Botanical Gardens in the
First Half of the Eighteenth Century”
Aline de Figueirôa Silva, Universidade de São Paulo, “Public
Gardens in the History of Landscape Design of Northeastern
Brazil in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”
Summer Fellows
Abigail Dowling, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Land
and Natural Resource Management in Northern France,
1302–1329: The County of Artois under Countess Mahaut”
Sandro Jung, Universiteit Gent, “Topographical Designs for
British Illustrated Pocket Diaries, Changing Landscape, and
the Nation”
Fei Mo, University of Sheffield, “Going Native: American
Gardens and the Modernization of Residential Landscapes in
Shanghai (1843–1949)”
Visiting Scholar
Joseph Disponzio, New York City Department of Parks and
Recreation/Columbia University, April 3–May 3, 2014
Project Grants
Jason Ur, Harvard University, “he Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey”
One-Month Research Stipends
Felicia Else, Gettysburg College, “Water and the Medici: A Proposed
Study of Art, Festivals, and Politics”
Deborah Green, University of Oregon, “‘I Have Come to My
Garden’: Ancient Jewish Constructions of Space and Gender”
fellowships, project gr ants, and r esearch stipends
23
homas Mical, University of South Australia, “Landscapes of Power
in Baroque Greenwich”
Luke Morgan, Monash University, “he Monster in the Garden:
Reframing Renaissance Landscape Design”
Heather Morrison, State University of New York, New Paltz,
“Imperial Gardens and Viennese Botanists: he Travel and
Collecting Practices of a 1783 Botanical Expedition”
Ana Rodrigues, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, “Unknown Gardens:
Literary Sources to Portugal”
Boris Sokolov, Russian State University for the Humanities,
“Russian Poliphilo: Comprehensive Translation and
Interdisciplinary Research of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”
Short-Term Predoctoral Residencies
Betsy Anderson, University of Washington
Claire Eager, University of Virginia
Sara Mahdizadeh, University of Sheield
Pre-Columbian Studies
Fellows
Élodie Dupey García, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
“Color and Culture among the Pre-Hispanic Nahuas”
Junior Fellows
Nicholas Carter, Brown University, “hat Strength Which in Old
Days Moved Earth and Heaven: Kingship in the Maya Terminal
Classic Period”
Zachary J. Chase, University of Chicago, “Performing the Past in the
Ritual, Mythological, and Historical Landscapes of Huarochirí,
Peru (ca. 1400–1700)”
Jamie Forde, University of Colorado, Boulder, “he Conquest of
the Hill of the Sun: Indigenous Domestic Life at Prehispanic and
Colonial Achiutla, Oaxaca, Mexico”
Alejandra Rojas, Harvard University, “Flora Incognita: Picturing
Nature in the New World”
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Franco Rossi, Boston University, “he Brothers Taaj: Orders and he
Politics of Expertise in the Late Maya Court”
Summer Fellows
Cristiana Barreto, Universidade de São Paulo, “Figuring the Body in
Ancient Amazonia”
Bérénice Gaillemin, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, “A
Critical Perspective on Central Mexican Writing and the
Phonetic Principle”
Project Grants
Ana Lucia Arroyave, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala,
“Revitalizing Guaytan”
Ana Nieves, Northeastern Illinois University, “Early Horizon and
Early Intermediate Period Rock Art of the Nasca Valley”
One-Month Research Stipends
Catalina Andrango-Walker, Virginia Tech, “he Inluence of PreColumbian Art on Cultural and Religious Transformations in
the Andes”
Tamara Bray, Wayne State University, “At the End of Empire: IncaCaranqui and the Northern Frontier”
Lena Bjerregaard, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, “PreColumbian Textiles”
William Duncan, East Tennessee State University, “he Roots of
Violence: Identifying Links between the Northern and Southern
Lowlands among the Postclassic Maya”
Gabrielle Vail, New College of Florida, “Deities and Mythologies
from the Northern Maya Lowlands”
Short-Term Predoctoral Residencies
Brian Cockrell, University of California, Berkeley
Katherine Davis, Harvard University
Anna Cohen, University of Washington
Donald Slater, Brandeis University
fellowships, project gr ants, and r esearch stipends
25
William R. Tyler Fellowships
William R. Tyler Fellowships are two-year fellowships for advanced
Harvard graduate students in the art history, archaeology, history,
and literature of the Pre-Columbian/early Colonial or Mediterranean/
Byzantine worlds or in Garden and Landscape history. he 2013–2014
academic year saw ive Tyler fellows in residence at Dumbarton
Oaks—two in Garden and Landscape Studies, two in Byzantine
Studies, and one in Pre-Columbian Studies.
Deniz Turker Cerda, Garden and Landscape Studies, “Ottoman
Victoriana: Istanbul’s Last Ottoman Palace-Complex of Yildiz,
1876–1909”
Saskia Dirkse, Byzantine Studies, “Asceticism, Orality, and Textual
Transmission in the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus”
Aleksandar Sopov, Garden and Landscape Studies, “Ottoman
Horticultural Science and Practice, 1453–1669”
Nawa Sugiyama, Pre-Columbian Studies, “Ritualized Animals:
Understanding Human-Animal Interactions at Teotihuacan”
Julian Yolles, Byzantine Studies, “Latin Culture in the Crusader
States (1099–1187)”
Director’s Visiting Scholar
Peter Brown, Princeton University, November 1–8, 2013
Harvard Exchange Visiting Scholar
Amy Hollywood, Harvard University, March 2014
Internship Program
Dumbarton Oaks hosted ten summer interns in 2013. Eight Harvard
undergraduate and graduate students, as well as two students from
other universities, worked on a variety of institutional projects, ranging from rare book exhibitions and garden excavations to translations
of medieval Latin texts. Expanded in recent years, the internship
program is coordinated by the director’s oice and draws on many
diferent departments, including the library, archives, museum, publications, and gardens. Students contribute to specialized projects,
gaining valuable work experience and skills while enjoying the historic campus and resources at Dumbarton Oaks.
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Summer Interns and Projects
Byzantine Seals Project
Joe Glynias, Harvard University
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
Sasha Benov, Harvard University
Elliot Wilson, Harvard University
Garden and Landscape Studies/Dumbarton Oaks Gardens
Rosabella Alvarez-Calderon, Harvard University
Katherine Hayes, University of Virginia
Matthew O’Donnell, Northern Virginia Community College
Oral History Project
James Curtin, Harvard University
Joshua Wilson, Harvard University
Rare Books
Jasmine Casart, Harvard University
Deirdre Moore, Harvard University
The Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard Exchange
he Harvard Exchange is designed to give Dumbarton Oaks fellows the opportunity to visit Harvard University during the term of
their appointment in order to present their work to a broader range
of colleagues and to meet with university faculty and staf. he contacts made at Harvard, and the experience of the exchange, are oten
invaluable for the development of fellows’ work at Dumbarton Oaks.
A Harvard faculty member may, in turn, visit Dumbarton Oaks to
give a talk for the beneit of the academic community. Fellows are
selected for the exchange by the director of Dumbarton Oaks in consultation with the directors of studies.
In 2014, Ekaterina Nechaeva, a fellow in Byzantine Studies, visited Harvard, where she gave a formal talk, “Defection and Freedom:
Long-Term Cross-Border Movement of Individuals in the Late Antique
World” (hosted by the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies) and
participated in an informal roundtable, “Border Crossing” (cosponsored by the Medieval Studies and Medieval History Workshops).
fellowships, project gr ants, and r esearch stipends
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Fellowship Reports
Byzantine Studies
Fellows
Ivan Drpić, University of Washington, “Art and Epigram in
Byzantium, 1100–1450”
During my fellowship, I worked on revising and expanding my doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript. he book explores the relationship between art and epigrammatic poetry in the last centuries of
Byzantium, with a focus on the realm of personal piety and its artistic and literary manifestations. I examine the corpus of epigrams, or
verse inscriptions, on art objects produced ca. 1100–1450. Proceeding
from a close reading of these complex, yet oten neglected and misunderstood texts, and from a detailed analysis of a range of objects with
verse inscriptions (including icons and icon veils, reliquaries, and
ecclesiastical textiles), my book seeks to ofer a fresh perspective on
the nexus of art-making, piety, and self-representation in Byzantium.
By the end of the fellowship, I was able to revise or newly drat all
of the projected seven chapters of the book. Two chapters in particular developed from new research conducted at Dumbarton Oaks: one
examined how devotional objects inscribed with dedicatory verses
served as a vehicle of elite self-fashioning; and the other considered
the visual, material, and spatial dimensions of the inscribed verse.
he superb library resources of Dumbarton Oaks and the expertise,
intellectual generosity, and friendship of an outstanding group of fellows greatly facilitated and enriched my research and writing. I was
truly blessed to have Foteini Spingou at my side, as her project on the
Winter snow in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
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epigrams preserved in the Anthologia marciana in many respects
intersected with and complemented my work.
Dimitris Kastritsis, University of St. Andrews, “Byzantines,
Ottomans, and Others in the Last Century of Byzantium
(1354–1453)”
I spent my fellowship researching the history and culture of the last
century of Byzantium (1354–1453), a period coinciding with the development of the Ottoman state from a small principality into an empire.
his research forms the foundation of my next monograph, an original
study of the period that aims to transcend the oten rigid boundaries
separating Byzantine, Ottoman, and Medieval studies. his book is
still in its early stages, but I have an advance contract for publication
with Harvard University Press for 2018. I also worked on two text-based
projects, both of which greatly beneitted from my time at Dumbarton
Oaks. Far from being unrelated to my larger historical project, the
detailed study of texts is essential to understanding the emergence of
the Ottoman Empire in formerly Byzantine cultural spaces. he irst
project is a translation and commentary on an Ottoman historical
compilation from 1484 known as the Oxford Anonymous Chronicle
(Bodleian Marsh 313). his will appear in the series Translated Texts for
Byzantinists in early 2015; it will be the irst full translation of an early
Ottoman chronicle into English. During my time at Dumbarton Oaks,
I inished the extensive historical introduction as well as the bulk of the
footnotes for this volume. he second project concerns the Ottoman
captions on the Byzantine Alexander Romance in Venice (Hellenic
Institute Codex gr. 5). hese captions are quite extensive and almost
certainly date from the late iteenth century. heir relationship to the
Byzantine images is complex, and they are highly revealing of the millenarian and universalist preoccupations of the time. I have already
published an article on this subject, and intend to produce an annotated
edition and translation over the next two years.
Ekaterina Nechaeva, American Academy in Rome, “Defection
and Freedom: Long-Term Cross-Border Movements of
Individuals in the Late Antique World”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks concentrated on individual emigration (both voluntary and forced) in Late Antiquity. I created a
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prosopographical database to elucidate the speciic economic, social,
and religious circumstances in Late Roman society that inluenced
the migration of individuals. I collected a considerable amount of biographic evidence about people leaving the Roman Empire to either
join diferent barbarian kingdoms in the West or to go to Persia in the
East. his investigation ofered a detailed view of the lives of individuals as well as a unique insight into the problems of Late Roman society.
I also considered the problem of freedom: how solid were the boundaries between diferent parts of the Late Antique world, and to what
degree was this world divided or united as concerns individual movements? Stories of the displacements and lights of individuals demonstrate that freedom of movement across the borders was quite limited,
but that these limits could oten be surpassed. In many cases, help
from the foreign side was essential for the success of a light. During
this fellowship, I prepared and published an article, “La traversée de
la frontière par les ‘émigrants’ en fuite, selon Ammien Marcellin,” in
Voyages, déplacements et migrations: Actes de la VIe journée d’études
nord-africaines, edited by François Déroche and M. Zink. I also inalized the work on my irst monograph, Embassies—Negotiations—
Gits: Systems of East Roman Diplomacy in Late Antiquity (2014).
Foteini Spingou, University of Oxford, “Anonymous Poems and
Epigrams from Marcianus gr. 524: Edition and Translation”
he thirteenth-century manuscript Marcianus gr. 524 is well known
for its vast anthology of eleventh- and twelth-century poetry. he
anthology is composed of single-author collections, long poems, and
three collections with unattributed poetry (Syllogae A, B, and C). I
am particularly interested in Syllogae B and C, which consist of epigrams on works of art, epitaphs, acclamations, and other occasional
poems. hese texts form a corpus that provides a unique insight into
eleventh- and (mainly) twelth-century Constantinopolitan reality
and into the cultural radiation of Byzantium to Southern Italy and
the Balkans. he poems talk about lost objects and monuments and
tell stories of individuals, illustrious ceremonies, and great triumphs.
hey map ideas and mentalities as well as literary and artistic tastes.
Despite their immense importance, these texts have yet to be published (though Spyridon Lambros published the transcriptions of some
of them in 1911). During my fellowship, I prepared the irst full edition,
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translation, and commentary of Syllogae B and C for Oxford University
Press. he book discusses this noteworthy manuscript, and is intended
to be a valuable and readily accessible source for literary historians,
philologists, art historians, historians, and lovers of Byzantium.
Tolga Uyar, Centre National de la Recherche Scientiique, “Art
and Society in the Land of Rūm: hirteenth-Century ‘Byzantine’
Paintings in Cappadocia”
he cultural residue of the Greek communities living under Seljuk
rule in Cappadocia represents the fullest and most detailed evidence
for the multicultural artistic and social landscapes of late Byzantine
Asia Minor. Although art historians have examined many of the thirteenth-century painting programs of the region, there has been little
attempt to place them within a broader cultural context. In order to
ill this lacuna, my study follows an interdisciplinary investigation
of art history, history, anthropology, archaeology, and epigraphy.
Grounded in a close examination of a large corpus of wall paintings
and containing signiicant new visual and epigraphic data, the study
methodologically demonstrates how visual culture can be used to
understand the environment that produced it. he documentation
is largely unpublished and was collected in ive long ield campaigns
undertaken in Turkey.
Based on my doctoral dissertation, this study forms the subject of
a monograph tentatively entitled Art and Society in the Land of Rūm:
hirteenth-Century “Byzantine” Paintings in Cappadocia. During my
residential fellowship, I revised, edited, and translated several sections
of my French thesis for publication, while reorganizing the irst drat
and rethinking and reining my conclusions. In addition, I wrote two
substantial chapters on the artistic bonds between Byzantium, Seljuk
Rūm, and the Eastern Mediterranean World and on the religious culture of Christian Cappadocia ater Byzantine rule. I also submitted an
article on Greek painters at the Seljuk court, which will be published
in Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia (forthcoming).
Elena Velkova Velkovska, Università di Siena, “he Byzantine
Liturgical Gospel between Constantinople and Jerusalem”
he greater part of my fellowship was dedicated to preparing an edition of the ninth-century manuscript Sinai Greek 210, the only Greek
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lectionary of the Jerusalem rite known prior to the New Finds of 1975.
Diferent parts of the manuscript are conserved in four collections,
three on Mount Sinai and one in Saint Petersburg. One of the Sinaitic
parts, which is currently misplaced, was photographed by Kurt
Weitzmann; I was able to consult these photographs in the Image
Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA). I completed the task of
collecting small fragments of leaves and ordering them according to
the liturgical year of Jerusalem, which had already been partially byzantinized by the epoch of the manuscript. I completed both the edition and the description of the manuscript, and I continued my work
on the liturgical commentary.
My work in ICFA yielded an unexpected discovery. he collection that Weitzmann photographed in the 1950s as Sinai Chest 1 corresponds to the catalog of Greek fragments that James Rendel Harris
described in 1894 as an appendix to a book by Agnes Smith Lewis.
Given that this collection cannot be found on Sinai, the ICFA photos
are the only extant source for most of these fragments. his collection
is the subject of a short article already submitted for publication.
Junior Fellows
Nathan Leidholm, University of Chicago, “Political Families in
Byzantium: he Social and Cultural Signiicance of the Genos as
Kin Group, ca. 900–1150”
I spent my time at Dumbarton Oaks working toward the completion of my dissertation, which explores the role and function of the
Byzantine aristocratic family group, or genos, as a distinct social
entity as it appears in a range of sources over the period ca. 900–1150.
Adopting a variety of approaches and incorporating methods from
several ields of history and the social sciences, my research ofers
an analysis of a form of “the family” not typically considered on its
own terms; it also acts as a counterbalance to the common tendency
to treat the household as the sole meaningful form of kin group in
the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, I use the insights gained
through such a study to develop a clearer picture of both social and
cultural change in Byzantium between the tenth and thirteenth century, especially among the elite.
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During my fellowship, I was able to complete three chapters of my dissertation and to begin a fourth chapter. he unique
combination of resources, personnel, and setting at Dumbarton
Oaks allowed me to pursue subjects and materials that I had not
previously thought relevant, including Byzantine law, philosophy,
and medicine, and my research is much improved as a result. he
thoughtful staf and administration, wonderful library resources,
lively lunchtime conversations, and diverse subjects of inquiry covered by both the fellows and visiting scholars served to enrich both
my experience as a junior fellow and my work more broadly.
Jordan Pickett, University of Pennsylvania, “Water ater
Antiquity: he Transformation of Roman Water Management in
the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean”
During my fellowship, I focused on my dissertation, which is concerned with the ideology and material practice of water management
in the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity. Instead of engaging
with the functionalist question of the survival or destruction of aqueducts and baths, my dissertation considers how monumental water
architecture was a space for sociocultural conlict and change, in
which a new palette of water supply and consumption options evolved
over the course of several centuries, well before the seventh-century
horizon for the survival of many Roman cities and water systems into
the Middle Ages. hese evolving systems relected a changing society, and they were important components in a constellation of ideas
pertaining to the relationship of the Byzantine Empire with nature,
industry, and public health. he unparalleled resources of the library
at Dumbarton Oaks allowed me to inish a critical survey of the
archaeology of water architecture in Eastern Mediterranean cities and
to write large parts of four dissertation chapters. I spent considerable
time with Roman and Late Antique books of law, medical treatises,
epigraphy, saints’ lives, and historiography. In addition to the work
of my dissertation, I also presented a conference paper, wrote two
book reviews and a number of entries for the Oxford Dictionary of
Late Antiquity, submitted a journal article, and served as a guest lecturer in the Department of History at Georgetown University and as
a guest docent in the Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek
Collections exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
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AnnaLinden Weller, Rutgers University, “Imagining PreModern Imperialism: he Letters of Byzantine Imperial Agents
Outside the Metropole”
During my term at Dumbarton Oaks, I completed my dissertation
project, an investigation of the letter collections of Byzantine imperial agents who were based outside of Constantinople. hrough
three case studies, two in Greek and one in Armenian, I explored
the use of epistolary communication in maintaining community ties
and reinforcing Byzantine imperial ideology under the pressure of
encounters in the liminal space of the frontier. By pairing a literary
analysis of the letters with a social-historical analysis of the networks
of communication that they represented, I demonstrated that middle
Byzantine epistolary texts were an important location for the expression of normative ideology—that is, letters allowed their authors to
present a vision of the Byzantine oikoumene that was in accordance
with the universalist imperial project of Byzantium, whether or not
they actually experienced this project as a success while serving the
empire. In addition, my Armenian case study brought into this discussion of letters as a locus of Byzantine imperialism a non-Byzantine, “indigenous”/“colonized” voice, albeit one that used Byzantine
aesthetics and participated in Byzantinesque cultural production as
well as pro-Byzantine political activity. By including this Armenian
source, I show how a literary form that is used by Byzantines to reinforce Byzantine ideology can be coopted for non-Byzantine use as
well as accommodated to Byzantine cultural expansion. I submitted
and defended this dissertation at Rutgers University near the end of
my fellowship.
Summer Fellows
Maria Doerler, Duke University, “he Death of Strangers and
the Life of the Community in Eastern Christian hought”
My research over the summer focused on the rhetorical and theological signiicance of the so-called pandektai in sixth-century Antioch
and its surroundings. Dubbed “strangers’ graves” in Syriac, these
cemeteries accommodated the bodies of those who died on foreign soil, separated from the families or communities that would
have normally assumed responsibility for their inhumation and
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commemoration. hese cemeteries are preserved for us as a textual
more than as an archaeological site. While excavations in the Eastern
Roman provinces have begun to shed light on puzzles in the historical
record, the mass graves of anonymously buried men and women of
limited means, lacking either structural or epigraphal treasure, hold
limited promise for archaeological inquiry. By contrast, the bodies of
strangers and the graves that housed them intrude upon a wide range
of texts from the ith and sixth centuries, including homilies, liturgical compositions, and hagiographical accounts.
While at Dumbarton Oaks, I worked on the irst systematic
examination of these sources. his study has proved exceedingly
productive, not only for assessing the social and economic conditions of Eastern Roman cities in the later parts of Late Antiquity but
also for providing glimpses at the still nascent theological imagination surrounding the aterlife and the community’s liturgical and
practical role therein. Late Antique writers like Severus of Antioch
frequently insisted that the individual alone bore responsibility for
the soul’s fate ater death. But their emphasis on the church’s ritual
accompaniment of the anonymous (and accordingly religiously and
morally indeterminate) dead illuminates an understanding of the
aterlife that was both more communally oriented and more relective of popular theological conceptions.
Mircea Dulus, Central European University, “he Homilies of
Philagathos of Cerami: Byzantine Culture at the Court of King
Roger II and William I”
he summer fellowship enabled me to complete the research for my
dissertation on the oeuvre and the life of Philagathos of Cerami.
Philagathos was an itinerant preacher in the Norman kingdom
of Sicily during the reigns of Roger II (1130–1154) and William I
(1154–1166); he was the author of a substantial collection of homilies for the Sunday readings and the feasts of the liturgical year, the
so-called italo-griechische Homiliar (A. Ehrhard). Renowned for
his distinguished learning, as the epithet ὁ φιλόσοφος testiies, he
was also the author of an allegorical interpretation of Heliodoros’s
Aethiopika. During the fellowship, I framed the theoretical
approach of Philagathos’s “ekphrastic” style by situating it against
the background of contemporary Byzantine rhetorical practices
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and literary criticism. I completed the analysis of Philagathos’s
contribution to the transmission of Late Antique anti-Christian
polemics, and I continued the analysis of the sources of the citations that beautify these sermons. Finally, I thoroughly reanalyzed
Philagathos’s allegorical interpretation of Heliodoros’s Aethiopika
by placing it within the Byzantine discursive tradition of allegorical
interpretation of secular literature in the context of the rediscovery
of the genre of the novel in Komnenian Byzantium. By taking into
account Byzantine literary structures such as registers of style and
genre, I surmount the modern dilemma of authorship that vacillates
between Philagathos the distinguished preacher and PhilipposPhilagathos the philosopher and the author of a Neoplatonic commentary on the Aethiopika. I showed that the decontextualized
mapping of the Neoplatonic underpinnings, constantly retained
in the scholarship, and the labeling of the work as “Neoplatonic” is
inaccurate and does not account for Philagathos’s exegetical strategy. I have been able to determine that Philagathos’s interpretation
is informed to an extent that has not been hitherto ascertained by
the tradition of mystical interpretation of the Song of Songs. In fact,
the alleged “Neoplatonic” elements of the composition are reminiscent of Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs and the
Life of Moses combined with Maximos the Confessor’s exegesis of
numbers that equally permeate Philagathos’s homilies.
Meaghan McEvoy, University of Oxford, “he Politics of
Incompetence? he ‘Feeble’ heodosian Emperors and Why
hey Matter”
During my summer fellowship, the unique resources of Dumbarton
Oaks (its library and its coin and museum collections, in particular) enabled me to make considerable progress on my monograph
on the Eastern imperial court under the heodosian emperors of
the ith century. In addition, I researched an article on the relationship between imperial courts under the Eastern emperor Leo
I (457–474) and the Western emperor Anthemius (467–472), looking at the particular diiculties that the transformation of the
imperial oice under the youthful nonmilitary emperors Arcadius,
Honorius, heodosius II, and Valentinian III in the irst half of the
ith century posed for these two adult emperors, both of whom
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were former soldiers themselves. his research highlights a period
of parallel in the political conigurations of the Eastern and Western
courts, in the balance of power between mature and experienced
emperors, dominant semibarbarian generals, and civilian advisers.
Competition between emperors and generals over issues of church
politics and ecclesiastical benefaction, and the considerable Eastern
investment in attempts to aid Western recovery in the later ith century also proved to be major themes of this investigation. Finally, I
began to research a collection of early ith-century Roman jewelry
(the “Piazza della Consolazione treasure”) held in the Dumbarton
Oaks Museum. his investigation was not planned, but it raised
many interesting questions regarding the provenance of the hoard
(and the current location of other pieces).
Inmaculada Pérez Martín, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y
Sociales, Madrid, “Byzantium’s Reception of Michael Psellos’ De
Omnifaria Doctrina, as Shown by Its Manuscripts”
he aim of my research was to determine what kind of reader accessed
De omnifaria doctrina, a bizarre miscellany of general notions on God,
the nous, the soul, the nature, and the matter. My paleographical and
codicological study has proven not only that the text reached every
corner of Byzantium—from Trebizond and Cyprus to Messina—but
that it encountered diferent kinds of readers, including scholars (such
as Michael Glykas), abbots (such as Gerasimos of the Nea Mone in
Chios), doctors, and members of the ecclesiastical administration.
he adaptability of the text, with its 201 short chapters, foretold
that many copyists would shape it according to their own intellectual
interests. In fact, commonly held ideas about the Byzantine “scribe”
or “copyist” must be clariied in front of copies of these “personal
selections,” since the mechanical transcription of a ixed text that we
usually attribute to medieval scribes does not apply here. Some readers expressed in the margins of their books their disagreement with
the ideas exposed by Psellos. his conversation between the margin
and the central text possibly points out to the consideration of Psellos
as an “authority” and suggests that this attribute could propel his
transmission. In fact, the comparison of De omnifaria doctrina with
similar texts, such as the Problemata of Aristotle, suggests that to
head a text with the name of a renowned sage, be it realistic or not,
may have played a major role in its dissemination.
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Marka Tomic Djuric, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA,
“Displaying Liturgical Poetry: he Church of Marko’s
Monastery Near Skopje”
he interplay of ecclesiastical poetry and murals is one of the key
aspects of church decoration in Late Byzantium and late medieval
Serbia. he project I undertook addresses the murals of the church
of Saint Demetrios near Skopje, FYROM, which are notable for
their emphatic incorporation of motifs drawn from the liturgy.
his church, the katholikon of a monastic establishment commonly
known as Marko’s Monastery, was the foundation of the Serbian
kings Vukasin and Marko Mrnjavcevic. he frescoes were painted
in 1376–1377. Central to the irst part of my investigation were poetic
texts and rituals associated with the celebration of Lent and Holy
Week. hese services have received a complex visual articulation
through a group of images: Akathistos Hymn to the heotokos,
Christ as the Wisdom of God, Mary’s Lamentation, and Christ as
the Man of Sorrows. I analyzed the changes brought about by the
Neo-Sabbaite liturgical reform and the adoption of the Jerusalem
Typikon, focusing on the heightened emotionalism of the liturgical
poetry performed during Lent and Holy Week services and the articulation of the multilayered interpretations of Christ’s Incarnation
and Sacriice. I concluded that these images were intended to elicit
emotional responses from the monastic community and to prompt
their active participation in the liturgy. I also studied works of
hymnography associated with Saint Demetrios, patron saint of
hessalonike, with regard to the presence of iconographic motifs.
My research revealed that images of the patron saint in Marko’s
Monastery assemble visual and poetic elements to convey messages
and to emphasize certain aspects of the cult.
Warren Woodin, Queens College, City University of New York,
“Byzantium and the Kipchaks: Material and Military Contacts”
My summer fellowship was devoted to investigating the history of
political, trade, and military ties between Byzantium and its thirteenth-century successor states with the steppe nomads, variously
known as Cumans, Kipchaks, or Polovtsy. his research provides a
historical underpinning for the interpretation of objects of Byzantine
manufacture found in the grave of a Kipchak “prince” at the Chungul
Kurgan in the Azov Steppe of Ukraine. In the course of my summer
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research, I engaged with the issues of ethnographic description in
Byzantine literature. Despite the received wisdom that Byzantine
ethnographic descriptions tend to be highly dependent on inherited
topoi from Herodotus and other classical sources, I found Niketas
Choniates’s and others’ accounts of the Kipchak nomads to be more
congruent with archaeological indings than they are with ancient
descriptions of the Scythians. I was also able to make good use of
the Dumbarton Oaks Seals Collection and its associated resources to
lesh out the picture of the Byzantine presence in the northern Black
Sea region. Because seal inds from the area are skewed toward oicials of high rank, I would suggest that the Byzantines administered
ports such as Sogdaia (Sudak) in a way that ceded local control to
the Kipchaks. he collation of archaeological data with the historical sources has not only helped pinpoint the possible routes by which
Byzantine and Near Eastern goods might have traveled to the Azov
Steppe but has also allowed for greater certainty in dating the burial
to the second or third decade of the thirteenth century.
Nektarios Zarras, University of the Aegean, “Image and
Narration in Byzantium: New Testament Cycles in Palaiologan
Monumental Painting”
During my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, I had the opportunity to
prepare for publication the paper, “Narrating the Sacred Story: New
Testament Cycles in Middle and Late Byzantine Period,” that Ι presented here at the spring symposium, “New Testament in Byzantium,”
on April 26–28, 2013. My research at Dumbarton Oaks was based on
the cycles of the Passion and Eothina gospels represented in monuments decorated by the painters Michael and Eutychios Astrapas. It
focused on three main areas: irst, the methods of organizing and
depicting the extensive narrative cycles; second, the inluence of the
texts on the arrangement and the iconography of the scenes; and
third, the perception of the sacred story by the beholder. It emerges
from the expansion of the cycles that the painters, in collaboration
with the designers of the programs and following the gospel text and
the rhetoric of images, created superb ensembles in which the scenes
are transformed into narrative media. Episodes that, within the narrative, function as prologue and epilogue to the central scenes, as
well as dialogues between the protagonists, which are illustrated
in every detail, dramatize the sacred story in such a way that the
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beholder lives an exciting experience of instruction through imagery.
In the course of working in the Dumbarton Oaks Library, I also had
the opportunity to embark on the Ministry Cycle of Christ depicted
in the Chora monastery. I hope that the results of this endeavor will
be published soon.
Garden and Landscape Studies
Fellows
Stephen Bending, University of Southampton, “Pleasure
Gardens and the Use of Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century
England, France, and America”
I came to Dumbarton Oaks to work on my current project, a book
on the problems of pleasure in the eighteenth-century gardens of
England, France, and North America. My focus has been on what I
see as a characteristic sense of unease about the experience of pleasure
in pleasure gardens, a sense that pleasure must be accounted for and
justiied, and that in accounting for it, those who write of gardens
inevitably also attempt to account for themselves. In other words, this
is a project on the experience of self and of how we might recover
the traces of emotion in eighteenth-century landscapes. My original
plan was to spend my time at Dumbarton Oaks working on the gardens and correspondence of early American presidents (Washington,
Jeferson, and Adams). But while I gathered a wealth of useful material from these sources, I have, as so oten before, found women to
be more interesting. Much of my time, therefore, was spent working
with women’s letters and diaries from the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. his research will feed in to my current project
in all sorts of useful ways, but, more importantly, it has provided me
with the material—and the inspiration—for a new project on women’s
experience of landscape in this period.
Daniel Bluestone, Boston University, “Dwelling in Landscape”
My book project, Dwelling in Landscape, explores the changing theories and practices that have guided designers in building residences
within the broader landscape and in shaping landscapes surrounding residences. It frames the changing theories of prospect and aspect
as they guided ideas about the appropriate relationship between
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residence and site in constituting a domestic landscape. he project
is focused primarily on the United States from the late eighteenth
century to the early twenty-irst century. I used many of the library’s
primary sources, including the early years of the journal Garden and
Forest, to take measure of Charles Eliot’s belief that the sensitivity
to landscape that could develop at home, in the garden, would then
translate into a politics that support the creation of regional park
systems and national conservation areas. I also drew on the rich secondary literature to situate the work of developer Robert Davenport,
architect Charles Goodman, and landscape architects Lou Bernard
Voigt and Daniel Urban Kiley at Hollin Hills, a modern post–World
War II residential subdivision in Fairfax County, Virginia, where
the walls of the house opened up to the surrounding landscape,
thereby extending the usual bounds of the house. I recast my previous research on Alexander Jackson Davis and Philip St. George Cocke
at Belmead mansion in Powhatan, Virginia, to focus more squarely
on the extraordinary plantation landscape surrounding Davis’s 1840s
country house and its relation to the broader contest over the place
of slavery in the United States. My subject has long resonated with
fundamental values concerning the relationship between civilization
and nature; it has taken on new urgency as we register the efects of
climate change and eforts to imagine more sustainable approaches to
buildings and environmental resources.
Sarah Cantor, University of Maryland, “he World of the Senses:
Gaspard Dughet and Seventeenth-Century Landscape Painting
in Rome”
During my fellowship year, I began work on a book, he World of the
Senses: Gaspard Dughet and Seventeenth-Century Landscape Painting
in Rome, which expands on my dissertation. he project explores the
intersections between landscape paintings by Dughet and his contemporaries, the study of the natural world, and the interest in antiquity in early modern Rome. In particular, I conducted research for the
chapters on the history of natural philosophy and the rise of empirical
study in early seventeenth-century Rome. he library at Dumbarton
Oaks and the access to collections at Harvard University allowed me
to accomplish most of my research goals, to prepare the prospectus,
and to begin writing the sections on natural history. In the Rare Book
Room, I was able to examine several relevant treatises and texts that
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have enriched my project. Additionally, I was able to revise sections
of a dissertation chapter into an article submitted for publication.
he collegial atmosphere and incredible community of scholars at
Dumbarton Oaks greatly enhanced both my work and overall experience. Discussions with fellows from across all the disciplines, with
director of studies John Beardsley, with visiting and senior fellows,
and most importantly, with postdoctoral associate Anatole Tchikine
have reshaped my approach to the project and my understanding of
landscape history in general.
Kristof Fatsar, Corvinus University of Budapest, “Professional
Networking and Knowledge Transfer of Gardeners in Europe
Using an Early Nineteenth-Century Example”
My research aimed to demonstrate the operation of an extensive
European-wide network of gardening professionals during the irst
half of the nineteenth century, as revealed by contemporary travel
journals and other publications, as well as by the manuscript itineraries and reference letters of two traveling Hungarians. Ater the
Napoleonic wars, “horticultural tours” were led throughout Europe,
allowing gardeners to gather new plants and ideas by making professional connections with fellow landscape gardeners, botanists, and
nurserymen. Gardening knowledge in this period meant everything
from horticultural practices to botanical usage to landscape design.
Horticulture was considered “practical botany” due to its abilities to
produce new varieties and hybrids, and nurserymen were eager to put
their hands on, to try to keep alive, and to propagate new species that
botanists discovered in remote parts of the world, while garden architects, as landscape architects were oten called at that time, used these
discovered or created varieties in the design of pleasure grounds. My
research succeeded in drawing up travel routes and personal connections among gardening professionals of the period across Europe.
Kathleen John-Alder, Rutgers University, “Purposeful
Study, Meaningful Order, and the Aesthetics of the Total
Environment”
My research seeks to deine a critical space for history relevant to
the contemporary practice of landscape architecture. It involves
two areas of focus: irst, my written scholarship explores the transformative role of ecology and environmentalism in the discourse of
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mid-twentieth-century landscape design in the United States; and
second, it promotes a productive engagement with history within the
context of the design studio. During my time at Dumbarton Oaks,
I explored Ian McHarg’s design for Pardisan Park in Tehran, Iran.
his project is important for several reasons. First, Pardisan is one
of the few planning proposals by McHarg that continued into the
design stage, and though unbuilt it provides valuable insight into an
important but little known aspect of his career. Second, the abrupt
halt of the project by the Iranian Revolution ended McHarg’s career
at Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd, thus signaling the end of his
most creative period. Further, the planning and design of Pardisan
occurred during a period when environmentalism went global, thus
making it an important case study of the appropriation of western
concepts of environmentalism by a Middle Eastern country with a
rich and ancient cultural heritage, as a means to reestablish itself on
the global geopolitical stage. My research combined several methodological approaches, including archival research, interviews with
individuals who worked on the project, and the procurement of the
transcripts of the tribunal hearing that negotiated the inal payment
agreement between McHarg and the revolutionary government of
Iran. My examination of Pardisan Park is part of a larger project on
McHarg that traces his concept of natural design as it moves from
housing to regional planning and to global ecosystems.
Junior Fellows
Rachel Korolof, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
“Seeds of Exchange: Russia’s Apothecary and Botanical Gardens
in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century”
he time granted to me by a year-long junior fellowship at Dumbarton
Oaks has allowed me to inish a drat of my dissertation, “Seeds of
Exchange.” Having gained a more nuanced assessment of the role
of landscape and garden design in the otherwise pragmatic spaces
of early scientiic practice, I am able to more clearly articulate and
to show how the emergence of a cosmopolitan scientiic community
in Imperial Russia was in close dialogue with its distinctly Russian
locale. Participating in the fall symposium, “he Botany of Empire
in the Long Eighteenth Century,” allowed me to present new work
on the botanist Johann Amman and the role of the Caspian Sea in
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the construction of Russia’s botanical empire. he spring symposium,
“Sound and Scent in the Garden,” similarly gave me the rare and enviable opportunity to engage for the irst time with literature on the
history of the senses. he resulting two papers have fundamentally
restructured my approach to the lived experience of Muscovite political and religious culture through garden creation. he scholarly community at Dumbarton Oaks, especially the mentorship extended to
me by John Beardsley and Anatole Tchikine, has fundamentally inluenced my approach to garden history and landscape studies. I owe a
great debt of gratitude to the librarians and all the studies directors,
but especially to the other fellows at Dumbarton Oaks, for enriching
my research at such an early stage and for setting a strong precedent
for collegiality and scholarship in my future.
Aline de Figueirôa Silva, Universidade de São Paulo, “Public
Gardens in the History of Landscape Design of Northeastern
Brazil in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”
My experience at Dumbarton Oaks contributed greatly to my doctoral
dissertation, which, prior to my fellowship term, was in an early stage
of the foreign literature review. I accessed library resources that are
mostly unavailable in Brazil, where historical studies in garden and
landscape are relatively new ields of research. I developed my dissertation by using three main groups of sources: irst, authors who cover
large periods of gardening in history and include nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century gardens in their broad chronologies; second,
monographs on public gardens or garden squares in European and
American cities, which allowed me to draw some analogies to, and
to establish some similarities and diferences with, Brazilian gardens;
and third, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference books
in the nineteenth-century garden debate as well as visitor accounts
dating from the late nineteenth century. In addition to my research,
the presentations, events, and internal discussions promoted by the
Garden and Landscape Studies department helped improve my ideas,
as I had the chance to hear from scholars from many parts of the
world. And since public gardens in Brazil (especially in the northeast
region of the country) are understudied, my research was welcomed
by my peers and colleagues because it addressed a new topic in the
garden research agenda.
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Summer Fellows
Abigail Dowling, University of California, Santa Barbara,
“Land and Natural Resource Management in Northern France,
1302–1329: he County of Artois Under Countess Mahaut”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks explored the interconnections among
literature, politics, economy, and environment as acted out on the
landscapes of the park at Hesdin in northern France in the early fourteenth century. Initially, I had planned to devote my time to a study of
inancial accounts and to use the extensive secondary collection held
in the library to provide a wider northern European context for those
practices. I originally intended to spend only a little time exploring how
agricultural manuals informed the vision of the aristocratic park. But I
discovered that medieval herbals were far more important to the park
tradition than landscape scholars have previously acknowledged. In
the Rare Book Room, I consulted medieval and early modern herbals
that helped me to reformulate my dissertation. As a result, my project
included a more comprehensive analysis of the medical, literary, and
illustrative traditions that informed landscape management as well as
an examination of how these traditions changed from the thirteenth
to the sixteenth centuries. Furthermore, my research in the library
enabled me to nearly complete a chapter of my dissertation that highlights the systematic and synergistic relationship among diferent natural resources both within and outside of the park walls.
Sandro Jung, Universiteit Gent, “Topographical Designs for
British Illustrated Pocket Diaries, Changing Landscape, and the
Nation”
My stay at Dumbarton Oaks was extremely rewarding, intellectually and personally. I am grateful to the Garden and Landscape
Studies program, the library staf, and the other fellows for creating
an enriching atmosphere of collegial exchange. As part of my project on “Topographical Designs for British Illustrated Pocket Diaries,
Changing Landscape, and the Nation,” I worked on the unique collection of material relating to the late eighteenth-century landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752–1818) and generated a narrative on his use
of largely unstudied topographical print media. Examining Repton’s
topographical designs for William Peacock’s diary-cum-almanac he
Polite Repository, I concentrated on a unique album of four hundred
cut-out vignettes. My study of the vignettes from he Polite Repository
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facilitated insights into the ways in which Repton used this publication
to popularize his ideas about landscape design. It also demonstrated
that, in designing these vignettes, Repton promoted and distributed his
work among a much larger audience than he had for his exclusive Red
Books (the unique and specially commissioned illustrated volumes containing proposals for the improvement of the country seats of the elite).
By the third week of my fellowship, the scope of my project had signiicantly widened, as I considered vignettes from other illustrated diaries
featuring topographical designs. Repton’s role as a popularizer of the
picturesque among the middle classes emerged as central to the success not merely of Peacock’s he Polite Repository. His work was genredeining in that, through the topographical vignette, he made available
in visual form the changing landscapes of Britain to a greater number
of consumers than ever before.
Fei Mo, University of Sheield, “Going Native: American
Gardens and the Modernization of Residential Landscapes in
Shanghai (1843–1949)”
My research at Dumbarton Oaks contributed to my doctoral dissertation, which analyzes the development of Shanghai’s urban landscape
during the modern era. My research intends to uncover the hidden
stories of American contributions to the modernization of the living
environment in Shanghai. I beneitted from the supportive environment and the valuable resources at Dumbarton Oaks, and I was able
to extract evidence for several remarkable stages in landscape development in Shanghai. For instance, I was able to identify the original
American housing model that was introduced to Shanghai in the 1850s;
this model was crucial to the development of a compact form of housing, thus triggering the establishment of communal, residential open
spaces on an industrial scale. In addition, according to early accounts
of Shanghai residents found here, I discovered that some American
dwellers created their housing in a Chinese courtyard style in the early
1920s, which meant that they contributed to preserving the local garden
tradition as well. Furthermore, an American civil planner developed a
proposal for the new city center of Shanghai in the early 1920s; this proposal changed local perspectives on residential community planning.
By exploring relevant books in the Dumbarton Oaks Library, I obtained
an in-depth understanding of the contemporary context of municipal
planning in America and linked it with planning in Shanghai.
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47
Pre-Columbian Studies
Fellows
Élodie Dupey García, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, “Color and Culture among the Pre-Hispanic Nahuas”
During my fellowship, I inished my historical research on color in
Nahua culture and prepared the data for publication. I also updated
the results of my 2010 doctoral dissertation with information recently
obtained through the direct examination of the color palettes of three
Pre-Columbian codices. My method was interdisciplinary, as I compared this data with information derived from archaeometry and with
accounts on colorants available in the historical sources. Moreover, to
guarantee an accurate use of the historical data, I carried out a new
translation of the only existing Nahuatl text on Pre-Columbian pigments. At the same time, I deined the outlines and wrote the irst chapters of the books that derive from my long-term and updated research.
One explains the structure and principles of the chromatic lexicon in
ancient Nahuatl, while the other demonstrates the importance of the
materiality of color in Nahua society. In fact, a major inding from my
fellowship was an understanding that the intimate relationship that the
Nahuas perceived between color and its material manifestation largely
determined the uses and meanings of colors in this culture. My stay
at Dumbarton Oaks also gave me the opportunity to collaborate with
Jamie Forde, another fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies. Jamie is a specialist in the Mixtec culture of Oaxaca, and we shared our respective
expertise to study an enigmatic Nahua codex that comprises six pages
repainted with a set of Mixtec igures and symbols.
Junior Fellows
Nicholas Carter, Brown University, “hat Strength Which in Old
Days Moved Earth and Heaven: Kingship in the Maya Terminal
Classic Period”
My most signiicant academic project at Dumbarton Oaks, and
the one which took up the bulk of my time, was writing most of
my doctoral dissertation, “Kingship and Collapse: Inequality and
Identity in the Terminal Classic Southern Maya Lowlands.” he core
of the dissertation consisted of a study of Terminal Classic Maya
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royal inscriptions from the central and southern lowlands—including several not previously adequately published or analyzed—along
with a discussion of archaeological evidence for ninth-century royal
and elite activity at the site of El Zotz in northern Guatemala. With
this work completed, submitted, and defended, I received the doctoral degree from Brown University on May 25, 2014. I presented
some of the results of my dissertation research in a research report,
“he Name of the King: Politics and Nomenclature in the Maya
Terminal Classic Period,” in October 2013. And I wrote a review of
Robert Williams’s recent book, he Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall:
Mixtec Lineage Histories and Political Biographies, which was published in the February issue of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie
sociale. One of the most satisfying aspects of my fellowship was
having the opportunity to discuss epigraphic and archaeological
questions with other researchers. hese discussions led to several
collaborative projects now in process, among them an analysis of
the Early Classic mural paintings from Uaxactun Structure B-13 and
an article on new epigraphic indings connected to the Terminal
Classic magnate Olom Jaatz’. Other articles derived from my dissertation work are in progress as well, including one on innovative
Terminal Classic onomastic practices and a reassessment of the Vase
of the Initial Series from Uaxactun.
Zachary J. Chase, University of Chicago, “Performing the Past
in the Ritual, Mythological, and Historical Landscapes of
Huarochirí, Peru (ca. 1400–1700)”
During my time as a junior fellow, I completed three chapters for
edited volumes and made enough concrete progress on my dissertation, “Performing the Past in the Historical, Ritual, and Mythological
Landscapes of Huarochirí, Peru (ca. 1400–1700),” to send a completed drat to my dissertation committee. he library collections
were invaluable in developing the conceptual framework and historical contexts for the following dissertation chapters: “he Myths
of a Prehistory,” an analysis of the principal historical components
of the currently prevalent model of Huarochirí’s prehistory; “Toward
an Archaeology of Extirpation,” an exploration of the theoretical and
material archaeological approaches to researching the destructive and
productive religious interactions during the series of Spanish colonial
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campaigns to eradicate non- or quasi-Christian cults in the seventeenth-century central Andes; and “he Llacsatambo-San Damián
Axis,” a presentation and analysis of the archaeological data from my
dissertation ieldwork. Conversations with director of studies Colin
McEwan and other fellows at Dumbarton Oaks were enlightening
and beneicial to developing my thinking on these and many other
topics. In addition to this progress in research and writing, and perhaps matching them in importance, were the lessons and training I
received in professionalism. hrough feedback from the community
at Dumbarton Oaks, I learned a great deal about polishing presentations, concentrating and focusing their content, and making them
accessible to audiences composed of smart and educated scholars
from a variety of disciplines.
Jamie Forde, University of Colorado, Boulder, “he Conquest of
the Hill of the Sun: Indigenous Domestic Life at Prehispanic and
Colonial Achiutla, Oaxaca, Mexico”
My dissertation research integrates archaeological, ethnohistorical, and iconographic data in a focused case study to examine how
the indigenous peoples of Mexico coped with Spanish colonial rule
during the early decades of contact with Europeans. My research is
focused on the site of Achiutla, in the Mixtec region of the modern
state of Oaxaca, where I recently carried out archaeological excavations of indigenous households dating to the early colonial period.
Pre-Columbian codices and colonial chronicles indicate that Achiutla
was an important native religious center prior to the conquest, the
home of an oracle that was venerated throughout the region and
abroad. Colonial legal records document numerous instances of conlict between indigenous residents and the Spanish authorities and
clerics. In focusing on households and material evidence, I examine
how this rather traumatic historical rupture afected daily life, in
ways that are not accounted for in the historical record. My research
has been enhanced greatly by a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks,
where I analyzed and synthesized data from the excavation project
at Achiutla. he outstanding library for Pre-Columbian Studies was
an invaluable resource, providing access to literature oten diicult
to ind elsewhere. Furthermore, given the interdisciplinary nature
of my research, I beneitted greatly from the scholarly community at
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Dumbarton Oaks, both within the Pre-Columbian Studies program
and beyond. Among other things, this led to a collaborative examination of the connections between Mixtec and Nahua pictorial codices
with Elodie Dupey-García.
Alejandra Rojas, Harvard University, “Flora Incognita:
Picturing Nature in the New World”
During my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, I inished drating my dissertation on the irst images of New World lora produced ater the
Spanish conquest. his dissertation investigates the illustrations of
New World nature in four herbals: Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo’s
Historia natural y general de las indias (1539–1548), Juan Badiano
and Martin de la Cruz’s Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis
(1552), Francisco Hernandez’s De Mmateria medica novae hispaniae
(compiled between 1571 and 1576), and book eleven of Bernardino
de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1576–1577). Each involved indigenous participation to varying degrees. hese documents demonstrate how text and image enabled European naturalists and clerics
to identify, translate, and appropriate indigenous knowledge. More
importantly, the stylistic wavering between Nahua and European
systems of representation shed light on the artists’ negotiation of a
new colonial identity vis-à-vis the preconquest past and new colonial
social and religious structures. Dumbarton Oaks ofered the ideal
interdisciplinary environment for me to extend and hone my work,
which stands at the intersection between art and science. Staf and
fellows were extraordinarily helpful and generous. I encountered
Byzantinists willing to read Latin poetry about passion-fruits and
descriptions of magical plants used to predict life expectancy, Garden
and Landscape fellows with whom I discussed European responses
to American nature, and Pre-Columbianists who reined my understanding of Nahua culture, helping me see, for example, the mythical
city of Tollan symbolized by multicolored plants in a manuscript I
had scrutinized for years beforehand.
Franco Rossi, Boston University, “he Brothers Taaj: Orders and
he Politics of Expertise in the Late Maya Court”
I came to Dumbarton Oaks having inished three seasons of thesis
ield research based at the Sabios Group in the Classic-period Maya
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site of Xultun, Guatemala. I arrived with a clear conceptual framework for my dissertation—building on what archaeologist Adam
T. Smith calls the “Archaeology of Political Associations” as seen
through the mural art and residential archaeology a highly inluential and political scribal order, with special emphasis on its internal
pedagogical practices. I set speciic goals for writing this research up
in the course of my fellowship. In the fall semester, I drated some 150
pages of the thesis, and in the spring semester, I shited my focus from
the dissertation to several collaborative articles concerning the Sabios
Group. he irst was submitted to the journal Antiquity in February
and accepted for publication in March (pending minor revisions);
the second was submitted to American Anthropology in March; the
third was submitted to Ancient Mesoamerica in April; and the fourth
was submitted as part of a set of collective papers stemming from a
recent conference on early Maya E-Group architecture. I will have a
full drat of my dissertation ready by October 2014—something that
would not have been possible without the focused research, thought,
and writing completed at Dumbarton Oaks.
Summer Fellows
Cristiana Barreto, Universidade de São Paulo, “Figuring the
Body in Ancient Amazonia”
My research explores the theme of body fabrication and representation among precolonial Amazonian cultures. My goal is to document
the range of variability in the way bodies are conceived and represented in clay igurines, in order to better characterize the diverse
cultural traditions that coexisted in the lower Amazon basin in the
centuries before the European conquest. In comparing diferent
models of bodies, I also aimed to gain new insights into the patterns
of interaction and exchange among these societies, since igurines are
closely related to the public display of their own identities. During
the summer at Dumbarton Oaks, I focused on expanding the bibliographic references for this study, reading about the archaeology of
igurines in other regions of South America, especially in the neighboring Pre-Columbian Andes and Caribbean. his research helped
me to pursue the idea that many traditions of igurines in Formative
South America share the intention of displaying the transformational
nature of the body, oten related to shamanistic practices. Many of
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these traditions also share an expanded notion of humanity, in which
animals, plants, objects, and other supernatural beings can behave as
humans in their own worlds.
Bérénice Gaillemin, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, “A Critical
Perspective on Central Mexican Writing and the Phonetic
Principle”
Studies conducted on the pictorial writing of Central Mexico prove
that there is a great variety of signs that have diferent functions
(semasiographic, logographic, and phonetic). I consider that those
functions change depending on time (pre-Hispanic or colonial) and
on the thematic nature of the encoded text. For instance, the use
of phonetic signs implies a change in the relation between writing,
orality, and memory. During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks, I began
to create an index of phonetic signs in order to clarify the contextual use of those signs. his index will enable me to underline the
polymorphic nature of the writings of Central Mexico, bringing new
answers to the central issue of the use of phonetic signs. Based on this
comparison, I started writing a paper concerning the originality of
the phonetic signs used in the Testerian catechisms. hese catechisms
were created for the evangelization of indigenous Nahuatl speakers
and their memorization of Christian texts. I reviewed the literature
concerning the irst attempts at deciphering several Mesoamerican
writing systems, paying particular attention to the specialized publications on speciic codices. A very surprising discovery helped me
understand that the Borbonicus Codex may provide phonetic signs,
working like puns based on the homophonic principle, which, to my
knowledge, has never been described as such before.
William R. Tyler Fellows
Deniz Turker Cerda, Garden and Landscape Studies, “Ottoman
Victoriana: Istanbul’s Last Ottoman Palace-Complex of Yildiz,
1876–1909”
During my spring-term residency at Dumbarton Oaks, I worked fulltime on a project to refresh the Middle Eastern Garden Traditions website, which was irst developed by an international group of scholars in
garden history in 2004. he site has languished for several years without
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an institutional home, but has now been moved to the Dumbarton
Oaks website. With the indispensable help and expertise of members of
the publications department, we are nearly ready to launch the updated
site. Its diverse content aims to serve scholars in the early phases of
their research on Islamic garden traditions by providing them with
invaluable bibliographic, lexical, visual, and descriptive information
on the most seminal gardens from the eighth to the twentieth centuries. I have spent invaluable time in the Rare Book Collection scouting for lesser-known travel accounts of naturalists who ventured to the
Near and Middle East in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Two
of these accounts have now found their descriptions in the Botany of
Empire online exhibition. Others will be added to the new sections of
the website in order to introduce the unique and diverse resources that
Dumbarton Oaks has to ofer on these geographies.
Saskia Dirkse, Byzantine Studies, “Asceticism, Orality,
and Textual Transmission in the Spiritual Meadow of John
Moschus”
During my second year as a William R. Tyler Fellow, I was able to
build on the research that I began in Europe last year. My dissertation is a study of attitudes toward and teachings about the end of life,
death, and the aterlife, as they are expressed in early Byzantine religious tales. Over the course of the year, I focused my attention on
descriptions of heavenly journeys of the soul, the postmortem reassimilation of anchorites into the community of the living, and the role
of monastic penitence as a preparation for death in John Klimakos’s
Ladder of Divine Ascent. My work has proited immensely from the
library’s extensive holdings and from the knowledge and kindness
of the staf. In particular, the large collection of primary and secondary texts related to death in the western Middle Ages ofered an
unexpected and fruitful comparative counterpoint to the Byzantine
tradition.
I also continued work on the Dumbarton Oaks Manuscripts on
Microilm database. his ongoing institutional project, which started
three years ago and is nearing its completion, seeks to create a searchable database of records for the library’s large and valuable collection
of microilms of manuscripts and documents. I spent much of my
time working with ilms from the Monastery of Saint Catherine on
Mount Sinai and the Istanbul Patriarchate library.
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Alexandar Sopov, Garden and Landscape Studies, “Ottoman
Horticultural Science and Practice, 1453–1669”
My research explores the relationship between farming manuals and
the changes in the agricultural production in early Ottoman cities
and countryside. I completed two chapters in the second year of my
fellowship. I used the library’s collection of early Ottoman primary
sources to analyze the spatial transformation of the newly conquered Constantinople/Konstantiniyye and the increased Ottoman
interest in producing farming manuals at the end of the iteenth
century. I also drated two chapters on the creation of the Ottoman
agricultural science in the second half of the sixteenth century, a
result of the absorption of agricultural land by the ruling class and
its interest in theoretical works on farming. his coincided with the
dispossession of peasants from agricultural land and the arrival of
new plants from the Americas.
In addition to the work on my dissertation, I worked in the
Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, where I cataloged photographs relevant to Garden and Landscape Studies. Prior to my
arrival at Dumbarton Oaks, these photographs were cataloged only
as Byzantine-related material, despite the fact that a large number of
them depict various Eastern Mediterranean landscapes and gardens. I
incorporated some of these images into the new design of the Middle
Eastern Garden Traditions website. I also revised some of the photograph descriptions in the Artamonof Collection, which were used as
visual sources in the “City and Agriculture: Studying and Preserving
the Historic Gardens of Istanbul” course at Harvard University.
Nawa Sugiyama, Pre-Columbian Studies, “Ritualized Animals:
Understanding Human-Animal Interactions at Teotihuacan”
During the course of my two-year fellowship, I completed both the
laboratory work and the write-up of my dissertation project. I analyzed
zooarchaeological and isotopic inds of nearly two hundred animals
from oferings at Teotihuacan, Mexico (1–550). his analysis not only
allowed me to produce a more nuanced reconstruction of the state rituals that took place but also enabled me to understand what some of the
key animals—felines, wolves, eagles, and rattlesnakes—symbolized and
how Teotihuacanos would have interacted with them. Skeletal pathologies conirmed that these wild carnivores were kept in coninement in
anticipation of the rituals. For example, a female puma, about eighteen
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55
months old, had an injury on her right femoral head. his would have
been a fatal injury for a solitary predator, but bone remodeling shows
that she survived this wound. Most likely, this carnivore was cared for,
and the remains of cooked rabbits in her stomach provide direct evidence of artiicial feeding. Results of bone isotopic investigations conirm this interpretation, as many of the animals sacriiced consumed
high levels of C4 grasses, most likely man-grown maize. hese results
push back the practice of keeping wild animals captive for sacriice over
nine centuries prior to the iteenth century, when Aztec rulers were
reported to have maintained zoos housing exotic and ferocious animals.
I use evidences of captivity to argue that these carnivores were active in
deining the sociopolitical landscape, giving meaning to monuments
themselves, and transforming artiicial mounds into sacred mountains.
Julian Yolles, Byzantine Studies, “Latin Culture in the Crusader
States (1099–1187)”
During my stay at Dumbarton Oaks, I divided my time between my
dissertation and my work for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.
he vast holdings at Dumbarton Oaks of primary and secondary literature on the crusades enabled me to produce the irst systematic overview of the extant Latin literary sources of the Latin East. In the second
half of the dissertation, I argue that writers in the crusader states
actively engaged with their cultural identity, particularly in relation
to the West, and sought to deine themselves by turning to classical,
biblical, and Carolingian models. his process of cultural self-deinition also took place within institutional contexts, as newly established
institutions such as the Templum Domini composed narratives to distinguish themselves within the dynamic landscape of the Holy Land.
My research was greatly aided by the feedback that I received from the
interdisciplinary group of scholars at Dumbarton Oaks; on numerous
occasions, the fellows generously provided me with helpful criticisms,
showed me relevant parallels, and opened up new ways of thinking.
During the spring term, I worked full time for the Dumbarton Oaks
Medieval Library. I proofread a number of volumes for the medieval
Latin subseries and coordinated with translators, and I utilized my
skills as a philologist to ensure that English translations matched the
Latin texts clearly and faithfully and that adequate notes were provided
for the beneit of a general audience.
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Byzantine Studies
his year will be remembered as a year of collaboration—exciting collaboration with the National Gallery of Art over their Byzantine exhibition, Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections;
unexpected but inspiring collaboration with the Garden and Landscape Studies program over two spring symposia on the senses; and
a collaboration with the Society for the Preservation of the Greek
Heritage over the lecture “Byzantine Emperors Abroad: FiteenthCenury Voyages to Western Europe.”
he National Gallery of Art exhibition brought 172 Byzantine
objects to Washington, D.C., from October 2013 to March 2014. For
Dumbarton Oaks, it was an opportunity to focus our activities on the
exhibition, moving some of them to the National Gallery of Art and
bringing some back to the museum at Dumbarton Oaks. For example, our fall colloquium—“Visualizing Community: City and Village
in Byzantine Greece,” organized by Robert Ousterhout—began at the
gallery, with papers by Eugenia Gerousi on “New Discoveries from
Byzantine Greece,” Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi on ceramics, and
Ioli Kalavrezou on “Art and Cratsmanship in Medieval Byzantium.”
It resumed the next day at Dumbarton Oaks, where Charalambos
Bakirtzis looked at Byzantine representations of Byzantine cities,
with a particular focus on hessalonike; Michalis Kappas spoke on
“Architecture and Piety in Urban and Rural Peloponnese”; Anastasia
Drandaki talked about Crete and its position between Byzantium and
the West in the late period; and Leonora Neville brought archival documents to life in a discussion of social hierarchies and social power in
medieval Greek villages. Jonathan Shea, one of our teaching fellows,
talked about visualizing urban economies in late medieval Greece,
A student in the Coins and Seals Summer School at work.
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and Sarah Brooks looked at two cases of the handling of memory ater
death in medieval Greek communities.
While this colloquium tried to deine Byzantine Greece, our
fourth Teaching Fellows’ Day—which brought together undergraduates from Georgetown University and George Washington
University—looked instead at the concept of Byzantine capitals outside Constantinople. Scott Johnson looked at Jerusalem as a spiritual capital for the empire, Margaret Mullett tried to see Ochrid as
a Balkan capital or at least as a communications hub, Jonathan Shea
looked at what happened when there were Epirote capitals at Ioannina
and Arta, and Dimiter Angelov introduced Nicaea as an exile capital. Students who had experienced the exhibition were able to set it
in context and to enjoy access to the museum collections, coins and
seals, and gardens of Dumbarton Oaks. As usual, they were delighted
with the occasion.
Our public lecture on January 16, 2014, was delivered by Sharon
Gerstel at the National Gallery of Art. It was a capacity audience and
the fortunate who gained admission heard a splendidly nuanced
treatment of items found in a hessalonike hoard and their place
in the history of the city. We also collaborated with the gallery over
their events, including a colloquium in February on the exhibition
objects as art (with papers by William Tronzo, Glenn Peers, Bissera
Pencheva, and Alicia Walker), and a public lecture by Robin Cormack
on classical art and Byzantine art. he National Gallery of Art then
organized a study day, when we sat with stools in the galleries to discuss the objects on view; Gudrun Buehl reciprocated with a greatly
appreciated visit to the Dumbarton Oaks Collection the next day.
In fact, February was a remarkable month for art historians and
Byzantinists in Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks had Anthony
Cutler as a visiting scholar, Francesca Tasso as a postdoctoral stipendiary, and Maren Heuren as a predoctoral resident all month, and
the collaboration with the National Gallery of Art drew in even more
Byzantine art historians for the colloquium and study days. Robin
Cormack spent a week at Dumbarton Oaks, and gave an “object
lesson” in storage, in which participants looked at diverse pieces like
the Chrysostom micromosaic and the Riha paten.
All of the planned events went well, but sometimes the unplanned
events were just as inspiring. he government shutdown, which delayed
the exhibition opening, was frustrating for the Greek archaeologists
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Visiting scholar Anthony Cutler delivering his informal talk in the
Founders’ Room, February 2014.
most closely concerned with the exhibition, but made it possible for
them to visit Dumbarton Oaks and to have more relaxed discussions
with our staf and fellows. he December public lecture at the National
Gallery of Art by Anthony Cutler was cancelled because of snow, but a
luncheon arranged at very short notice by the gallery’s director of academic programs allowed our fellows to discuss with him the exhibition,
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Scent lab at the “Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium”
symposium, April 2014.
their work, and the subject of the lecture, which was, in fact, heard as
part of our informal talks series on February 12, 2014.
We walked through the exhibition with groups from the
American School at Athens, who were excited to see their Corinth
materials on show; the Cappella Romana, who sang in the gallery and
returned to R Street to have supper with fellows; and the Center for
Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, who also saw that morning as a
highlight of their year. Fellows were able to spend time with objects
they were working on and junior fellows were able to gain experience
giving tours in the exhibition. When the show moved to Los Angeles,
Margaret Mullett was fortunate to see it in its new setting when she
gave a plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy
of America. (Next year, Chicago Byzantinists will be the lucky ones,
as the exhibition is reenvisaged for the Art Institute of Chicago.) he
whole experience for fellows, staf, and the Byzantine community
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in Washington, D.C., was extraordinary, and we are grateful to our
Byzantine colleagues inside and outside of Dumbarton Oaks as well
as to our colleagues at the National Gallery for what they saw, and
acknowledged publicly, as an important collaboration.
In April, we enjoyed two smaller but equally interesting collaborations; irst, a lecture by Judith Herrin on iteenth-century travel
by Byzantine emperors to the West was arranged by the Society for
the Preservation of the Greek Heritage. We were delighted to welcome both the organization and the lecturer, and half the seats in the
Founders’ Room were made available to members of the community
at Dumbarton Oaks. he annual symposium, with Susan Ashbrook
Harvey as symposiarch, was on sense perceptions in Byzantium. he
Garden and Landscape Studies symposium, two weeks later, was on
sound and scent in the garden. So the two programs collaborated: we
discussed installations; we shared a one-month stipendiary, Deborah
Green, who attended both symposia and spoke at the second; and we
constructed and administered a scent lab. Fourteen scents were available for sniing throughout the two symposia on the Music Room
Terrace, and symposia participants illed in questionnaires identifying the smells, and deining the associations, memories, and emotions
invoked by them. Dede Ruggles tabulated the results, concluding that
while the Garden and Landscape Studies attendees were better at identifying garden smells, the Byzantinists were unrivalled in recognizing
anise, redolent of long cloudy drinks beside the Mediterranean. he
scents were all chosen from a single Byzantine alimentary treatise by
Symeon Seth, an eleventh-century scientist, and a display and booklet
arranged by Alison Noble ofered translations of the relevant passages
and an overview of the text as a whole. Meanwhile, in the library,
Deb Brown organized an exhibition of musical books, entitled Music
in the Collections of Dumbarton Oaks, drawing on the library’s general and rare book collections, the Image Collections and Fieldwork
Archives, and the Institutional Archives. Featured in the exhibition
were musical manuscripts owned by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss
and facsimiles of medieval musical manuscripts (Byzantine, Slavic,
and Western). A new rotation of Byzantine textiles—focusing on
Byzantine and early Islamic furnishing textiles with igural imagery and showing the enduring popularity of motifs evoking the good
life—was on display in the Textile Gallery of the Dumbarton Oaks
Museum. he Orientation Gallery contained an exhibition, entitled
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Byzantine Studies fellows, May 2014.
Hagia Sophia Abstractions, of ive pastels by former employee and
artist Alex de Boeck, together with a slide show of images from Study
of Light in Hagia Sophia taken in the 1930s and 1940s by the Byzantine
Institute and now in the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives.
he symposium itself was the irst on the subject for Byzantinists
anywhere, though our symposiarch had written a highly acclaimed
book on smell. Art historians had perhaps been there earlier than
most, and two elegantly opposed papers—one looking back to the
Menil exhibition of last year, the other looking forward to an exhibition on the senses at the Walters Art Museum—set the tone. We proceeded in a properly Aristotelian progression from sight to sound and
then to smell, taste, and touch. We thought with Amy Papalexandrou
about the semantron as the one sound we can be sure sounded the
same to us and to the Byzantines; relected on desert silence with
Kim Haines-Eitzen; and enjoyed both the sound and thought of
Spiro Antonopoulos on embellishment and comprehensibility in late
Byzantine music. he next day, we were taken by Felipe Rojas Silva
and Valeria Sergueenkova to Anatolia to tangle with unpleasant
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smells, and by Dede Ruggles to Spain to consider the diiculty of
inding scents in Islamic gardens. homas Arentzen investigated milk
imagery in the poetry of Romanos, while Darlene Brooks Hedstrom
considered the determination of Egyptian monastic tastes on the basis
of archaeology. Stavroula Constantinou and Ingela Nilsson relected
on touch in terms of torture and eros. We then had the opportunity
to pull together the ive senses: Ruth Webb looked at the role of rhetoric; Laura Lieber considered ritual in two Jewish hymns; and Marcus
Plested examined the spiritual senses.
Of course, the lavor of any particular year is determined not by the
events but by the community of scholars in residence. During the
summer of 2013, the Coins and Seals Summer School brought eight
international numismatists and sigillographers together under the
direction of teachers Cecile Morrisson and Eric McGeer, along with
Eurydike Georganteli, Jonathan Shea, and Margaret Mullett. Seven
fellows were in residence during the summer, including historians,
students of religious studies, philologists, and art historians working on topics ranging from heodosian Rome to Roger II’s Sicily and
Kipchak cemeteries to Skopje. It was a pleasure to look at textiles with
Warren Woodin and to celebrate the new book by Meaghan McEvoy.
Maria Doerler and Nektarios Zarras worked on topics related to
past and future scholarly events at Dumbarton Oaks (i.e., the New
Testament symposium and the Emotions colloquium, respectively);
Mircea Dulus on a topic (Philagathos of Cerami) preigured by the
former director of studies Henry Maguire; Inmaculada Peréz Martín
on the manuscripts of Michael Psellos’s De omnifaria doctrina; and
Marka Tomic Djuric on the paintings of Marko’s monastery.
In the autumn, the lavor changed again with the incoming fellows, including two students of epigrams—Ivan Drpic, an art historian, and Foteini Spingou, a philologist—who managed to involve us
all in their concerns. With Tolga Uyar, who worked on Cappadocian
painting, and Jordan Pickett, who worked on late antique water
supply, they provided a base for the discussion of art history and
archaeology. Two other fellows and one Tyler fellow worked in the
early period—one a liturgist, Elena Velkova, and the other a historian, Ekaterina Nechaeva, as well as Saskia Dirkse, who worked on
her own PhD project on John Moschos and his contemporaries as well
as on her microilm project with Deb Brown. Junior fellows Nathan
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Leidholm and AnnaLinden Weller and Tyler fellow Julian Yolles
worked in the middle period, all on the borderlines of history and
literature, while Dimitris Kastritsis joined Tyler fellows Deniz Turker
Cerda and Aleksandar Sopov in Ottomanist conversation (though he
also had a great deal to say in dialog with the Byzantinists). he year
produced new jobs in Athens and Princeton, one Koc fellowship, one
PhD, and one book.
We also welcomed eight one-month stipendiaries from Australia,
Canada, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the Vatican,
and the United States, who brought to us a range of skills in law, liturgy, intellectual history, art history, and philology. Six predoctoral
residents included yet another epigrammatist who worked closely
with Foteini and Ivan. his year’s Harvard exchange sent Ekaterina
Nechaeva to Harvard, and brought Amy Hollywood to us, both very
successfully, and in the irst term a great highlight, much appreciated by the fellows, was the visit of Peter Brown. In addition to the
Harvard visits by Dimiter Angelov and Ioli Kalavrezou with their
classes, we welcomed a group of graduate students from the medieval
seminar, and four Bliss awardees to the symposium (one Byzantinist
and three students of the senses in Jefrey Hamburger’s class). We
made six awards of project grants, for seasons at sites in Albania,
Greece, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. Five of these project grant reports
may be found on our website. We are sad to report that the expedition
to Labovo could not take place as planned due to the tragic death of
Anna Christidou from the Central European University; we hope that
her collaborators can soon return to the site.
In terms of Dumbarton Oaks publications, it was a good year.
John Haldon’s A Critical Commentary on the Taktika of Leo VI was
published together with a revised edition of George Dennis’s he
Taktika of Leo VI. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67 (2013) appeared, for
the irst time in decades, in the year inscribed on the spine, and we
were delighted to publish he Life of Saint Basil the Younger: Critical
Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version, edited,
translated, and commented by Denis F. Sullivan, Alice-Mary Talbot,
and Stamatina McGrath, our largest volume since the Economic
History of Byzantium.
Members of the team in Byzantine Studies also published various works during the year. Margaret Mullett published “Tented
Ceremony: Ephemeral Performances under the Komnenoi,” in Court
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Robin Cormack delivering a lecture at the National Gallery of Art.
Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval
Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (2013); “How to Criticize
the Laudandus,” in Power and Subversion in Byzantium (2013);
“Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine
Tent,” in Experiencing Byzantium (2013); “Dreaming in the Life of
Cyril Phileotes,” in Dreaming of Byzantium and Beyond (2014); and
“Gynamics: he Dynamics of Female Founding in Byzantium,” in
Female Founders in Byzantium and Beyond (2011–2012). his book
also contains papers by three other members of the 2013–2014 community: Tolga Uyar, Alice-Mary Talbot, and Fani Gargova.
Members of the team also gave lectures in Athens, Edinburgh,
Jerusalem, New York, Notre Dame, Princeton, Salzburg, Vienna, New
Haven, and Washington, D.C. Margaret Mullett gave a plenary lecture at the joint meeting of the Medieval Academy of America and the
Medieval Association of the Paciic, hosted by CMRS on April 10–12,
2014, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She taught a class at
George Washington University and served on the board of ARIT, as
an external reader on a PhD committee, and on the jury of CAORC’s
inaugural Mellon fellowships, an outcome of the Dumbarton Oaks
conversations on archaeology. Scott Johnson gave the Procope Costas
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Distinguished Lecture at Brooklyn College in May 2013, and serves on
the governing board of the Byzantine Studies Association of North
America, on the editorial board for publications at the Center for
Hellenic Studies, and as an academic advisor for the vHMML project.
With Jack Tannous, he continues to edit the Syriac Resources page at
Dumbarton Oaks. Jonathan Shea, with the advice of Eric McGeer, is
responsible for the seals pages at Dumbarton Oaks.
Outreach was served by the monthly newsletter, the Byzantine
Studies Facebook page, and by the program director’s annual report
to the Byzantine Studies Conference. We were very sorry to lose
Amanda Daxon as our program coordinator, but we are grateful to
Sarah Bohn for stepping into the breach as interim coordinator.
Postdoctoral Associates
Scott Johnson, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Byzantine Greek
In Fall 2013, I taught an experimental and challenging course, “Maps
and the Mediterranean, 1500 BC to 1500 AD” at Georgetown University.
he course, which arose from my work on cartography and travel literature in the Middle Ages, was a thrilling opportunity to try out
some texts and ideas on a small group of iteen students. In Spring
2014, I taught a course on “Procopius and Justinian,” which considered the historiographical basis for understanding the sixth century in
Byzantium. I also taught an introductory Syriac class in both semesters
to Georgetown University students and two fellows from Dumbarton
Oaks. I brought my students to Dumbarton Oaks for public lectures,
the Teaching Fellows’ Day, the colloquium, and the symposium. I also
took a group to hear the public lectures at the National Gallery of Art
in conjunction with the Heaven and Earth exhibition. I gave a tour of
this exhibition to students from Loyola Marymount University, and
guest lectured on the city of Constantinople to a class at the Catholic
University of America. As I do every fall, I gave a series of aternoon
lectures on the “Byzantine Balkans” at the Foreign Service Institute to
prepare diplomats going abroad to the Balkan region. Finally, I formed
with local colleagues a scholarly reading group called “Washington
Area Reading Group in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies”
(WARBLS), which has attracted students and professors from local universities, promoting a real sense of community among scholars of the
Middle Ages in Washington, D.C.
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Jonathan Shea, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Byzantine
History/Sigillography and Numismatics
he academic year 2013–2014 marked my irst full year of teaching
at George Washington University. I taught two classes: “Byzantium,
Empire of the New Rome” in the fall, and “Polis, Civitas, and Madina:
Cities in the Medieval Mediterranean” in the spring. Both classes
enjoyed trips to the Dumbarton Oaks Museum, where they were
given tours of the Byzantine Collection and were allowed to handle
Byzantine seals and coins. With Scott Johnson, I helped organize
the fourth Teaching Fellows’ Day, a daylong conference for students
from George Washington University, Georgetown University, and
Catholic University on “Center and Periphery: Byzantine Capitals
Outside Byzantium.” My contribution addressed the political turmoil
in Ioannina and Arta in the late Byzantine period. I also presented
the paper “Visualizing Urban Economies in Late Medieval Greece” at
the Byzantine Studies colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks. Work on the
seals catalog progressed with a redesign of the seals pages and continued work on the seals of the judiciary, to which have been added
seals of the central administration and palace staf. With the work by
Lain Wilson on the Byzantine military seals, we are coming closer to
having an index of the seals collection for the irst time.
Scholarly Activities
Annual Symposium
Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium
Organized by Susan Ashbrook and Margaret Mullett
April 25–27, 2014
Glenn Peers, University of Texas, Austin, “How Bodies Know, How
We Know Bodies”
Martina Bagnoli, Walters Art Museum, “Sensing Beauty: Medieval
Art, the Five Senses, and the Art Museum”
Amy Papalexandrou, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, “he
Byzantine Ear: Perceptions of Sound and Sonic Environments
across the Byzantine Acoustic Horizon”
Kim Haines-Eitzen, Cornell University, “Geographies of Silence in
Late Antiquity”
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Spiro Antonopoulos, City University, London, “he Phenomenon
of Embellishment and Recomposition in the Music of Late
Byzantium”
Felipe Rojas Silva, Brown University, and Valeria Sergueenkova,
University of Cincinnati, “he Smells of Time: Olfactory
Associations with the Past in Roman and Byzantine Anatolia”
D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
“Finding Scents in Islamic Gardens”
homas Arentzen, Lund University, “Struggling with Romanos’s
‘Dagger of Taste’”
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Wittenberg University, “Baking
Bread and Salting Fish: he Archaeology of Monastic Kitchens and
Ascetic Taste”
Stavroula Constantinou, University of Cyprus, “he Saint’s Two
Bodies: Sensibility Under (Self)Torture in Byzantine Hagiography”
Ingela Nilsson, Uppsala University, “To Touch or Not to Touch:
Erotic Tactility in Byzantine Literature”
Ruth Webb, Université Lille 3, “Virtual Sensations and Inner
Visions: Words and the Senses in Late Antiquity and Byzantium”
Laura Lieber, Duke University, “Singing the Body Organic:
Corruption and Creation in Two Late Ancient Jewish Hymns”
Marcus Plested, Marquette University, “he Spiritual Senses,
Monastic and heological”
Colloquium
Visualizing Community: City and Village in Byzantine Greece
Organized by Robert Ousterhout
November 15–16, 2013
Eugenia Gerousi, Directorate of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine
Antiquities, “New Discoveries from Byzantine Greece”
Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, Dumbarton Oaks, “he Leventis
Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Cyprus, Earthenwares from
‘Heavenly’ Byzantium”
Ioli Kalavrezou, Harvard University, “Art and Cratsmanship in
Medieval Byzantium”
Charalambos Bakirtzis, Foundation Anastasios G. Leventis,
“Visualizing the Byzantine City”
Michalis Kappas, Greek Archaeological Service, Kalamata,
“Architecture and Piety in Urban and Rural Peloponnese”
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Scott Johnson at the “Center and Periphery: Byzantine Capitals Outside
Byzantium” workshop, March 29, 2014.
Anastasia Drandaki, Benaki Museum and Princeton Institute for
Advanced Study, “Patronage, Politics, and Art in Crete on the Eve
of the Council of Ferrara-Florence”
Leonora Neville, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “Social
Hierarchies and Social Power in Medieval Greek Villages”
Jonathan Shea, Dumbarton Oaks/George Washington University,
“Visualizing Urban Economies in Late Medieval Greece”
Sarah Brooks, James Madison University, “he Art of Memory:
Visualizing Death in Byzantine Greece”
Teaching Fellows’ Day
Center and Periphery: Byzantine Capitals Outside Byzantium
Organized by Scott Johnson and Jonathan Shea
March 29, 2014
Scott Johnson, Dumbarton Oaks/Georgetown University,
“Jerusalem: Christian Capital and Center of Byzantine Faith”
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Margaret Mullett, Dumbarton Oaks, “Ochrid: he Middle
Byzantine Balkans and Imperial Communication”
Jonathan Shea, Dumbarton Oaks/George Washington University,
“he Epirote: Arta, Ioannina, and Byzantine Greece as Periphery”
Dimiter Angelov, Harvard University, “Nicaea: A Byzantine
Capital in Exile”
Public Lecture
January 16, 2014
Sharon E. J. Gerstel, University of California, Los Angeles,
“Witnessing Byzantium: he Greek Perspective”
Talks
October 2, 2013
Giedre Mickunaite, Vilnius Academy of Arts, “Maniera Graeca in
Europe’s Catholic East: Words and Pictures beyond Byzantium”
October 16, 2013
Rafah Jouejati, McGill University, “Syrian Church Mosaics of the
Fourth and Fith Centuries: An Overview”
November 13, 2013
Andrew McCarthy, Cyprus American Archaeological Research
Institute, “Town and Country in Byzantine Cyprus: Recent Results
from the Prastio Mesorotsos Archaeological Expedition”
November 20, 2013
Julian Yolles, Harvard University, “Latin Culture in the Crusader
States (1098–1187)”
December 4, 2013
Alan Cadwallader, Australian Catholic University, “Layers of
Conlict in the Story of Saint Michael of Chonai”
December 11, 2013
Saskia Dirkse, Harvard University, “he Unquiet Dead: he
Posthumous Experience of Bodies in Early Byzantine
Religious Tales”
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January 15, 2014
Dimitris Kastritsis, University of St. Andrews, “A Byzantine
Alexander Romance and its Ottoman Captions: Venice Hellenic
Institute Codex Gr. 5”
February 5, 2014
Andrew Walker White, Stratford University, “Perspectives and
Questions on the Iconography of the hree Children”
February 12, 2014
Anthony Cutler, Pennsylvania State University, “Gits and Git
Exchanges between Byzantium and Islam”
February 19, 2014
Dafni Penna, University of Groningen, “Digesting the Digest: On
the ‘New’ Basilica Scholia”
February 26, 2014
Ivan Drpic, University of Washington, “he Byzantine Enkolpion:
Object and Agency”
Francesca Tasso, Raccolte Artische Castello Sforzesco, “Collecting
Ivories in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: he Trivulzio
Family Collection and the Grado Chair”
March 5, 2014
Foteini Spingou, University of Oxford, “Royal Weddings and Royal
Babies in Twelth-Century Constantinople”
March 12, 2014
Marilyn Heldman, American University, “Saint Mark Evangelist as
Patriarch and Other Observations on the Garima Gospels”
March 19, 2014
Fani Gargova, Dumbarton Oaks, “he Synagogue of Soia: A
Reassessment of the Role of the Bulgarian Sephardic Community
at the Turn of the Twentieth Century through Its Architecture”
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Participants in the Coins and Seals Summer School.
March 26, 2014
Marek Dospĕl, Charles University, Prague, “Bir Shawish: An
Early Christian Community in the Western Desert of Egypt and
heir Texts”
April 2, 2014
Betsy Williams, Dumbarton Oaks, “From Artemis to Gabriel:
Iconography, Technique, and Sources of the Earliest Resist-Dyed
Textile Hangings”
April 16, 2014
Judith Herrin, King’s College, London, “Byzantine Emperors
Abroad: Fiteenth-Century Voyages to Western Europe”
April 22, 2014
Andraá Neméth, Vatican Library, “Revisiting the Chronology of
Constantine VII’s Historical Excerpts”
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April 23, 2014
Joshua O’Driscoll, Harvard University, “In the Wake of heophanu?
he Byzantine Question in Manuscript Illumination from
Ottonian Cologne”
Summer Program
Coins and Seals Summer School
Faculty: Cécile Morrisson and Eric McGeer, with Eurydike Georganteli and Jonathan Shea
July 8–August 2, 2013
Participants: Pavla Drapelova, Angelina Volkof, Ali Miynat, Maria
Papadaki, Sandro Nikolaishvili, Tommi Lankila, Christos Malatras,
Ayse Ercan
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Garden and
Landscape Studies
The academic year 2013–2014 marked an important new point
of departure for the program in Garden and Landscape Studies.
We submitted a successful application to the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation for a major initiative in urban landscape studies, which
plans to bring designers and historians together at Dumbarton Oaks
over the next three years (2015–2018) to address the landscape consequences of advancing urbanization. At the same time, we continued
to develop our traditional areas of strength, hosting the fellowships,
lectures, symposia, internships, and garden installation projects that
have become the hallmarks of Garden and Landscape Studies at
Dumbarton Oaks.
he annual symposium, organized by senior fellow D. Fairchild
Ruggles and held May 9–10, 2014, was on the subject of “Sound and
Scent in the Garden.” Featuring fourteen speakers—a truly global
team in terms of institutional ailiations, range of subjects, and
scholarly perspectives—the symposium examined one of the most
diicult topics in landscape history: sensory perception. While we
oten approach gardens as things to be seen—thus engaging the rational, intellectual part of the human brain—“Sound and Scent in the
Garden” explored the more elusive experiences of sound and smell.
Although important dimensions of garden design and performance
that have powerful efects on the human body, memory, and imagination, these senses are ephemeral and do not lend themselves easily to
scholarly investigation. How does the historian capture those sensations except through words, which survive in manuscripts and printed
books, themselves visual media? Aside from stating that a lower is
Hugh Livingston installing The Pool of “Bamboo Counterpoint” in the
Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
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fragrant, how can the historian bring out the cultural meanings of
its speciic scent, beyond stating that it is sweet or pungent or that
it smells like something else, incurring a circular pattern of description and association? Can the historical soundscape of a garden with
running water and nightingales be meaningfully recreated for ears
that are accustomed to the loud hum of air conditioning and the roar
of car engines? he papers in the symposium explored the ways that
the historical experience of sound and scent can be recuperated, and
examined the meaning of those senses for cultural history and landscape design, past and present.
A smaller event, the annual colloquium, involved seven speakers and was held on November 1, 2013, on the subject of “Travel and
Translation.” Its aim was to explore the ways in which landscape
design ideas are transmitted and exchanged—sometimes through
literal travel and translation, and sometimes through study, absorption, and interpretation. his colloquium also marked the launching
of a new Dumbarton Oaks series of translations of classic and rare
texts on garden history and on the philosophy, art, and techniques
of landscape architecture, the irst two volumes in which, presented
below, were published in the fall of 2013. he focus of the colloquium
was on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany and Central
Europe, with comparative talks on Italy, England, Ireland, and the
United States. Topics included the German response to English and
American ideas about metropolitan park design; travel in the context
of gardeners’ education in nineteenth-century Germany; the travels
of Irish revolutionaries in France and the impact of these experiences
on the formation of their ideas; the response to Palladian villa gardens in the context of the Grand Tour; and the adoption of English
landscape garden forms in Hungary in the course of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Other academic events during the year included lectures
by Georges Farhat of the University of Toronto on “Le Nôtre and
Versailles in Modernity,” an examination of the enduring legacy of
the great French landscape designer on the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth, and by Eugene Wang of Harvard University,
who spoke on the Qianlong Emperor’s Garden in the Forbidden
City, drawing out both its temporal and spatial narrative qualities.
We also hosted numerous informal talks by visiting scholars, onemonth research stipend recipients, and interns, who spoke to staf
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Garden and Landscape Studies fellows, interns, and staf, Summer 2013.
and fellows as well as invited guests. All these events were ably organized by Jane Padelford, the program coordinator in Garden and
Landscape Studies.
Our publications program continued to be active on many
fronts, thanks to the efforts of postdoctoral associate Anatole
Tchikine. his year, the proceedings of the 2011 symposium were
published as Technology and the Garden, edited by Kenneth
Helphand and Michael G. Lee, and the irst two titles appeared in
the translation series, ex horto. One is a travel report by the German
court gardener Hans Jancke, Travel Report: An Apprenticeship in
the Earl of Derby’s Kitchen Gardens and Greenhouses at Knowsley,
England, the manuscript of which is in the Rare Book Collection at
Dumbarton Oaks. he publication is a joint project with the Center
of Garden Art and Landscape Architecture at Leibniz University
Hannover. he other is the translation of Die Gartenkultur des 20.
Jahrhunderts by the German theoretician and designer Leberecht
Migge, one of the least known and most interesting texts of the
modern era in landscape architecture, which appeared on the
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Garden and Landscape Studies fellows and staf, May 2014.
centenary of the book’s original publication in 1913. Next in the
series is a volume of translations of the Kangxi emperor’s poems and
prose descriptions of the hirty-Six Views of the Bishu Shanzhuang,
to be published together with the irst-ever side-by-side reproductions of the complete woodblocks and copper plate engravings commissioned by the emperor, which were instrumental in bringing
knowledge of Chinese gardens to Europe. he goal of ex horto is
to make available in English both works in manuscript that have
never been published and books that have long been out-of-print;
the series will eventually constitute a library of historical sources
that have deined the core of the ield. By making these works more
available, the series will help provide access to the foundational literature of garden and landscape studies.
he community of fellows in 2013–2014 included seven in all,
both full year and half year, both fellows and junior fellows. hey
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hailed from England, Hungary, and Brazil as well as the United
States; their topics ranged from Russian apothecary gardens to
public parks in Northeastern Brazil. Two Tyler fellows were also
in residence, both Ottoman specialists, working on updates to the
Dumbarton Oaks Middle East Garden Traditions website. We also
hosted three summer fellows from China, Belgium, and the United
States as well as three summer interns, who divided their time
between research projects and work in the gardens. During the year,
we welcomed visiting scholar Joseph Disponzio, who worked on
Jean-Marie Morel; we also hosted three predoctoral residents and
seven month-long research stipend recipients.
he year also saw continued activity in the program’s occasional
series of contemporary art installations. Cloud Terrace, the creation of
artists Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot, was disassembled in October. In
May, in conjunction with the symposium on scent and sound in the
garden, we opened a new project by sound artist Hugh Livingston. Dr.
Livingston installed a group of twelve organ-like pipes in the ornamental pool that garden designer Beatrix Farrand placed in lieu of a
stage below the brick amphitheater in the gardens. he pipes, made
of clear acrylic with speakers mounted on the top, may be seen as a
chorus of diferent voices, creating a soundscape of remixed recordings collected in the gardens and augmented by newly composed
musical materials, many of which are related to the bamboo growing near the pool. In addition, Livingston spent some time with the
1926 Steinway in the historic Music Room, a venue connected with
Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto. Fragments and igments
of Stravinsky are present in the sound installation’s vocabulary, using
computer sotware that generates real-time improvised variations
from the source material. From a distance, on the amphitheater steps,
visitors perceive the chorus as a melded whole. Up close, as one circulates the perimeter of the pool, the individual components and their
counterpoint become more obvious. Sound resonates of the surface of the water and ills the enclosure created by the amphitheater,
the bamboo to the east, and the steep slope to the west. Livingston
graduated cum laude in music from Yale University, received an MFA
from the California Institute of the Arts, and a doctorate from the
University of California, San Diego. He draws on the history of outdoor music making as well as on natural sound and psychoacoustic
principles to create site-speciic soundscapes.
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Speakers at the “Sound and Scent in the Garden” symposium,
May 9–10, 2014.
Complementing our traditional strengths, an indication of
additional future directions in Garden and Landscape Studies was
given by the receipt of a major award from the Mellon Foundation to
create a new interdisciplinary program in urban landscape studies.
he grant of $850,000 was awarded through the Foundation’s initiative in “Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities,” launched in
2012 to support scholarship and higher education at the intersection
of architecture and the humanities. he grant will add a signiicant
new dimension to the existing program in Garden and Landscape
Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. Bringing together landscape architects
and historians, it will explore how urban environments got to be the
way they are and how best to manage them today. his grant is one of
iteen made by the Mellon Foundation so far to major institutions of
higher education and research to foster the joint contributions that
the humanities and the design and planning disciplines may make
to the understanding of the processes and efects of burgeoning
urbanization.
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he program at Dumbarton Oaks will involve three principle components: new semester-long fellowships to be shared among designers
and academics, as well as shorter-term residencies for senior practitioners; a series of academic events that will create a framework for
interactions among these scholars and practitioners, along with other
humanities scholars at Dumbarton Oaks and neighboring academic
institutions; and a series of public programs, including lectures, colloquia, workshops, and publications, all aimed at disseminating the initiative’s work nationally and internationally. Dumbarton Oaks is one of
the few institutions in the world with a program devoted to garden and
landscape studies that is targeted at both humanities scholars and landscape practitioners. his grant will signiicantly expand the institution’s
opportunities for both of these groups, fostering constructive dialogue
between them about the history and future of urban landscapes, and
encouraging them to bridge the gap between their professional modes
of thinking. he program will be in the planning phase during the
2014–2015 academic year, and will be implemented over three years
from September 2015 to June 2018.
Scholarly Activities
Annual Symposium
Sound and Scent in the Garden
Organized by D. Fairchild Ruggles
May 9–10, 2014
John Dixon Hunt, University of Pennsylvania, “Beyond Ekphrasis,
Beyond Sight, Beyond Words . . . ”
Anatole Tchikine, Dumbarton Oaks, “Water in the Italian Garden:
he Culture of Display and the Politics of Sensory Experience”
Barbara Burlison Mooney, University of Iowa, “Bearing to
Your Senses Sweet Sounds and Odors: Early Impressions of the
Prairie Landscape”
Priyaleen Singh, School of Planning and Architecture, New
Delhi, “Sounds and Scents of Monsoon in the Late Medieval
Gardens of Rajasthan”
Mohammad Gharipour, Morgan State University, and Manu Sobti,
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “Entrapping Ephemeral
Magic: Sensation and Reward in the Persianate Garden”
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Mark Laird, Harvard University, “Lilac and Nightingale: A Heritage
of Scent and Sound at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill”
Hugh Livingston, Livingston Sound, “A Sound Garden for
Dumbarton Oaks”
Deborah Green, University of Oregon, “‘Come South Wind, Blow
Upon My Garden that Its Spices May Flow’: Experience in the
Ancient Jewish Garden”
Alain Touwaide, Smithsonian Institution, “Bottled Gardens:
Capturing Scents for Health”
Ali Akbar Husain, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture,
Pakistan, “he Nine Scent Bouquets from the Itr-i Nauras Shahi”
Elizabeth Hyde, Kean University, “he Scent of Power, or Flowers,
Fragrance, and Ephemerality in the Gardens of Louis XIV”
Elizabeth Fowler, University of Virginia, “Audio Delay: he Hortus
Conclusus and Body Technique”
Yu Zhang, Southwest Jiaotong University, “A Sensorial Experience
in Yunqin Zhai: From Qin Zither Music to Natural Melody in the
Chinese Garden”
Rachel Korolof, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign/
Dumbarton Oaks, “he Unscented Garden: Scent Experience
in Russian Medical and Botanical Gardens at the Turn of the
Seventeenth Century”
Colloquium
Travel and Translation
Organized by John Beardsley, Dumbarton Oaks
November 1, 2013
Finola O’Kane Crimmins, University College Dublin, “Route
Reversal: he Design Consequences of Traveling in Contrary
Motion Across Eighteenth-Century Europe”
Kristof Fatsar, Corvinus University of Budapest, “European
Travelers and the Transformation of Garden Art in Hungary at
the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”
Linda Parshall, independent scholar, “‘Letters of a Dead Man’:
A New Translation of Prince Pückler-Muskau’s Letters from
England, 1826–1829” (presented by herese O’Malley)
Rafaella Fabiani Giannetto, University of Pennsylvania, “‘Greens
ater the Italian Way’: he Landscape of the Veneto through the
Lens of the Grand Tour”
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Hubertus Fischer, Leibniz-Universität Hannover, “Unique Sources
of European Garden Culture; Travels and Travel Reports of
German Court Gardeners in the Early Nineteenth Century:
Heinrich Ludolph Wendland (1820)”
Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Leibniz-Universität Hannover,
“German Gardeners, Travel, and Professional Training in
the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: he Example of
Hans Jancke”
David H. Haney, University of Kent, “‘he Metropolis a Mother of
Gardens’: he Role of International Urban Design in Leberecht
Migge’s Garden Culture of the Twentieth Century”
Public Lectures
September 23, 2013
Georges Farhat, University of Toronto, “Le Nôtre and Versailles in
Modernity”
March 20, 2014
Eugene Wang, Harvard University, “How to Read the Chinese
Garden? Qianlong Emperor’s Retreat in the Forbidden City”
Talks
August 24, 2013
Rosabella Alvarez-Calderon, Harvard University, “he Dumbarton
Oaks Frameyard Excavation Report”
August 24, 2013
Matthew O’Donnell, Northern Virginia Community College, “GIS
Tree Database for the Non-Public Areas of Dumbarton Oaks/
Pollinator Survey”
August 24, 2013
Kate Hayes, University of Virginia, “Wild Washington”
September 25, 2013
Betsy Anderson, University of Washington, “Beatrix Farrand’s Design
of the Naturalistic Stream Valley in Dumbarton Oaks Park”
September 25, 2013
Ana Duarte Rodrigues, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, “Unknown Gardens: Literary
Sources in Portugal”
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Volunteers at the de-installation of Cloud Terrace, October 2013.
November 6, 2013
Felicia M. Else, Gettysburg College, “Water and the Medici: An
Interdisciplinary Study of Festivals and Gardens”
November 26, 2013
homas Mical, University of South Australia, “Landscapes of Power
in Baroque Greenwich”
December 4, 2013
Peter Harnik, Center for City Park Excellence, Trust for Public
Land, “Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities”
December 10, 2013
Jason Ur, Harvard University, “Landscape Planning in the Core of
the Assyrian Empire, ca. 900–600 BC”
March 19, 2014
Luke Morgan, Monash University, Australia, “he Monster in the
Garden: Reframing Renaissance Landscape Design”
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April 2, 2014
Heather Morrison, State University of New York, New Paltz,
“Imperial Gardens and Viennese Botanists: he Travel and
Collecting Practices of a 1783 Botanical Expedition”
April 23, 2014
Joseph Disponzio, New York City Department of Parks and
Recreation/Columbia University, “Jean-Marie Morel and the
Invention of Landscape Architecture”
June 25, 2014
Boris Sokolov, Russian State University for the Humanities,
Moscow, “Russian Poliphilo: Comprehensive Translation and
Interdisciplinary Research of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”
Contemporary Art Installation Program
April 2012–October 2013
Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot, cao | perrot studios, Cloud Terrace
April 2014—June 2015
Hugh Livingston, Livingston Sound, he Pool of “Bamboo
Counterpoint”
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Pre-Columbian Studies
he annual Pre-Columbian Studies symposium, “Making Value,
Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World,” organized
by Professor Cathy Costin (chair of Anthropology at California State
University, Northridge) and held October 11–12, 2013, was again subscribed to capacity. Scholars gathered to present new insights into
the ways in which technical innovations and expertise were introduced and applied in diferent media. Ranging across Mesoamerica
and the Andes, the topics explored the technical and cultural choices
employed in the creation of polychrome murals, in the working of
semiprecious exotic jade and shell, and in the production of textiles.
In December, Professor Gary Urton presented the fall public
lecture entitled “To Write or Knot: Recent Advances in the Study of
Andean Knotted Cord Records.” Professor Urton currently serves on
the Pre-Columbian Studies board of senior fellows and was recently
awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to further his long-term study
and attempts to decipher the administrative and narrative information encoded in Andean khipus. Later in the spring, a workshop led
by Professor Urton addressed the “Investigation of General Andean
Cord Recording Principles and Technologies: A Dumbarton Oaks
Workshop on Pre-Wari, Wari, and Inka Khipus.” he workshop contributions included reports on the study of Middle Horizon khipus
from museum collections and secure archaeological contexts that
extend our documentation of these quintessentially Andean recording devices well back into the Middle Horizon.
Detail of a painted vessel in the Pre-Columbian Collection.
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Early in the New Year, we bade farewell to the outgoing program
coordinator, Emily Gulick Jacobs. We extend grateful thanks to Emily
for six years of stellar service to the Pre-Columbian Studies program
and the wider Dumbarton Oaks community; we also welcomed the
arrival of our new program coordinator, Kelly McKenna.
It was a productive year for Pre-Columbian publications, and
we acknowledge the continuing support of our publications department, led by its director, Kathy Sparkes, and its art and archaeology
editor, Sara Taylor. Alexander Tokovinine’s monograph Place and
Identity in Classic Maya Narratives is the latest addition to the resurrected Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology series and
there are other titles “in the pipeline.” he most recent volume in the
symposium series, Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in PreColumbian Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Andrew Scherer
and John Verano, explores the theme of warfare in the pre-Hispanic
Americas, focusing on the central highlands of Mexico, the Maya
Lowlands, and the central Andes. he volume debuted just in time
for the annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in
Austin, Texas.
A major new initiative is the catalog of the Central America
and Colombian collection at Dumbarton Oaks, which has long languished largely unseen and unpublished. Work is now underway
on this the ith (and inal) volume in the series of catalogs covering
the Pre-Columbian Collection. From January 12–19, 2014, the PreColumbian Studies department convened a workshop on “Ancient
Central American and Colombian Art at Dumbarton Oaks,” with
invited colleagues coming from Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia,
and further aield. he assembled experts enjoyed an intensive week
absorbed in the study of the gold, jade, and shell objects from Central
America and Colombia in the Dumbarton Oaks Museum, and their
distilled expertise has laid the foundations for a deinitive reference
work. Timed to coincide with the workshop, our librarian Bridget
Gazzo installed an exhibition entitled All that Glitters: Gold of the
Circum-Caribbean, which featured the gold of Panama, Costa Rica,
and Caribbean Colombia; the exhibition was on display in the library
during the winter months of 2014.
Work continues on two outstanding Pre-Columbian archives
that are coming to Dumbarton Oaks. he deed of git received from
Justin and Barbara Kerr assures the eventual donation of the rich
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Presentation by summer fellow Gabrielle Vail, June 2013.
photographic corpus that they assembled in the course of more than
half a century of study and assiduous recording. Sadly, we learned of
the April 28, 2014, passing of Barbara Kerr, who worked in lifetime
partnership with Justin. he archival processing of the Moche collection is also advancing to help prepare the ground for wider availability of this unique resource for scholarly study.
Scholarly Activities
Annual Symposium
Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World
Organized by Cathy L. Costin
October 11–12, 2013
Laura Filloy Nadal, Museo Nacional de Antropología, México,
“Lustrous Surfaces, Greenstones, and Votive Oferings in
Mesoamerica”
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Speakers at the “Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the PreColumbian World” symposium, October 11–12, 2013.
John Janusek, Vanderbilt University, and Patrick Ryan Williams,
he Field Museum, Chicago, “Tectonic Techné and the
Coordinated Production of Tiwanaku Monumentality”
Claudia Brittenham, University of Chicago, and Diana Magaloni
Kerpel, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, “he Eloquence of Color: Material
and Meaning in the Cacaxtla Murals”
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Blanca Maldonado, El Colegio de Michoacán, “New World
Metallurgy: A Comparative Study of Copper Production in the
South Central Andes and West Mexico”
Colleen Zori, University of California, Los Angeles, “Valuing the
Local: Inka Metal Production in the Tarapacá Valley of
Northern Chile”
Lisa DeLeonardis, Johns Hopkins University, “Encoded Process,
Embodied Meaning in Paracas Post-Fired Ceramics”
Lisa Trever, University of California, Berkeley, “Crat or Anti-Crat?
On the Artistry of Moche Mural Painting”
Stephen Houston, Brown University, “Carving Credit: Authorship
among Classic Maya Sculptors”
Carlos Rengifo, University of East Anglia, “Shaping Local and
Regional Identities: he Artisans of the Moche Period, Peru”
Jerry D. Moore, California State University, Dominguez Hills,
and Carolina Vilchez, Proyecto Qhapaq Ñan, Ministerio de
Cultura, Perú, “Techné and the horny Oyster: Spondylus Crat
Production and the Inca Empire at Taller Conchales, Cabeza de
Vaca, Tumbes, Peru”
Christina T. Halperin, Princeton University, “Textile Techné:
Classic Maya Translucent Cloth and the Making of Value”
Cathy L. Costin, California State University, Northridge, “Crating
Identities Deep and Broad”
Michael G. Callaghan, Southern Methodist University, “Production,
Form, Technology, and Performance: Examining Ceramic Social
Valuables of the Preclassic Maya Lowlands”
Alessandra Russo, Columbia University, “Overseas Apelles: Ancient
Technés, New Artists, and the Birth of Another Literature of Art
in the Sixteenth-Century”
Workshops
Ancient Central America and Colombian Art at Dumbarton Oaks
January 12–19, 2014
Participants: Rae Beaubien, Bryan Cockrell, Richard Cooke, Francisco Corrales Ulloa, Kim Cullen Cobb, Antonio Curet, Miriam
Doutriaux, James Doyle, Ainslee Harrison, John Hoopes, Victoria
Lyall, Julia Mayo Torne, Colin McEwan, Ann McMullen, David MoraMarín, Juan Antonio Murro, Karen O’Day, Silvia Salgado González,
Nawa Sugiyama, María Alicia Uribe Villegas
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Pre-Columbian Studies staf and fellows, February 2014.
Investigation of General Andean Cord Recording Principles
and Technologies: A Dumbarton Oaks Workshop on
Pre-Wari, Wari, and Inka Khipus
April 11–12, 2014
Participants: Catherine Allen, Elizabeth Benson, Susan Bergh,
Carrie Brezine, Nicholas Carter, Zachary Chase, Anita Cook,
Allison Davis, Chris Donnan, Élodie Dupey García, Jamie Forde,
Joan Gero, Milosz Giersz, Patrycja Giersz, Colin McEwan, Julia
Meyerson, Juan Antonio Murro, Donna Nash, Alejandra Rojas,
Franco Rossi, Frank Salomon, Jefrey Splitstoser, Nawa Sugiyama,
Gary Urton, Ryan Williams, R. Tom Zuidema
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Public Lectures
December 5, 2013
Gary Urton, Harvard University, “To Write or Knot: Recent
Advances in the Study of Andean Knotted Cord Records”
Tertulias
June 26, 2013
Gabrielle Vail, New College of Florida, “Introducing the Maya
Codices Database and Website”
July 10, 2013
Cristiana Barreto, Universidade de São Paulo, “Figuring the Body in
Ancient Amazonia”
July 18, 2013
Bérénice Gaillemin, Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie
Comparative at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, “Mexican
Pictorial Catechisms: Contextualizing heir Elaboration and Uses”
July 25, 2013
Catalina Andrango-Walker, Virginia Tech, “Religious
Transformation in the Andean Region in the Sixteenth Century”
October 9, 2013
Carolina María Vílchez Carrasco, Proyecto Qhapaq Ñan,
Ministerio de Cultura, Perú, “El Taller de Spondylus de Cabeza
de Vaca”
January 23, 2014
Leonardo López Luján, Institut d’études avancées de Paris, “A
Social History of the Teotihuacan’s Water Goddess”
May 7, 2014
Haagen Klaus, George Mason University, “Tradition and Diversity
of Human Sacriice in Northern Peru: Multidimensional
Perspectives on Ritual Killing in the Lambayeque Valley (AD
900–1532)”
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Library
While libraries nationwide struggle to maintain services and collections, our research library continues to build deep collections with a
robust acquisitions budget, thus relecting its critical role in the mission of Dumbarton Oaks. In the current year, 2,290 new monographs
were acquired and 1,680 serials subscriptions and standing orders
were received. hirty-one serials were newly subscribed, with titles
spread across all three subjects. A total of 1,082 monographic titles (in
2,673 volumes) were cataloged, bringing the library’s current holdings
to more than 225,000 volumes. During the year, 336 older titles were
recataloged or reclassiied to provide improved access for scholars,
with most of those titles in Byzantine Studies. More than 1,000 items
were cataloged for the Garden Archives.
Interlibrary loan services expanded again, as more fellows and
library users in Cambridge took advantage of Harvard Library’s Scan
and Deliver service, with its rapid provision of digital copies of journal articles and book chapters. Lending (via scanned items) doubled,
while borrowing from other Harvard libraries increased nearly forty
percent. Traditional interlibrary loan service stabilized at nearly 1,000
loans and receipts of hard-copy items.
During the fall term, the Research Library expanded its use of
the intranet. Supplementing the existing portal developed to guide
staf and fellows to the library’s policies, procedures, and scholarly
resources, videos were created to instruct new users on the intricate
details of ILLIAD, the computerized interlibrary loan request system
used by Harvard Library. Orientation for new fellows is now as close
to paperless as possible, and fellows can easily refresh their memory
about interlibrary loan request procedures at any time by logging into
the intranet.
Augustin de Saint-Hilaire, Plantes usuelles des Brasiliens, detail of plate XXII.
97
Use of rare materials has steadily increased in recent years, but
2013–2014 saw a remarkable doubling of usage by fellows, outside
readers, and staf. here were requests for 599 titles in 1,000 volumes
during this period, resulting in many days when all readers’ desks
were reserved well in advance.
Public viewing hours for the Rare Book Reading Room were
increased in June, allowing visitors to enter from noon to six o’clock
on weekends. In spring 2014, the museum shop increased its sales
oferings that are based on images held in the Rare Book Collection.
Sarah Burke Cahalan, special projects and reference librarian, worked
with Patti Sheer, museum shop manager, to create two new scarves
that make use of images from our manuscript of lower paintings (ca.
1550–1570) by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.
In April 2014, the research library was approached by the Emily
Dickinson Archive (EDA), an open-access site that provides images of
nearly all of the extant poetry manuscripts by Emily Dickinson. he
archive collaborates with many institutions to provide readers with
images of manuscripts held in multiple libraries and archives and to
ofer an array of transcriptions of Dickinson’s poems, as well as digital
tools to foster further exploration and scholarship. Houghton Library
curator of books and manuscripts Leslie Morris, who is involved in
assembling the archive, was curious about a HOLLIS reference to
a manuscript page tipped into our Rare Book Collection’s copy of
he Single Hound. Upon closer examination, it was discovered that
our library owns the manuscript for the poem “For death or rather”
(Franklin 644). Long thought by scholars to have been lost, this manuscript is believed to be the one sent by Dickinson to her sister-inlaw Susan. he poem manuscript and a Dickinson letter were a git to
Mildred Barnes Bliss in 1951. he manuscript has now been digitized
and added to the archive at http://www.edickinson.org/.
On the evening of May 2, 2014, Dumbarton Oaks hosted a reception for three hundred art and architecture librarians who were registrants for the annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North
America in Washington, D.C. Although the library and archival collections have formed the heart of Dumbarton Oaks since its inception in 1940, there has never been an event to celebrate our collections
and to show them formally to an international association of library
colleagues. he reception was the “hottest ticket” of the ive-day conference, as guests were given unprecedented access to the Research
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dumbarton oaks
Attendees at the Art Libraries Society of North America conference
reception, May 2, 2014.
Library, Rare Book Collection, Image Collections and Fieldwork
Archives, museum galleries, museum shop, and gardens. Librarians
and archivists who previously only knew Dumbarton Oaks through
its publications came away with a strong impression of the beauty
and the energy of our institution. Colleagues remarked throughout
the conference that Dumbarton Oaks librarians work in paradise—
a statement that is hard to dispute, considering that the library staf
builds world-class collections in a Robert Venturi–designed building
surrounded by Beatrix Farrand–designed gardens.
In August 2013, Katy Van Arsdale was hired for a one-year term
as a research assistant on the Garden Archives project ater a year as a
casual employee. In September, Megan Cook joined the full-time staf
for a one-year term as a photographer, having worked for the library
part-time since May 2011. In September, Lisa Warwick resigned her
position as the acquisitions and interlibrary loan assistant, and in
December, Sarah Mackowski was hired into that position. Linda Lott,
rare book librarian, celebrated twenty-ive years at Dumbarton Oaks
in November 2013.
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Poster for the Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century exhibition.
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Exhibitions
All That Glitters: Gold of the Circum-Caribbean
Bridget Gazzo, the Pre-Columbian Studies librarian, curated a
book exhibition on the gold of Panama, Costa Rica, and Caribbean
Colombia, which was on display in the Research Library during the
winter months of 2014. he exhibition was held in conjunction with
the workshop “Ancient Central American and Colombian Art at
Dumbarton Oaks,” held January 12–19, 2014. he workshop gathered
experts in the material culture of the Intermediate Area to study the
gold, jade, and shell objects of Central America and Colombia in the
Dumbarton Oaks Museum. Placing the focus on gold objects, and
with generous assistance from the museum shop manager Patti Sheer,
Bridget included jewelry reproductions from the museum shop.
Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
he year 2013 marked the itieth anniversary of the Rare Book
Reading Room’s construction in 1963. To commemorate this event,
special projects and reference librarian Sarah Burke Cahalan worked
with executive director Yota Batsaki to organize the “Botany of
Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century” symposium in October
2013. As part of this project, the Rare Book Collection welcomed two
summer interns, Jasmine Casart and Deirdre Moore from the History
of Science Department at Harvard University, whose contributions
made the Botany of Empire exhibition (both on-site and online) a
highlight of the 2013–2014 academic year. he on-site exhibition was
held in both the Research Library and the Rare Book Collection. he
accompanying online exhibition provided an opportunity to highlight materials from all three areas of study at Dumbarton Oaks. Staf
members from throughout the library were involved in the exhibition, contributing their subject expertise, updated HOLLIS records,
and hundreds of digital images.
Music in the Collections of Dumbarton Oaks
To complement the Byzantine Studies and Garden and Landscape
Studies symposia on sensory experiences, the library hosted this exhibition from April–July 2014. Deb Brown Stewart curated the exhibition
libr ary
101
with assistance from several departments. Ameena Mohammad, PreColumbian archives assistant, wrote text and prepared images from
the Christopher B. Donnan and Donna McClelland Moche Archive,
1963–2011, in the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, with the
assistance of Bridget Gazzo and Colin McEwan. For a display about the
sources for Pre-Columbian music, James Carder and Linda Lott provided information about the musical interests of Mildred and Robert
Woods Bliss, along with musical manuscripts that are currently held in
the Rare Book Collection and the Dumbarton Oaks Archives. Several
scholars advised on the textual content for the cases on Byzantine and
medieval music, including Spiro Antonopoulos, Alexander Lingas,
Grammenos Karanos, Nadezhda Kavrus-Hofman, Elena Velkovska,
and Alice-Mary Talbot.
Time and Its Measurement
For what is Time? he shadow on the dial,—the striking
of the clock,—the running of the sand,—day and night,
—summer and winter,—months, years, centuries;—these
are but arbitrary and outward signs,—the measure of
Time, not Time itself. Time is the Life of the soul. If
not this, then tell me, what is Time?
Longfellow, Hyperion, book ii, chapter 6
he ephemeral nature of time made it an intriguing topic for an
exhibition. While Longfellow could eloquently characterize “time” in
a few sentences, it can be more complicated visually. Images from the
Rare Book Collection were selected for exhibition that endeavored to
provide an overview of how time and its measurement are portrayed
in the collection. he items displayed demonstrated that there are
varied reasons for an artist to depict a speciic identiiable moment.
Nature Speaks in Symbols and in Signs
Nature may speak in symbols and in signs, but the scientist and the
artist interpret her creations to document, study, and explain the natural world through illustrations. Materials displayed in this exhibition were drawn from the holdings of the Rare Book Collection and
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William R. Tyler fellow Saskia Dirkse working with microilm for the
Manuscripts-on-Microilm Database.
included a variety of natural history subjects that appear in books,
prints, and drawings. Items exhibited date from the late iteenth
through the nineteenth century, with several comparisons that highlighted the diversity of technologies, cultures, and eras that make up,
in part, the rich collection held at Dumbarton Oaks. he exhibition’s
title was taken from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “To Charles
Sumner,” found in Whittier’s he Poetical Works of John Greenleaf
Whittier (Boston, 1891).
Special Projects
Manuscripts-on-Microilm Database Update
On July 31, 2013, the Manuscripts-on-Microilm Database was made
publicly available on the Dumbarton Oaks website: http://www.
doaks.org/library-archives/library/mmdb. New content was added
during the 2013–2014 academic year by former intern and current Tyler fellow, Saskia Dirkse, from the Department of Classics at
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Harvard University. Between mid-September and mid-May, the project created 110 new manuscript records and processed 174 microilm,
including the library’s collection of microilm representing documents from the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, Egypt.
In the irst year of public access, the database hosted more than 17,800
page views. A new microilm/microiche scanner was purchased to
provide researchers with more accessible interfaces for editing, annotating, saving, printing, and sharing digital iles that are scanned
from ilm or iche.
Digitization of Rare Books
In the second year of the multiyear project to digitize unique or very
rare items from the library’s collections, more titles were digitized
using Harvard Library’s Imaging Services. his work drew on the talents of staf throughout the library as the work progressed. hirteen
titles in eighteen volumes (with more than 6,600 digital captures in
total) had their catalog records enhanced, metadata for every cover
and page created, and digital photography completed. Each item can
now be viewed using a link found in its HOLLIS record that takes one
directly to Harvard Library’s Page Delivery Service. Detailed metadata permits readers to hone in directly on a desired page or image
and easily browse entire volumes, using astonishing zoom capabilities
at any time. Access is also provided through a Research Library web
page dedicated to this project: http://www.doaks.org/library-archives/
rare-book-collection/rare-book-digitization-project.
Garden Archives Project
he design of the Garden Archives project began in May 2013, when
Sheila Klos and Wendy Johnson started working with a Plone consulting irm on the custom design of the online archive. Scheduled
to launch in summer 2014, the online archive permits faceted searching by a range of options as well as the use of an index to the correspondence, thus ofering access to materials previously undescribed
in any library catalog. With more than 6,200 digital images of drawings, photographs, and correspondence, the Garden Archives is still
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a work-in-progress. he online archive is being built in a logical fashion, garden room by garden room, thus allowing related images and
letters to be linked to one another for the easy discovery of design
connections between rooms as well as discussions that took place
between Beatrix Farrand and Mildred Bliss over more than thirty
years of collaboration.
Katy Van Arsdale joined the project staf in August 2013; she
immediately began to research and write information pages about
individual garden rooms to orient readers to the garden’s design and
history. Photography of the design drawings—which was partially
completed by Megan Cook in previous years—continued, as the
library strived to create the highest-quality digital reproductions of
originals ranging from 10–inch-square pencil sketches to 48-inchwide drawings in ink and colored pencil. Zoomable images of every
item in the archive will be online and linked to related items. Wendy
Johnson and Van Arsdale worked in tandem on the design and testing of the online archive. In the irst months of the digital archives
construction, metadata and records have been created for more than
1,000 items. he Garden Archives can be consulted at http://www.
doaks.org/library-archives/garden-archives/.
Signiicant Acquisitions
Bellarmino, Roberto Francesco Romolo, Saint. Declaración copiosa
de las quatro partes mas essenciales, y necessarias de la doctrina
christiana/compuesto . . . por . . . Roberto Belarminio, de la Compania
de Iesus; con las adiciones del . . . Sebastian de Lirio . . . ; traducida
de lengua castellana en la general de inga por . . . Bartolome Iurado
Palomino . . . Impresso en Lima : Por Iorge Lopez de Herrera . . . , 1649.
his volume is a complete and rigorous Quechua translation of
the renowned Doctrina christiana by the Jesuit cardinal Roberto
Bellarmino. It was originally published in Italian in Rome by publisher Luigi Zanetti in 1603; the translator, Bartolomé Jurado
Palomino, was born in Cuzco, Peru, and was the “Predicador General
de la lengua Quechua.” he Italian text and its Quechua translation
appear in parallel columns.
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La Bibbia di San Marco a Venezia. Reggio Emilia:
Scripta maneant and Marcianum Press, 2013–2014.
Produced under the direction of the Procuratoria di San Marco, this
luxurious two-volume set highlights Old and New Testament scenes
in the Byzantine and medieval artworks in the Basilica di San Marco.
High-quality photographs by Sandro Vannini document the mosaics,
pavements, treasures, and architectural sculpture, including areas of
the church that are not accessible to visitors.
Catherwood, Frederick. Views of Ancient Monuments in Central
America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. London: F. Catherwood, 1844.
Lauded as the most magniicent plate book on the ancient
Maya, this volume is one of the
earliest visual records of Maya
buildings and monuments.
In 1839 and 1841, the British
architect and artist Frederick
Catherwood accompanied
the American writer John
Lloyd Stephens on two expeditions to the Maya region of
Southern Mexico and Central America. Stephens wrote his observations, while Catherwood, with the aid of the camera lucida, accurately
drew the structures in ine detail. he results of these two expeditions
were published as two immensely popular works: Incidents of Travel
in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan and Incidents of Travel in
Yucatan. Catherwood’s drawings were reproduced as two hundred
engravings in these two volumes. A third volume—intended as a
monumental work and an all-embracing study of Central American
archaeology—fell victim to the political and inancial turbulence of
the mid-nineteenth century. Catherwood, undaunted, persisted on
his own accord and commissioned twenty-ive lithographs of his
drawings, which he published in 1844 as Views of Ancient Monuments
in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. he plates include views of
Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Tulum.
he works of Stephens and Catherwood were widely read and
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highly praised, but sadly neither lived to enjoy their success. Stephens
died of malaria contracted in Colombia in 1852, and Catherwood went
down on a steamship in the North Atlantic in 1854. Aldous Huxley
said: “Catherwood belongs to a species, the artist-archaeologist,
which is all but extinct. Piranesi was the most celebrated specimen
and Catherwood his not unworthy successor.”
he Chetwynd-Talbot Family Album [circa 1837–1859]. Attributed to
John and/or Caroline Chetwynd-Talbot (artists). Folio.
his album contains 118 original drawings of landscape and architecture, mainly associated with the great estates of Great Britain. It is
an important album, exceptional for its size and for the quality of its
drawings, and unique as a record of the summer and autumn travels
of an upper-class English couple. It can be argued that the period covered by the drawings in the album marks the start of the last golden
age for the nobility and landed gentry in the United Kingdom. Truly a
“family album,” it demonstrates in graphic form the numerous labyrinthine connections that wove John and Caroline Chetwynd-Talbot
into the mutually supportive fabric of the British upper classes—all
while providing a spectacular record of the great places they visited.
he attribution comes from the art historian Rupert Gunnis, who
notes that the album came from the library at Falconhurst, home to
John Gilbert Talbot. Gunnis attributes the drawings to one or both of
Talbot’s parents—an attribution seemingly supported by the dates of
the drawings and the places visited by the couple.
Facsimile of Pseudo-Oppian’s Cynegetica: tratado de caza y pesca,
Cod. Gr. Z.479. Valencia, Spain: Patrimonio Ediciones, 1999.
his full-color facsimile reproduces a beautiful illuminated Byzantine
manuscript of the eleventh century, once in the collection of Cardinal
Bessarion and now housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. he
text of the treatise, which is attributed to a second-century author,
was popular in the Byzantine period and cited by authors such as
John Tzetzes and Constantine Manasses. Images in this particular
manuscript provide insight into Byzantine-era fashions, hunting
practices, zoological knowledge, and the postclassical reception of
pagan mythology and iconography.
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Dietrich, Albert Gottfried. Flora regni Borussici. Flora des Königreichs
Preussen oder Abbildung und Beschreibung der in Preussen
Wildwachsenden Planzen, 12 volumes with 864 handcolored
lithographed plates. Berlin, 1833–1844.
his multivolume set is an extremely wellillustrated copy of the only major Prussian
lora. Albert Gottfried Dietrich (1795–1856)
was a teacher at the Gartner-Lehranstalt in
Schoneberg, near Berlin, and a curator at
the Royal Botanical Gardens beginning in
1835. he designs for all of the plates were
drawn by the author; the plants were mostly
collected by Gottfried in the Prussian
territories.
Dietzsch, Barbara Regina. Gouache on paper of a Poppy Anemone,
with Dietzsch’s signature meticulous style.
he work is a beautifully composed still life of a poppy with butterflies. The composition is highly decorative and elegant, with
Dietzsch’s characteristic intense colors, black background, subtle
details, and strong attention to botanical taxonomy. he black background accentuates the composition and gives it an almost threedimensional trompe l’oeil quality.
Barbara Regina Dietzsch was born into a family of painters in
Nuremberg; she is best known for her works of lowers and animals.
Nuremberg was a major publishing center in the eighteenth century,
and Dietzsch (like other female lower painters working there) produced work to be translated into engravings. She painted both bouquets and single plants.
A Pocket Map & Visitor’s Guide to the Central Park in the
City of New York, with all the necessary explanations.
New York: Published by P. Burger & co., 1859.
While maps of Central Park were issued in Valentine’s Manual and
Reports of the Park Commissioners as early as 1858, this publication is
likely the earliest separately issued pocket map of the park. It is also
the irst edition of an early guidebook to Central Park with a long,
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horizontal folding pocket map attached to the inside back cover. he
map shows the park under development in 1859, with drives, promenades, walks, buildings, ponds, wooded areas, and large rocks. he
border of the map indicates the locations of numbered streets and
avenues, with shaded blocks between them. he irst eight pages of
the twenty-four-page guidebook give a history of the park and a brief
account of its planning, design, and ongoing construction, along with
information on how to get there and the rules to follow once there.
(Page eight reprints a “Caution to Visiters [sic]” issued by architectin-chief Frederick Law Olmsted that reads, in part, “it is positively
forbidden to anyone, for any motive, to pick any fruit, lowers, leaves,
nuts or berries, or to remove any sticks, roots, stones, stakes, or
broken stakes or boards, shavings or any rubbish supposed triles of
any kind whatever; . . .”
Saint-Hilaire, Augustin de. Plantes usuelles des Brasiliens.
Paris, Grimbert (printed by Casimir), 1824–1828, 14 installments.
70 hand-colored lithographed botanical plates (by Langlumé)
bound together in paper covered boards.
French botanist Auguste de Saint-Hilaire
was one of the irst scientists to freely
travel throughout Brazil. Born in Orleans
in 1799, he had the opportunity to explore
the southern provinces of Minas Gerais,
Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina,
Rio Grande do Sul, and Cisplatina (currently Uruguay) from 1816 to 1822. He
returned to France with 7,000 plant species, including 4,500 species that were
unknown to scientists at the time. hese
collections are held in the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris.
Saint-Hilaire described native Brazilian plants and their beneicial use in this book, as well as in Systema materiae medicae vegtabilis
brasiliensis (1843), thus signiicantly enhancing the knowledge of the
utility of these plants and fostering their integration into the practice
of European medicine. His contribution to the knowledge of Brazilian
biodiversity is incalculable.
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Spilbergen, Joris van. Oost- en West-Indische voyagie, door de strate
Magallanes naer de Moluques . . . onder den commandeur Ioris
Spilbergen. Als mede de wonderlijcke reyse ghedaen door Willem
Cornelisz Schouten van Hoorn, en Iacob le Maire, in den jaere 1615,
1616, 1617 . . . Amsterdam, for Joost Hartgers, 1648.
An important account of early circumnavigations of the world by Spilbergen
(in 1614–1617) and by Schouten and Le
Mair (in 1615–1617), this volume was part
of Hartgers’s series Oost-Indische voyagien. he irst account is a description of
Joris van Spilbergen’s journey through
the Strait of Magellan to the East Indies,
while the second is Willem Cornelis
Schouten’s “Journael” of the expedition
in which he and Jakob le Maire successfully sailed around Cape Horn in search of new routes to the East. Le
Maire’s father, Isaac, was a wealthy merchant and one of the founders
of the Dutch East India Company. Ater Isaac was forced to resign
from the company, he sent out his own expedition, with Jakob as
commander and Schouten as captain. While attempting to ind a new
route between the Atlantic and Paciic Oceans south of the Straight
of Magellan, they discovered what is now named the Le Maire Strait.
heir vessel was seized in Batavia and the crew was arrested by the
local Dutch authorities, accused of having violated the Dutch East
Indian Company’s monopoly. Le Maire and Schouten were sent back
to Holland in the Amsterdam, which was commanded by Joris van
Spilbergen, who was halfway through his circumnavigation. Jakob
died on the homeward journey, and Schouten and the others arrived
in Holland in 1617. Isaac Le Maire sued the Dutch East India Company
for the illegal seizure of his ship and won his case.
Squibb, Robert. he Gardener’s Calendar for Alabama, South
Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina. Mobile, Alabama:
Published by S. W. Allen, 1843.
his volume is the fourth edition of he Gardener’s Calendar, but it is
the irst to contain material on Alabama, following editions published
in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1787, 1809, and 1827. Squibb’s book
is an intriguing guide, chronologically arranged by month, which
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includes a description of the necessary work undertaken each month
for a speciic fruit, vegetable, or herb. he inal pages contain a catalog
of “fresh garden seeds” available from I. C. DuBose & Co., druggist
of Mobile, as well as other titles available from publisher S. W. Allen.
Squibb was a southern seeds man and nursery grower. he irst edition of this work was only the second gardening book published in
America. he Rare Book Collection also owns the 1827 edition, entitled he Gardener’s Calendar for the States of North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia.
Vredeman de Vries, Jan, and Samuel Marolois. La perspective,
contenant la theorie pratique, et instruction fondamentale,
illustreé de plusiers belles ordannances, d’architecture, comme de
temples, palais, galeries, jardins, marchez, a l’antique et modern,
clairement expliquées pour
architectes, ingenieurs et
amateurs. Augmentée par
Samuel Marolois. Amsterdam:
Johannes Janssonius,
1639–1646 [= ca. 1646–ca. 1655]
Seventeenth-century vellum.
Samuel Marolois enlarged and
corrected this French edition of
a famous, well-illustrated treatise on perspective by Jan Vredeman de Vries. he treatise was originally published in 1604–1605 in Latin, French, Dutch, and German
editions by Hendrick Hondius, who also engraved many of the plates.
he plates illustrate individuals viewing various objects with projection lines passing through a plane, thus showing the principles of
perspective drawing as well as examples of perspective views of solid
bodies and more elaborate architectural subjects, many showing projection lines and landscapes with buildings or ruins. hese include
intricate stairways, furniture, fortiications, galleries, and some beautifully inished views of garden architecture and buildings, including
one plate of a fortiied castle in a river.
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Image Collections
and Fieldwork Archives
In 2013–2014, the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA)
signiicantly expanded access to its holdings by launching a new collection management system, processing and describing its archival
collections, and conducting targeted outreach activities. In February
2014, ICFA launched AtoM@DO (http://atom.doaks.org/), an online
inventory of Dumbarton Oaks’ archival holdings of documents and
photographs. AtoM@DO uses the ICA-AtoM (International Council
on Archives Access to Memory) platform, an open-source, web-based
archival collection management system. he initial launch included
nearly forty collections from ICFA and the Dumbarton Oaks
Archives, many with comprehensive inding aids. ICFA is taking an
iterative approach to its archival description, based on the archival
processing concept of MPLP (More Product, Less Process) devised
by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner. Each collection, whether
processed or unprocessed, is described by a collection-level record in
AtoM@DO. As collections are processed, they will be described more
thoroughly at more granular levels in the archival hierarchy. Prior to
the release, ICFA staf and interns—led by Anne-Marie Viola, metadata and cataloging specialist—collectively created more than 8,500
database records, including more than 450 authority records and
nearly 200 terms in the Places and Subjects taxonomies. hese numbers will grow over time, as more collections are processed, additional
levels of description are added, and related digital assets are linked.
Anne-Marie also continues to collaborate with Prathmesh Mengane
to develop a VRA Core cataloging template that will allow ICFA to
From The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records
and Papers, ca. late 1920s–2000s: Study of light in apse, Hagia Sophia,
Istanbul, Turkey, 1948 (HS.BIA.1726).
113
integrate image records with their related inding aids. Anne-Marie
and Fani Gargova, Byzantine research associate, are also cleaning up
and normalizing approximately 70,000 image records exported from
legacy systems for eventual import into the new collection management system.
Since the public launch, AtoM@DO has been visited more than
2,000 times by over 1,000 users, who have viewed approximately
18,400 pages. he average duration of each session is more than
seven minutes, suggesting that visitors are exploring the collections
in depth. To date, the top two collections viewed in AtoM@DO are
he Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and
Papers, ca. late 1920s–2000s (MS.BZ.004) and Nicholas V. Artamonof
Photographs of Istanbul and Turkey, 1935–1945 (PH.BZ.010).
Additionally, unprocessed collections related to Pre-Columbian
Studies and Garden and Landscape Studies consistently rank among
the most viewed, indicating that ICFA is inding a growing audience
in other ields. To further enhance the indability of the collections,
ICFA contributed its inding aids to ArchiveGrid, Online Computer
Library Center’s online discovery service for archival descriptions,
which contains more than three million records and is a leading
source of referral traic to AtoM@DO.
Last year, ICFA released the inding aid for he Byzantine Institute
and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and Papers, the product of
nearly two and a half years of processing spearheaded by Rona Razon,
archivist, and her team of interns and part-time staf. In March
2014, ICFA was notiied that the inding aid was awarded the 2014
Frederic M. Miller Finding Aid Award by the Mid-Atlantic Regional
Archives Conference (MARAC). Previous winners of the award
include Princeton University Library, Delaware Public Archives,
New York Public Library, Archives of American Art (Smithsonian
Institution), and the Museum of Modern Art Archives. he award
committee selected ICFA’s inding aid because it “did an excellent job
of providing more granular access to a very large collection,” according to Laurel Macondray, chair of the MARAC inding aids award
committee. he award recognized ICFA’s commitment to producing high-quality standards-based inding aids that serve the unique
research needs of Byzantine scholars. Since the inding aid was published, there has been unprecedented interest from new and varied
researchers on topics as diverse as cultural history, philanthropy,
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ICFA’s redesigned departmental website,
http://www.doaks.org/library-archives/icfa.
conservation, and historic preservation. With more granular descriptions, a collection that was previously diicult to manage due to size
and multiplicity of formats has become a case study in how inding
aids can enhance access to archival collections for external researchers. To document ICFA’s local application of the ISAD(G) (General
International Standard Archival Description) elements in AtoM@DO
and our current descriptive practices, Viola and Razon developed a
Finding Aid Style Guide and AtoM Worklow. he former has been
published online and both are available as a resource to other institutions implementing the ICA-AtoM collection management system.
In the same vein, ICFA continues to process and describe our
archival collections with the goal of further expanding access to our
holdings. In 2013–2014, ICFA made signiicant progress in processing
and inalizing inding aids for several Byzantine collections, including: Robert L. Van Nice Fieldwork Records and Papers, ca. 1936–1989
image collections and fieldwork archives
115
From The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and
Papers, ca. late 1920–2000s: Pages from Richard A. Gregory, “Notebook No. 2: Notes and Observations Taken at St. Sophia,” 1939 (MS.
BZ.004-02-01-02-177).
(MS.BZ.012); Margaret Alexander Papers and Records of the Corpus
des Mosaïques de Tunisie, 1948–2003 (MS.BZ.001); William Earl Betsch
Photographs of Architectural Capitals in Istanbul, 1970 (PH.BZ.002);
Ernst Kitzinger Research Papers and Photographs, 1940s–1980s (MS.
BZ.016); and Sirarpie Der Nersessian Papers and Photographs, 1939–
1966 (MS.BZ.005). To improve access to unprocessed collections,
ICFA staf also published drat inventories for the following collections: Donald Drew Egbert and Andrew S. Keck Photograph Albums,
1937 (PH.BZ.009); Arthur Kingsley Porter Photographs of Architecture
and Manuscripts, 1980s (PH.BZ.007); Dumbarton Oaks Research
Archive, ca. 1940s (MS.BZ.018); and Franklin M. Biebel Photograph
Albums of Mosaics, ca. 1950s (PH.BZ.006).
Many of these processing and description projects were executed
by the interns, fellows, and volunteers who worked in ICFA over the
course of 2013–2014. hese include:
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Alison Skaggs (University of Maryland, College of Information
Studies): inal processing and description of the William Betsch
and Ernst Kitzinger collections
Aleksandar Sopov (William R. Tyler Fellow, Harvard University):
inventory of garden and landscape content in the Black and
White Photograph (Architecture) and Nicholas Artamonoff
collections
Nawa Sugiyama (William R. Tyler Fellow, Harvard University):
assessment of iconographic terms for the description of fauna in
the Justin Kerr Maya Vase database
Jan Zastrow (Volunteer): Assessment of the Louisa Bellinger
papers and the Byzantine Object Census
ICFA part-time staf also provided signiicant support for ongoing projects throughout the year. Beth Bayley, Byzantine archives
assistant, inalized the processing and description for the Robert
Van Nice archive. Jessica Cebra, departmental assistant, completed
the rehousing of ICFA’s extensive negative collection for long-term
cold storage and also created a detailed inding aid. In October 2013,
Ameena Mohammad joined ICFA as a part-time Pre-Columbian
archives assistant, to focus on processing and rehousing the
Christopher B. Donnan and Donna McClelland Moche Archive, 1963–
2011 (PH.PC.001). his vast photographic archive of Moche ceramic
vessels includes approximately 100,000 photographic and reprographic prints, along with nearly 25,000 negatives and slides that will
be rehoused for cold storage. Also in Fall 2013, Megan Cook joined
ICFA as a part-time photographer (shared with the research library).
Over the course of the year, she completed several digitization projects, including: fragile subject boards from the Moche archive; photographs of manuscripts from the Red Sea monasteries in Egypt;
letters related to homas Whittemore and Chauncey Stillman; and
selected slides and transparencies from the Henry Maguire and Ann
Terry Poreč Archive, 1990s–2000s (MS.BZ.015). She also made steady
progress in reformatting deteriorated color transparencies that provide valuable documentation of conservation work on the mosaics
and frescoes at the Kariye Camii in Istanbul, Turkey, executed by the
Byzantine Institute from 1947 to 1959.
image collections and fieldwork archives
117
In addition to preserving its analog collections, ICFA also
focused on addressing the growing needs of its digital collections,
whether digitized surrogates of analog materials or born digital
objects. In 2013, Dumbarton Oaks was selected as a host institution for the inaugural cohort of the National Digital Stewardship
Residency (NDSR) program (along with the Association of Research
Libraries, Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress, Maryland
Institute for Technology in the Humanities, National Library of
Medicine, National Security Archive, Public Broadcasting Service,
Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the World Bank). ICFA manager Shalimar Fojas White and Viola developed a project proposal to
develop an institutional solution for long-term digital asset management and preservation at Dumbarton Oaks. hey also served as comentors to Heidi Dowding, who was selected from an impressive pool
of candidates as Dumbarton Oaks’ resident. Starting in September
2013, Heidi conducted twenty-four interviews and focus groups with
staf across Dumbarton Oaks, producing thirteen reports documenting each department’s methods for digital asset creation and management. In addition, Heidi conducted a ile-level inventory of a wide
range of networked drives and folders to identify the ile formats and
storage environments currently in use. Using this qualitative and
quantitative data, Heidi compiled an extensive institutional report on
the current landscape for digital assets at Dumbarton Oaks, both in
terms of current practices and the existing technical infrastructure.
he report also included recommendations for further developing
the infrastructure, policies, and worklows needed to establish a longterm plan for digital asset management and preservation moving forward. To aid in this efort, Heidi also delivered a cost-beneit analysis
for implementing a digital asset management system (DAMS) and
drated a digital asset selection policy for future use by Dumbarton
Oaks staf. his research was shared with both the director’s oice
and the incoming director of information technology.
In 2013–2014, ICFA also focused on conducting outreach to promote the use of its collections by a wide range of audiences. Over the
course of the year, ICFA released two new online exhibits: A Truthful
Record: he Byzantine Institute Films (http://www.doaks.org/icfa/
truthful-record) and Artamonoff: Picturing Byzantine Istanbul,
1930–1947 (http://images.doaks.org/artamonof/exhibits/show/picturingbyz). hese sites presented already digitized content, with curated
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The landing page for ICFA’s online exhibit, A Truthful Record: The
Byzantine Institute Films, launched in January 2014,
http://www.doaks.org/icfa/truthful-record.
material to encourage users to engage with ICFA’s collections in more
depth. he Artamonof online exhibit—developed by former intern
Alyssa DesRochers—recreated the exhibition of the photographer’s
work mounted by Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian
Civilizations in Istanbul from June to November 2013. he Byzantine
Institute ilms exhibit—designed by Fani Gargova—combined videos
of the digitized ilms with newly digitized and transcribed archival
documents that illuminate how and why they were created, as well as
their style, content, and reception by contemporary audiences. hus,
this online exhibit serves as a concrete demonstration of the value
of integrating visual materials with related archival content, thereby
greatly enhancing meaning and value through context. his is the
underlying ethos of ICFA’s ongoing eforts to develop the AtoM@
DO collection management system in order to aggregate our archival inding aids with their related image records. To better integrate
ICFA’s main web presence with AtoM@DO and to improve users’
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access to the collections, Fani and Rona redesigned and relaunched
the ICFA departmental website in June 2014: http://www.doaks.org/
library-archives/icfa. Since January 2013, visitors to the departmental
site have viewed approximately 101,410 pages, including ICFA’s collection descriptions, indings aids, inventories, and online exhibits.
ICFA continues to expand the online audience for its collections
through its departmental blog and social media. In the past year, ICFA
staf, interns, and fellows published more than thirty posts on ICFA’s
Wordpress blog (http://icfadumbartonoaks.wordpress.com/), documenting ongoing projects and interesting discoveries made along the
way. In 2012, ICFA’s blog was viewed 9,230 times; in 2013, it was viewed
17,903 times. his represents a 94 percent increase in usage over the
previous calendar year. he blog also provides an additional communication channel to publish announcements about ICFA’s content
releases, which supplement professional listservs and social media.
While the bulk of referrals come from search engines, a signiicant
proportion of the incoming traic is generated by other blogs, email
listservs, cultural heritage institutions, and social media. Indeed, the
joint library and ICFA Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/
pages/Dumbarton-Oaks-Library-and-Archives/188985567883483)
continues to provide an efective means of connecting with international audiences. From July 2013 to June 2014, ICFA and library staf
published more than 300 posts, which were viewed approximately
328,300 times. Since its launch in April 2012, the Facebook page has
been viewed approximately 741,000 times and “liked” more than
2,400 times by 246,400 unique users. Scholars and enthusiasts also
share the Facebook posts within their own wide-ranging social networks, thereby expanding their potential reach. While the majority of
traic to the page comes from North America and Europe, an increasing proportion of users represent diverse countries around the world
in the Middle East, Asia, and South America.
ICFA also conducted direct outreach to colleagues in academia
and within the library, archives, and information communities.
Within the Dumbarton Oaks community, ICFA materials were featured in research reports and informal talks given by fellows, staf,
and readers, as well as in papers presented at the Byzantine Studies
symposium. Also in the past year, ICFA staf have presented papers or
participated on panels at the Society of American Archivists annual
meeting (August 2013), the Byzantine Studies Conference (November
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2013), the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (November
2013 and April 2014), the Visual Resources Association annual conference (March 2014), the Art Libraries Society of North America annual
conference (May 2014), the International Congress on Medieval
Studies (May 2014), and the Princeton University Digital World of Art
History conference (June 2014). ICFA staf have also endeavored to
organize events related to digital humanities and preservation for the
beneit of Dumbarton Oaks staf and fellows. In October 2013, AnneMarie Viola conducted an introductory session on linked open data
with Scott Johnson, a teaching fellow in Byzantine Greek. his was
followed by an advanced workshop on the topic with Sebastian Heath
and Tom Elliott from New York University’s Institute for the Study
of the Ancient World. In November 2013, ICFA organized a session
for staf and fellows on sharing and publishing archaeology data with
Sarah and Eric Kansa, founders of Open Context and the Alexandria
Archive Institute. In December 2013, Fani Gargova presented a screening of the Byzantine Institute ilms for fellows and staf. In April 2014,
ICFA staf coordinated a workshop for library and ICFA staf on the
preservation of photographic materials led by Brenda Bernier, Paul M.
and Harriet L. Weissman Senior Photograph Conservator and Head
of the Weissman Preservation Center at Harvard University. As part
of her residency, Heidi conducted a digital preservation workshop in
March 2014 for Dumbarton Oaks staf, which is also available online
through the intranet. hat same month, Heidi organized an NDSR
host meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, which included a talk on open
access and alternative scholarly publication by Eileen Joy of Punctum
Books. By combining its outreach initiatives with eforts to expand its
professional networks to practitioners of digital humanities and preservation (both analog and digital), ICFA hopes to prepare the ground
for future projects to share its digital collections with a growing—and
increasingly networked—global audience.
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Museum
he past year was signiicant on two major fronts: we continued our
tradition of experimenting with experiential exhibitions, and we
strengthened our mission of collection-based scholarship. Between
July and December 2013, the museum hosted the second half of its
yearlong program of special events to mark the itieth anniversary of
the Philip Johnson pavilion and to celebrate the unique installation
of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. Behind
the scenes, and with increased activities at the beginning of 2014, the
museum’s collaborative research and exhibition development projects
continued. Byzantine Collection staf conducted material analyses
and object documentation for the Byzantine textile catalog raisonné,
researched and prepared options for a new online presentation of our
digitized Byzantine manuscripts, and developed the structure for an
online database providing digital access to the extensive Byzantine
coin collection. Pre-Columbian Collection staf facilitated research
on the collection of Central American objects in preparation for a catalog raisonné of this material to be edited by Pre-Columbian Studies
director Colin McEwan. Overall, the past year was inward focused,
as staf members worked to increase knowledge of the museum’s
objects, and outward focused, as staf members reached out to invite
specialists and the broader public “to meet” the collections. While
reasserting strength in scholarship, we strive to see the museum as a
bridge—not as an ivory tower.
he year 2013–2014 concluded with a major change, as the opening hours of the museum, which for seventy-ive years had permitted
visitors to enjoy our collections for a mere three hours per day, were
Special exhibition, Inspiring Art: The Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure.
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increased by 100 percent. his shit, which allows patrons to visit from
11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., has been received very positively; we regularly
encounter more visitors during the irst two hours alone than we
welcomed during an entire day in the past. he museum is fortunate
to have a newly trained cohort of gallery attendants and a passionate group of devoted volunteers who are trained to give tours and to
orient patrons upon entering the museum lobby. Without their gits
of time and talent, we would not be able to fulill our mission.
Exhibitions and Events
he three exhibitions (listed on the following pages) held in conjunction with the itieth anniversary of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection
of Pre-Columbian Art, which were introduced in last year’s annual
report with their accompanying public programs, came to an end
in December 2013. he anniversary lecture series was an enormous
success. he inal three Saturday talks were illed to capacity, and the
public lectures were also very well attended, oten by guests who were
newcomers to Dumbarton Oaks. hey found out about the lectures
from our website, the itieth-anniversary program booklet, and listserv announcements featuring the museum events.
A highlight of the wide-ranging, multifaceted program was the
museum’s study day held in conjunction with the Inspiring Art: he
Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure exhibition. Miriam Doutriaux, the
Pre-Columbian Collection exhibition associate, coordinated and
chaired the event, which opened with a public lecture by Wendy
Grossman on “Pre-Columbian Art between the Ethnographic and
the Surreal: Man Ray’s Imagined Americas.” he following day saw
ive papers by specialists from the United States and Mexico who
addressed the open questions that our enigmatic sculpture still poses,
even 110 years ater its irst publication and attribution as Aztec. he
study day provided a lively forum to discuss themes and topics around
the notion of fake, copy, forgery, and inluence.
The special exhibition Seldom Seen: A Selection of Prints,
Drawings, and Decorative Art from the Dumbarton Oaks House
Collection opened in April 2014. he show presented a selection of
artwork from the House Collection and highlighted a portion of our
holdings that had never been publicly displayed. he opportunity to
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Special exhibition, Seldom Seen: A Selection of Prints, Drawings, and
Decorative Art from the Dumbarton Oaks House Collection.
see and study artwork usually kept in storerooms was highly appreciated by museum visitors.
In the spring of 2014, a smaller exhibition in the Orientation
Gallery entitled Hagia Sophia Abstractions presented ive pastels by
Alexis de Boeck. A former Dumbarton Oaks staf member, de Boeck
became intrigued by a black-and-white photograph of a roof section
of Hagia Sophia taken by the Byzantine art historian Robert Van
Nice. In 1990, de Boeck transformed the photo into abstract compositions of lines, colors, and shapes. “Study of Light in Hagia Sophia,”
a slide show of a series of black-and-white photographs taken in the
1930s by the Byzantine Institute (and currently in Image Collections
and Fieldwork Archives), accompanied the exhibition and presented
an inspiring juxtaposition of architectural art, documentation, and
abstraction.
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Research and Other Projects
Over the past year, the museum advanced its special research project of publishing a catalog of its Byzantine textile collection, with the
focus on the so-called furnishing textiles. In October 2013, Gudrun
Buehl and Elizabeth Williams, research assistant, attended and presented a joint paper at an international conference organized by the
“Textiles of the Nile Valley” group and hosted at the Katoen Natie
Collections in Antwerp. Short research visits with the aim to study
comparative material were undertaken in the collections of the
Baltimore Museum of Art; he Walters Art Museum; he Museum
of Fine Art, Boston; he Harvard Art Museums; he Metropolitan
Museum of Art; and the Katoen Natie Collection, Antwerp. he
museum staf hosted and facilitated the individual research of textile project collaborators and scholars Sumru Krody, Eunice Maguire,
and helma homas. Technical analysis of the textile fragments in the
Dumbarton Oaks Collection were conducted by Kathrin Colburn, a
textile conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Curatorial staf and the web team members engaged in a series of
meetings to discuss models of an online scholarly publication that we
aim to develop to present the results of our research. he scope of the
project is to publish the Byzantine Collection’s textile holdings in a
new and innovative way, one that beneits from the features and technologies of online publishing. Additionally, the museum continued
to forge ahead with related events, namely a textile colloquium that
will take place in March 2015 with collaborators who are working on
individually assigned objects and catalog entries as well as scholars
outside of this core group.
With the close of the special exhibition Four Byzantine Manuscripts, the display case in the permanent collection that focuses on
book culture was reconigured. he project to publish the digitized
Byzantine Greek manuscripts in a “turn-page presentation,” with
annotations on the individual page spreads, is underway and will be
launched in the coming months.
During the 2013–2014 academic year, the museum staf collaborated with numismatics advisor of the Byzantine coin collections,
Cécile Morrisson, and the web team to embark on a special project
that aims to produce a new content type and database structure for
the Byzantine coins collection. his online publication is modeled
on the successfully implemented Byzantine seals catalog. Work is
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Museum staf at the iftieth anniversary of the installation of the Robert
Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art, December 10, 2013.
underway to digitize the collection and to enter the data on the irst
batch of coins, those that were acquired ater the last volume of the
Dumbarton Oaks series of coin catalogs was printed.
he curatorial staf was pleased to organize and host various class
visits, including ones from Ioli Kalavrezou (Harvard University),
Holger Klein (Columbia University), Robert Nelson (Yale University),
Jennifer Davis (Catholic University of America), and Dimiter Angelov
(Harvard University). It is reassuring to see students being trained in
an “object-oriented” approach—one that integrates theory and methodology with an intensive, hands-on examination of actual objects.
his approach requires a collection with an inspiring and diverse
range of material, as well as staf members who are eager to share their
knowledge and expertise.
he museum department also helped to prepare and to consult on
art and art reproductions to be installed in the Fellowship Building.
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Special exhibition, Hagia Sophia Abstractions: Pastels by Alexis de Boeck.
Curatorial staf members attended the American Association of
Museums annual meeting in Seattle, as well as individual sessions
and workshops organized by the Museums and the Web conference
in Baltimore. Gudrun Buehl was invited to speak at the Harvard Art
Museums about the exhibition concepts and strategies used in the
reinstallation of the Byzantine galleries; she also taught a seminar
on “Exhibition Making” at the University of Mainz in Germany. She
attended the fall and winter business meeting of ARIAH (Association
of Research Institutes in Art History) as the secretary and delegate
for Dumbarton Oaks, and was a participant in the digital humanities
workshop “Beautiful Data” (June 16–27, 2014) that was funded by the
Getty Foundation and hosted and organized by Harvard’s metaLab
in Cambridge.
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Staf News
We bid farewell to Chris Harrison, senior museum technician, in
January 2014, and to Hillary Olcott, public program and exhibition
coordinator, in February 2014. In June 2014, we welcomed Colin
Kelly as our new museum technician; we also hosted summer intern
Colleen O’Leary, who assisted the Byzantine Collection staf with the
coin database project and the rehousing of archaeological material in
object storage.
Exhibitions
January 15, 2013–January 5, 2014
Connecting Collections, Collecting Connections: Fity Years of PreColumbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks
February 2, 2013–January 5, 2014
Architectural Contrasts: he Philip Johnson Pavilion and the Rare
Book Library
April 25–October 20, 2013
Four Byzantine Manuscripts
June 27, 2013–March 2, 2014
Inspiring Art: he Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure
April 21, 2014–October 12, 2014
Seldom Seen: A Selection of Prints, Drawings, and Decorative Art from
the Dumbarton Oaks House Collection
May 2014– November 2, 2014
Hagia Sophia Abstractions: Pastels by Alexis de Boeck
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One of two Byzantine bronze weights now in the Byzantine Collection;
donated by Susanne K. Bennet.
Scholarly Activities
Public Lectures
September 26, 2013
Wendy Grossman, he Phillips Collection, “Pre-Columbian Art
between the Ethnographic and the Surreal: Man Ray’s Imagined
Americas”
October 26, 2013
Emily Kaplan, National Museum of the American Indian, “Inka and
Colonial Wooden Keros: Results of a Collaborative Technical Study”
November 16, 2013
Andrew Finegold, Wake Forest University, “Atlatls and the
Metaphysics of Violence in Central Mexico”
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Museum Study Day
Inspiring Art: he Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure
September 27, 2013
Miriam Doutriaux, Dumbarton Oaks, “he Dumbarton Oaks
Birthing Figure: An Introduction”
Elizabeth Boone, Tulane University, “Right and Wrong: A New
Look at the Tlazolteotl”
Susan Toby Evans, he Pennsylvania State University, “Tlazolteotl
and Her Sisters: Mistaken and Shiting Hierophanic Identities”
Emily Umberger, University of Arizona,“Women Who Have Given
Birth in Aztec Sculptures”
Susana Pliego Quijano, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e
Historia, México, “Tlazolteotl in Mexican Art: Birth, Sexuality,
and National Identity”
Constance Cortez, Texas Tech University, “Tlazolteotl as Floating
Signiier or he Use (and Abuse) of an Ersatz Aztec Icon in
Popular Culture and Contemporary Art”
Tours
July 5, August 2, September 6, October 4, and November 1
First Friday curators’ gallery talks on “Birds and Beasts,” “Jade and
Gold,” “Excavated Treasures,” “Heads and Skulls,” and “Celebrating
Colors”
July 6, September 7, October 5, and November 2
First Saturday docent-led tours on “Architectural Contrasts”
Acquisitions
Byzantine Collection
Semis weight with two imperial busts (BZ.2013.007)
Lead token of Constantine V (BZC.2013.006)
Two solidi of Anastasius (BZC.2013.027, BZC.2013.028)
Solidus of Justin I (BZC.2013.029)
Two solidi of Justin II (BZC.2013.030, BZC.2013.031)
Tremissis of Michael II with heophilus (BZC.2013.032)
Histamenon of Michael VII (BZC.2013.033)
Middle Byzantine gold and enamel ring (BZ.2014.001)
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Gifts
Byzantine Collection
Git of a bone plaque with a standing nude igure, Late Antique/early
Byzantine, Egypt (?) (BZ.2013.026), donated by Giovanni Bertele
Git of two Byzantine bronze weights (BZ.2014.001, BZ.2014.003),
donated by Susanne K. Bennet
Loans
Byzantine Collection
Loans from the Collection
Loan of one object to the exhibition Exuberance of Meaning: he Art
Patronage of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), Georgia Museum of
Art, Athens, September 21, 2013–January 5, 2014; and Hillwood
Estate, Museum, and Garden, February 1, 2014–June 7, 2014
Loan of one object for exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, beginning October 8, 2013
Loans to the Collection (long-term)
1,011 coins and seals on loan from he Fleischmann Foundation, in
honor of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fleischmann III
Loan of Byzantine key ring from the Menil Collection, Houston, for
study and exhibition beginning March 20, 2012
Continuing loan of one John II Komnenos (1118–1143) hyperpyron
coin from Mr. Eric Hompe, Washington, D.C., for exhibition
beginning March 25, 2011; on loan from the family of Ferne Carol
Carpousis in her memory
Continuing loan of one object from Susanne K. Bennet, Washington,
D.C., for permanent exhibition beginning April 11, 2008
Pre-Columbian Collection
Loans from the Collection
Loan of three objects to the exhibition Realm of the Condor:
Wari, the Art of a Pre-Inca Empire, Cleveland Museum of Art,
Cleveland, October 18, 2012–January 6, 2013; Museum of Art |
Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, February 10–May 19, 2013; and
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, June 16–September 8, 2013
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Loans to the Collection
Loan of one object from the National Museum of Natural History,
Washington, D.C., to the exhibition Connecting Collections,
Collecting Connections: Fity Years of Pre-Columbian Art at
Dumbarton Oaks, January 15, 2013–January 5, 2014 (extended,
mid-term loan)
House Collection
Loans from the Collection
Loan of one object to the exhibition he Greek of Toledo, Museo
Santa Cruz, Toledo, Spain, March 14, 2014–June 14, 2014
Loan of one object to the exhibition he Early Years of American
Impressionism, 1880–1900, Musée des impressionnismes Giverny,
Giverny, France, March 29, 2014–June 29, 2014
Docents and Visitor Service Assistants
Tours that highlight objects from the Dumbarton Oaks Museum are
frequently requested by groups visiting Dumbarton Oaks. From May
2013 until April 2014, the museum volunteers assisted over 14,059
aternoon visitors. Saturday aternoon tours included a house tour
and an architecture tour (which was ofered on the last Saturday of
the month). Over 531 visitors joined the house tour in 2013–2014 (up
from 472 visitors in 2012–2013). Monthly architecture tours started in
February 2013 as part of the itieth anniversary of the Philip Johnson
pavilion. Forty-eight people have taken the architecture tour since
its inception. Weekday aternoon tours include a public garden tour
at 2:10 p.m. and a special exhibition tour at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and hursday. Although the garden was closed numerous times due to weather conditions, the docents provided the public
garden tour to 940 visitors in 2013–2014. hey also led 219 visitors
through 73 special exhibition tours.
Docents and visitor service volunteers were kept up-to-date and
informed through formal and informal meetings led by staf and
outside lecturers on the third Friday of the month. hese meetings
included a June visit to the Hillwood Garden and a July visit to the
Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. In October, the volunteers visited Glenstone Museum to see their collection and installations, and in November, they visited the National Gallery to see
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Docents and Visitor Service Assistants, 2013–2014.
the Heaven and Earth exhibition. During our meeting in January,
the museum’s research assistant for the Byzantine textiles project,
Elizabeth Williams, spoke to the docents on the Byzantine tapestries.
In March, Miriam Doutriaux, the Pre-Columbian Collection exhibition associate, spoke to the volunteers on the Kreeger Mayan Censer.
Gail Griin, director of gardens and grounds, discussed the winter
changes to the garden and plans for the spring and summer in April.
Also in April, John Beardsley, director of Garden and Landscape
Studies, arranged for Hugh Livingston to speak to the volunteers on
his sound sculpture in Lover’s Lane Pool.
Other information sessions are led by curators during the week.
Gudrun Buehl and John Hanson gave an overview of Four Byzantine
Manuscripts; Miriam Doutriaux and Hillary Olcott coordinated
tours of Inspiring Art: he Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure; and
James Carder presented an overview of Architectural Contrasts: he
Philip Johnson Pavilion and the Rare Book Library and Seldom Seen: A
Selection of Prints, Drawings, and Decorative Art from the Dumbarton
Oaks House Collection. In addition to attending regular meetings
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and information sessions, our docents and visitor service volunteers
attended various symposia, lectures, tertulias, and colloquia presented by the three programs of study, as well as public lectures, openings, and tours presented by curators in conjunction with exhibitions.
A inal contribution to the volunteer education was the establishment of a resource area in the docent lounge. It houses Dumbarton
Oaks publications, along with articles and other titles relevant to the
collections, garden, and the subject ields. Docents regularly contribute material that they have located in books, newspapers, or other
media. All of these activities not only beneit the docents educationally but also help the docents to stay in touch with one another and to
know that they are part of the community at Dumbarton Oaks.
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Gardens
In the summer of 2013, in the frame yard adjacent to the vegetable
garden, Rosabella Alvarez-Calderon, the garden conservation intern,
continued the research of previous garden interns, with further investigation into the 1930s Kitchen Garden hot bed that had been buried
since the mid-1950s. Trained as an archeologist and working with the
garden staf, Alvarez-Caldero began the excavation of the site by creating vertical proiles along the internal walls of the structure in order
to expose its boundaries. She then excavated three test pits in critical parts of the house to better understand the construction process.
Once the structure was completely cleaned and excavated, AlvarezCaldero created a digital plan that she geo-referenced and added to
the garden’s Geographic Information System.
he hot bed excavations in June and July were interrupted oten
by thunderstorms, and the tumultuous weather continued into the
fall and winter with rain, cold temperatures, and record snowfalls.
he garden staf moved from its typical regimen of pruning, cleaning,
and planting to soggy leaf raking, storm water management, shoveling, and plowing. With one of the coldest and snowiest Marches on
record, the spring of 2014 began late but was especially beautiful with
everything coming into bloom at the same time. he plums, deciduous magnolias, and cherries bloomed together in early April, and the
snowlakes and euphorbias bloomed with the quinces in late April.
Tulips and other bulbs were especially brilliant and profuse but as
spring progressed the garden staf realized that many plants had not
survived the winter’s unusually cold temperatures.
Despite the challenging weather in December and January, John
Pond and Nate Trent rebuilt the sandstone terrace above the Pebble
Rain over the Kitchen Garden.
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Thyme bench on the Arbor Terrace.
Garden, where, over time, an American elm planted in the 1920s had
displaced the terrace’s sandstone, warped the rail, and damaged the
Pebble Garden and Box Walk stone walls. Ater removal of the elm,
the garden staf and John Pond designed a mirror image of Beatrix
Farrand’s pattern, which extended the terrace ten feet to the north.
Once the stone work was completed, Francis Flaherty enclosed the
new terrace within an iron rail compatible in design with Farrand’s
more decorative adjacent rail. Almost immediately, the terrace
became a favorite place for staf and fellows’ meetings.
In addition to this new rail, in this past year, Flaherty restored
iron canopies, ornaments, and rails throughout the garden. In 1932,
Beatrix Farrand made a drawing entitled Iron Bouquet for Gate Piers,
which was forged into a mixture of black iron lowers arising from
stone vases lanking the northern gate of the Fountain Terrace. Over
time, the bouquets have rusted and their connection with the vases
has deteriorated. Flaherty removed the pieces to his shop, restored
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Garden staf celebrating Miguel Bonilla and Rigoberto Castellon.
damaged parts, and repainted the entire bouquet before reinstallation
into the vases.
In addition to replanting the iron lowers, the garden staf introduced a number of living species within the Herbaceous Borders,
Fountain Terrace, and Cutting Garden. Seven diferent species of
alliums were introduced into the three gardens with hundreds of
ield poppies, Papaver rhoeas, sprinkled throughout the Herbaceous
Borders as well as black, red, and cream hollyhocks introduced
throughout the gardens. In addition to perennials, biennials, and
annuals, the garden staf and the garden volunteers added a number
of herbs and vegetables to the Kitchen Garden, and began the practice of bringing the harvest to chef Hector Paz, in the Dumbarton
Oaks Refectory, to be incorporated into the daily lunchtime oferings
to staf and fellows. he garden staf brought the irst strawberries to
Paz on May 23, followed by radishes, cabbages, rhubarb, and greens
picked throughout the spring and early summer.
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Herb garden on the Arbor Terrace.
To accompany the Garden and Landscape Studies symposium
held on May 9–10, 2014, the garden staf brought back many of the
scented herbs that Beatrix Farrand had chosen for her Arbor Terrace
herb gardens of the 1920s and 1930s. Around the oval pool of the Cloud
Terrace installation, the staf set four benches surrounded by pots
containing scented geranium, lemon verbena, southernwood, lowering tobacco, rosemary, lavender, and hyssop. Also for the terrace, the
garden staf found an old teak bench in disrepair, built a new deep seat
to hold soil, and planted within a mixture of thyme, chamomile, and
forget-me-nots. In the northeast corner of the terrace, the staf added
a grouping of tables and chairs that has become a favorite place to sit
to look over Mélisande’s Allée and the Kitchen Garden below.
Conservators completed a number of brick, stone, and iron projects throughout the gardens. Mason Cook of Westmill Preservation
cleaned and consolidated the pinecone inials on the gates to the
north and south of the Rose Garden. John Pond rebuilt the stone walls
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above the Herbaceous Borders and below the Lilac Circle, Fairview
Hill, and the Rose Garden. He also repaired brick walls within the
North Vista and the Lovers’ Lane Pool amphitheater. In addition to
the work mentioned earlier, Francis Flaherty repaired the canopies
in the Beech Terrace, above the Bliss Crypt, and next to the Terrior
Column; he also cleaned, restored, and powder coated the Ruth
Havey–designed rail to the north of the Rose Garden. Along the Goat
Steps reset by John Pond in 2012, Flaherty added a hand rail within
the stairway’s inner curve for support and safety. Adam Jaroszynski
of Art of Gold Studio gilded the hooves, pipes, and horns of the
statue of Pan near Lovers’ Lane Pool, and gilded the stars within the
Aquarius Fountain in the Star Garden. Stone carver and conservator
Andy Del Gallo repaired the inscription on Angeliki Laiou’s birdbath
in the Wilderness and elevated the basin for greater presence within
the surrounding ferns and iris.
Many other changes in the gardens are recorded within the
garden blog on the Dumbarton Oaks website. In existence since the
spring of 2010, the blog has now received over 165,000 hits and contains a full repository of images of the garden taken throughout the
year. At present, Luis Marmol organizes and adds commentary to the
images on a daily basis, adding the botanical names of the plants pictured and identifying their location within the garden.
On June 26, 2014, the Dumbarton Oaks community celebrated
the twenty-ith anniversaries of two garden staf members, Miguel
Bonilla and Rigoberto Castellon. When they came in the summer of
1989, Bonilla began work with Franco De Simoni in the greenhouses,
and Castellon began work with Larry Johnson in the garden. Both
De Simoni and Johnson worked at Dumbarton Oaks for nearly forty
years, and were trained by Matt Kearney and Don Smith, both of
whom worked closely with Beatrix Farrand and Mildred Bliss. And
now, Castellon and Bonilla, as crew leaders, are training the new generation, Ricardo Aguilar and Nathan Neufer, Marc Vedder and Luis
Marmol. hey are passing along not just horticultural expertise, but
also the camaraderie and the pride in their work that have existed in
generations of gardeners at Dumbarton Oaks.
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Publications
While remaining committed to traditional academic book publishing, the publications department is enthusiastic about integrating
digital humanities strategies in to our overall publishing program.
Digital humanities is in its nascence, and it ofers wide-open horizons
for the exploration, visualization, and dissemination of information
and resources for the humanities. It is exciting and inspiring to work
with scholars and professionals who want to forge roads into this new
territory. Focusing on web-based sotware—such as our content management system—and database technologies, we are developing and
reining methods of disseminating the resources of Dumbarton Oaks
as well as looking for new ways to augment and extend the concept of
scholarly publishing.
Merging old and new technologies, while adding value to both,
serves as an excellent mission for the publications department. To this
end, we assisted the administration of Dumbarton Oaks in creating
a new set of policies and procedures for proposing print and digital humanities projects, thus encouraging stakeholders to creatively
explore the many possible paths to meet their project goals and helping them to visualize the context of their projects in the overall institutional mission of supporting scholarship.
Books and Journals
Our Byzantine editor, Joel Kalvesmaki, has been working on several
new titles, as well as managing our Byzantine journal, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers. Much anticipated and many years in the making, he
Detail of ms.bz.004-icfa.kc.bia.3226, on the cover of The Life of Saint
Basil the Younger, published in May 2014.
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Life of Saint Basil the Younger was released in May 2014. his critical
edition and annotated translation, which is part of the Dumbarton
Oaks Studies series, was authored by Denis F. Sullivan, Alice-Mary
Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath. We also released a revised edition of
he Taktika of Leo VI in paperback, as well as A Critical Commentary
on he Taktika of Leo VI by John Haldon. We anticipate that both volumes will become appreciated additions to the corpus of scholarly reference materials in Byzantine and military studies. We also released
the 2013 edition of Dumbarton Oaks Papers (number 67) as well as
paperback editions of he Old Testament in Byzantium and Becoming
Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium.
Sara Taylor, our art and archaeology editor, has been busy with
the Garden and Landscape Studies and Pre-Columbian Studies
publishing programs. She attended the Society for Architectural
Historians conference in the spring, introducing our landscape titles
(including the irst two volumes of our ex horto series) to a new and
appreciative audience. Consisting of historical texts devoted to the
philosophy, art, and techniques of landscape design, ex horto reintroduces classic works long out of print. he irst volume, Garden Culture
of the Twentieth Century by Leberecht Migge (1881–1935), was translated from German by David H. Haney. Migge was one of the most
innovative landscape architects of his time, and his notion of “garden
culture” captured the essence of the progressive reform movements
of early twentieth-century Germany. he second volume, Travel
Report: An Apprenticeship in the Earl of Derby’s Kitchen Gardens
and Greenhouses at Knowsley, England, is a critical translation of the
handwritten journal of Hans Jancke (1850–1920), a court gardener
who served the Prussian kings in Potsdam, Germany. Previously
unpublished, this journal describes his apprenticeship at Knowsley,
the seat of the Earl of Derby near Liverpool, England, and ofers an
interesting look at the technical and practical aspects of gardening
in late nineteenth-century England. We also released Technology and
the Garden, a volume in the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the
History of Landscape Architecture series that examines the efect of
emerging technologies on the shaping and experience of landscape in
a diversity of places, times, and cultures.
Taylor also shepherded two new Pre-Columbian titles in 2013–
2014. he latest volume in the Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian
Symposia and Colloquia series—Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places:
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The Life of Saint Basil the Younger
Critical Edition and Annotated
Translation of the Moscow Version
Edited and translated by Denis F. Sullivan,
Alice-Mary Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath
978-0-88402-397-5
Becoming Byzantine
Children and Childhood in Byzantium
Edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou and
Alice-Mary Talbot
978-0-88402-398-2
The Old Testament in Byzantium
Edited by Paul Magdalino and
Robert S. Nelson
978-0-88402-399-9
publications
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The Taktika of Leo VI
Revised Edition
Edited and translated
by George T. Dennis
978-0-88402-394-4
A Critical Commentary on
The Taktika of Leo VI
John Haldon
978-0-88402-391-3
Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places
War in Pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica and the Andes
Edited by Andrew K. Scherer
and John W. Verano
978-0-88402-395-1
Place and Identity in Classic
Maya Narratives
Alexandre Tokovinine
978-0-88402-392-0
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Technology and the Garden
Edited by Michael G. Lee and
Kenneth I. Helphand
978-0-88402-396-8
Garden Culture of the
Twentieth Century
Leberecht Migge
Edited and translated
by David H. Haney
978-0-88402-388-3
Travel Report
An Apprenticeship in the Earl of
Derby’s Kitchen Gardens and
Greenhouses at Knowsley, England
Hans Jancke
Edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn
978-0-88402-389-0
publications
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War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Andrew
K. Scherer and John W. Verano—utilizes methodological and theoretical developments in anthropological archaeology, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory to shed new light on the nature of conlict in
Mesoamerica and the Andes. In Place and Identity in Classic Maya
Narratives, the latest addition to the Studies in Pre-Columbian Art
and Archaeology series, Alexandre Tokovinine explores notions of
place and community in the Classic Maya world.
he publications department was also very happy to complete
our irst volume for Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for
Italian Renaissance Studies. Taylor and Kathleen Sparkes, the publications director, thoroughly enjoyed assisting I Tatti in the production of Bernard Berenson: Formation and Heritage, and look forward
to working with them on many more books in the years to come.
The Web Team
In August 2013, the web team of Kathy Sparkes, Michael Sohn, and
Prathmesh Mengane added a new member, web content editor Lain
Wilson. Wilson has been systematically upgrading and maintaining
the public information pages of our content management system, as
well as working to develop new protocols to help us streamline the
processes of content management, content editing, and user support.
he web team continues to examine and reine our support and
development procedures in order to ensure that the content management system and database support management remains agile
and supportive of the scholarly environment of Dumbarton Oaks.
We created a new protocol for user support: a “web help” email
that enables users to receive same-day support from any available
member of the web team. his new protocol has also helped with
issue documentation and support resolution. Our database and content management system developer, Prathmesh Mengane opened
a GitHub Code Repository, thus allowing us to create support and
development tickets as well as to store and share code on the cloud
for further projects. He continues to manage the support and development environment.
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Digital Humanities
We have made great strides in exploring and expanding our approach
to digital humanities in 2013–2014. Lain Wilson stepped up to the role
of assisting in the inal development of the Garden Archives project
in the content management system, thus allowing the project team
to accomplish a sot launch in summer 2014. He has also carefully
reviewed the entire Dumbarton Oaks website to clean up and add
consistency to content pages and to create more dynamic and user
friendly structure and landing pages.
Athena Ruby
he Athena Ruby typeface, developed by John Hudson for Tiro
Typeworks as directed by our Byzantine editor, Joel Kalvesmaki, was
selected in 2012 as one of the best new typeface designs in the annual
Type Directors Club competition. One of the four TDC judges,
Abbott Miller, selected Athena Ruby as his personal “Judge’s Pick,”
and it appeared in the TDC annual, Typography 34.
AtoM@DO
Prathmesh Mengane has been working hard to develop and maintain
AtoM@DO, the new collection management system for the Image
Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA). his database serves as a
web-based portal that allows users to more efectively search the ICFA
and Dumbarton Oaks Archives collections. Instead of searching collections one-by-one by means of individual inding aids or collection
guides, the users of AtoM@DO can now search across all holdings
using keywords, thus allowing for more direct access to desired information. Prathmesh installed AtoM on Amazon Cloud Services and
developed its structure and functionality, which enabled ICFA to
sot launch the database in December 2013. He also helped to set up a
Github Code Repository for the sharing and collaboration of his VRA
Template development with the open-source community. he inal
import/export functionality and other features will be completed in
the coming year. http://atom.doaks.org/icaatom/index.php/
publications
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The Bliss-Tyler Correspondence Project
Editor James Carder and project manager Sara Taylor were joined by
Lain Wilson, who provided vital assistance with the development,
editing, cleanup, and coding for the Bliss-Tyler Correspondence
project. he project moved forward switly in 2013–2014, with a sot
launch of the irst group of letters (1902–1908) in fall 2013. Two additional groups of letters (1909–1919 and 1920–1927) were published in
spring 2014. Lain and Sara also worked to expand the functionality
of the Online Publications tool, thus paving the way for additional
online publications in the coming months and years. http://www.
doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence
The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century
Designed to accompany a symposium held at Dumbarton Oaks
in October 2013, the exhibition he Botany of Empire in the Long
Eighteenth Century includes a strong focus on botanical books and
illustrations and coincides with the itieth anniversary of the Rare
Book Reading Room at Dumbarton Oaks. his online exhibition,
curated and created by librarian Sarah Burke Cahalan with the
help of Jasmine Casart and Deirdre Moore, and with the support
and editing skills of Lain Wilson, was designed to explore some of
the major themes of the symposium and to promote the holdings
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of the Rare Book Collection. he Rare Book Collection is particularly strong in the areas of garden history and early texts about the
Americas, strengths that are relected in the exhibition’s coverage.
http://www.doaks.org/library-archives/library/library-exhibitions/
botany-of-empire
Philip Johnson at Dumbarton Oaks
Curated and created by James Carder, this online resource commemorates the itieth anniversary of Philip Johnson’s Pre-Columbian
pavilion at Dumbarton Oaks. Johnson’s architectural masterpiece
opened in 1963 and is now seen as a seminal building in his late 1950s’
shit from International-Style modernism to postmodern classicism. he 2013 anniversary year provided an excellent opportunity
to highlight the Pre-Columbian Collection’s impressive housing,
which is arguably a work of art in its own right. http://www.doaks.
org/museum/online-pubs/philip-johnson
publications
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Friends of Music
he 2013–2014 season opener was noteworthy in a number of ways.
First, it marked the Washington, D.C., debut of the cutting-edge New
York–based chamber orchestra, he Knights, who, with twenty-three
musicians, were the largest ensemble ever to perform in the Music
Room. he concert embraced a variety of musical eras and styles,
with the centerpiece of the program, Igor Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton
Oaks” Concerto, commissioned by Mildred Barnes Bliss to celebrate
her thirtieth wedding anniversary in 1938. Revisiting the work in the
same intimate space where it irst came to life seventy-ive years earlier added sweet relevance to the performance.
he Knights also presented two contemporary Washington premieres: Concerto for Santur (a classical Persian hammer dulcimer),
Violin, and Orchestra, composed and performed by Colin Jacobsen
and santur virtuoso Siamak Aghaei; and the orchestra’s collectively
composed the ground beneath our feet, which was inspired by a
ground bass from Tarquinio Merula’s Ciaccona of 1637. In addition,
the musicians played Steve Reich’s mesmerizing Duet for Two Violins
and Strings, J. S. Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe, and Joseph
Haydn’s Symphony no. 8 (“Le Soir”). he Washington Post’s Robert
Battey commented that “it is a joy to see such deeply committed music
making,” calling the evening an “auspicious Washington debut . . .
[that] bespeaks of the highest level of musicianship and preparation.”
he entire concert was recorded live for commercial release on CD.
Pianist Joel Fan crated a program of works “written from 1831 to
1893, by four composers each of whom understood Romanticism in a
distinct way and whose oeuvres could not sound more distinctive.”
Solidly in the standard repertoire were the Polonaise-Fantaisie, op. 61,
The Tempest Trio, January 2014.
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by Frédéric Chopin; the Six Piano Pieces, op. 118, by Johannes Brahms;
and the Mephisto Waltz no. 1, by Franz Liszt. he program’s two works
by Richard Wagner were less familiar. Fan opened the recital with the
prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, arranged by the brilliant
and eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. By tweaking the score
in a few places, Fan managed to play with only two hands Gould’s
transcription for four. he most obscure work on the program (and
Wagner’s last major work for piano) was the Grand Sonata for Piano in
A Major, op. 4, completed when the composer was eighteen.
Pifaro, he Renaissance Band celebrated both winter solstice and
holiday season by doing its best to “Drive the Cold Winter Away” (the
title of the program). he band mobilized an impressive assembly of
historical instruments for the job, including a sackbut, shawm, dulcian, recorders, bagpipes, lute, guitar, pipe and tabor, and other percussion, and performing both familiar and rare French and English
dance tunes. Guest soprano Laura Heimes joined the ensemble with
Hanukkah songs from the Sephardic diaspora, as well as sixteenthand seventeenth-century songs for Christmas and the New Year.
Although pianist Alon Goldstein, violinist Ilya Kaler, and cellist Amit Peled continue to enjoy hugely successful careers as soloists,
the three friends chose to indulge their passion for playing chamber
music by forming the Tempest Trio. he ensemble typically receives
accolades wherever it performs, and in January, the Tempest Trio
made its eagerly anticipated Washington, D.C., debut in the Music
Room. Of the three works on the program, Leonard Bernstein’s Piano
Trio, written when the composer was a nineteen-year-old student at
Harvard University, was arguably the most fascinating. he ensemble
opened the program with Haydn’s Trio no. 39 in G major (“Gypsy”)
and closed with Antonín Dvořák’s Trio no. 3 in F minor. As an encore
to an exquisite concert, the Tempest played a movement from a trio
by Beethoven.
Making his Washington, D.C., recital debut, Ashu, a young concert
saxophonist who goes by his irst name only, played with breathtaking
artistry, partnered expertly by pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. he sonority
was another “debut” of sorts—the irst time ever that a saxophonist had
been presented by the Friends of Music. Works on the program composed expressly for the sax were by Claude Debussy, Jacques Ibert, Jules
Demersseman, and Paul Creston. hree tangos by Astor Piazzolla and a
movement from the cello sonata by Sergei Rachmaninof were adapted
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Pifaro, The Renaissance Band, December 2013.
for sax and piano by Ashu. Noting Ashu’s “remarkable virtuosity,” his
“near-lawless ingering,” and “his easy, natural sense of phrasing,”
Washington Post critic Stephen Brookes enthused: “Ashu’s clear pleasure in performing was infectious . . . Ibert’s ‘Concertino da Camera’
was a playful, light-illed joy to hear, and the soaring exuberance of Paul
Creston’s Sonata, Op. 19, was so powerful it practically knocked you out
of your chair.” he year 2014 marked the one-hundredth anniversary
of the birth of the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax; this concert
would have made him proud.
Pianists Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung—the Bax and Chung
Duo—applied four agile hands to the Music Room’s Steinway with
impressive results. he husband and wife team designed a dancethemed program. With the exception of The Hebrides Overture
by Felix Mendelssohn that opened the concert, Bax and Chung
performed Stravinsky’s own arrangement of his complete ballet
fr iends of music
155
The Knights, October 2013.
Petrouchka; Sixteen Waltzes, op. 39, by Johannes Brahms; and Four
Tangos by Astor Piazzolla.
The Baroque strings of REBEL (pronounced re-BEL), with
recorder and lute virtuoso Matthias Maute, gave the inal concert of
the season. heir program, called “Rediscoveries,” included rare concertos and sonatas by contemporaries of J. S. Bach, including Georg
Philipp Telemann, George Frederick Handel, Johann heile, heodor
Schwartzkopf, Giorgio Belitze, and Johann Adolf Hasse. Maute’s
striking arrangement of Bach’s “Italian Concerto” as a concerto for
recorder and strings transformed the familiar solo keyboard work
into a rarity indeed, and was a highlight of the evening. According to
the Washington Post, “the playing was of the highest level throughout” and “the eight musicians were highly expert, presenting the
music with scholarly care and lively enjoyment.”
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Performances
October 7–8, 2013
he Knights
November 3–4, 2013
Joel Fan
December 1–2, 2013
Pifaro, he Renaissance Band
January 12–13, 2014
he Tempest Trio
February 9–10, 2014
Ashu
March 9–10, 2014
Bax and Chung Duo
April 6–7, 2014
REBEL
fr iends of music
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Finance
he inance department manages a wide spectrum of responsibilities.
We handle the day-to-day transactional accounting for the organization, guaranteeing that invoices are paid on a timely basis, payroll is
calculated and paid to employees accurately, payments from income
generating activities are deposited, and all transactions are accurately
recorded on the “books.” he inance department is also responsible for managing cash inlow and outlow and for ensuring the
availability of funds to handle the organization’s expenses. Finance
department members work with the department heads in budget and
forecast preparation; we monitor various budgets and conirm that
they align with expenses. We also report numbers to Dumbarton
Oaks managers and to Harvard University. We prepare inancial
statements and handle lux analysis, reaching out to diferent departments when needed. One of our key responsibilities is adhering to
proper internal controls to ensure that the appropriate checks and
balances are in place when dealing with cash and other aspects of
accounting and inance.
he department underwent some changes during the course of the
year. Our full-time staf is composed of Gayatri Saxena, inance director (who joined Dumbarton Oaks in October 2013); DeWahn Coburn,
inance manager; Maurice Sanders, staf accountant; and Jonathan
Lee, payroll and beneits coordinator. We are constantly evolving
and making improvements. For example, in payroll, we introduced a
time clock for all of our nonexempt employees, which provided more
accurate and timely information for payroll. Our state and federal tax
payments are now being handled by ADP, which ofers eicient and
Rose Garden gate in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
159
timely iling. We also provide paperless pay stubs, in keeping with our
green initiatives. In accounts payable, we email credit card statements
to departments so that they can code their charges and get necessary
sign-of to ensure timely payments. We have instituted sign-of thresholds for all departments. Expenses are also now closely aligned with the
function of departments, leading to improved accountability. We have
focused on account reconciliation and tightened our month-end and
quarterly close. We have enhanced our Abila sotware with an accounts
receivable module so that we can accurately report and manage aged
receivables in the upcoming iscal year.
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Facilities
he facilities department is responsible for the operation and maintenance of building systems, utilities, housekeeping, accommodations,
special events, refectory operations, internal mail service, capital
planning, and project management functions in thirteen buildings,
with 210,000 gross square feet (GSF), in a sixteen-and-one-quarter-acre campus. Department team members consist of engineers,
building assistants, and refectory staf, coupled with trusted service
contractors for major building systems and highly skilled construction staf for capital projects.
Engineering team members operate, maintain, repair, and
replace all building systems—over nine hundred pieces of equipment
assets, including HVAC equipment, chillers, boilers, vertical transportation vehicles (elevators), and rooing systems. In 2013–2014, we
renegotiated and adjusted our major service contracts, including the
chiller, emergency generator, and BAS (Building Automation System)
service contracts in order to enhance the predictive and preventive
maintenance programs. A major overhaul (ten-year maintenance)
was also completed for all three chillers to assure continued reliable
operations. Engineers solicited bids for comprehensive roof preventative maintenance, infrared testing of electrical equipment, water
treatment for open and closed loop systems, and boiler maintenance;
bids were evaluated over the summer to choose these service contracts. As part of our ongoing education and training program, the
engineers attended the NFMT (National Facility Maintenance and
Technology) conference in Baltimore.
Building assistants provided the housekeeping and custodial
services for all buildings, as well as set up, food and drink service,
Operations Building.
163
and breakdown for special events. hey provided housekeeping and
turn-down services for the rooms in our accommodations as well as
sent and delivered all mail and packages for the Dumbarton Oaks
community. Additionally, the building assistants attended the galleries during the public hours of the museum. (At the time this report
was written, this duty was moved to the security department, due to
the extended museum hours.) he facilities department recruited one
full-time building assistant, Adebayo homas, for a vacant position.
Refectory staf provides lunches ive days a week, ity weeks a
year, for the staf, fellows, and other members of the community at
Dumbarton Oaks. hey have been instrumental in preparing the food
for small, high-end special events in the refectory, director’s residence,
and orangery as well as for the annual holiday party in December.
he year 2013–2014 was a very busy year, with many capital projects
running simultaneously. We substantially completed the roof replacement and building envelopes of the refectory, Operations Building,
Acorn Cottage, Guest House, director’s residence, and we started the
Main House Phase One Building Envelope project. Phase One of this
project is slated to be completed by the end of 2014. We replaced the
north side windows in the Guest House with new, high-eiciency
windows; installed ADA-accessible automated doors to the upper
and lower refectory to complete the ADA pathway from the street
to the library; and we installed a new gutter system and leaf guards
for the greenhouse as an experiment that will serve as a model for
other buildings to cut the cost of gutter leaf cleaning services. We
upgraded the security system through the installation of new CCTV
cameras as well as back end and security control room equipment for
the entire campus. We installed new smoke detection and heaters in
the refectory attic space; relocated several oices for staf members;
and completed the design for perimeter wall repairs, greenhouse
structural improvements, and utility tunnel sump pump installation
projects. hese projects are slated to start in mid-summer 2014. We
started the RFQ and RFP process for the utility master plan and the
utility upgrades project for the gardens. Finally, the new thirty thousand gross square feet, twenty-ive unit Fellowship Building is 70 percent complete and is slated to be substantially inished by the end of
September 2014.
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Trustees for Harvard University
Drew Gilpin Faust, President
James F. Rothenberg, Treasurer
Lawrence S. Bacow
James W. Breyer
Paul J. Finnegan
Susan L. Graham
Nannerl O. Keohane
William F. Lee
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Joseph J. O’Donnell
Robert D. Reischauer
Robert E. Rubin
heodore V. Wells Jr.
Executive Committee
homas B. F. Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of
Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art
Ioli Kalavrezou, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Art
Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History; Chair of
the Committee on the Study of Religion
Diana Sorensen, James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance
Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature; Dean of
Arts and Humanities, Ex Oicio
Mathilda van Es, Associate Dean for Administration for Arts and
Humanities, Ex Oicio
Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval
Latin; Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, Ex Oicio
Wisteria in the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
167
Honorary Ailiates
Susan Boyd, Curator of the Byzantine Collection, 1979–2004
Giles Constable, Director, 1977–1984
Edward L. Keenan, Director, 1998–2007
William C. Loerke, Professor of Byzantine Art, Emeritus
Irfan Shahîd, Ailiate Fellow of Byzantine Studies
Robert W. homson, Director, 1984–1989
Director’s Oice
Jan Ziolkowski, Director
Yota Batsaki, Executive Director
Brijette Chenet, Executive Assistant
Nevena Djurdjevic, Human Resources Coordinator
Susannah Italiano, Events Manager
Pallavi Jain, Human Resources Manager
Francisco López, Fellowship Program Coordinator
Research Appointments
Raquel Begleiter, Research Associate
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Byzantine
Studies, Dumbarton Oaks/Georgetown University
Eric McGeer, Consultant for Byzantine Sigillography
Jonathan Shea, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Byzantine History/
Sigillography and Numismatics, Dumbarton Oaks/George
Washington University
Byzantine Studies
Margaret Mullett, Director of Byzantine Studies
Amanda Daxon, Program Coordinator in Byzantine Studies
Senior Fellows
John Dufy, Chair
Dimiter Angelov (interim)
John F. Haldon
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Ioli Kalavrezou
Robert Ousterhout
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Garden and Landscape Studies
John Beardsley, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies
Jane Padelford, Program Coordinator in Garden
and Landscape Studies
Anatole Tchikine, Postdoctoral Associate in Garden
and Landscape Studies
Senior Fellows
D. Fairchild Ruggles, Chair
Sonja Dümpelmann
Georges Farhat
Gert Gröning
Alison Hardie
haisa Way
Pre-Columbian Studies
Colin McEwan, Director of Pre-Columbian Studies
James Doyle, Postdoctoral Associate in Pre-Columbian Studies
Kelly McKenna, Program Coordinator in Pre-Columbian Studies
Senior Fellows
homas Cummins, Chair
Barbara Arroyo
Leonardo López Luján
Diana Magaloni
Charles Stanish
Gary Urton
Facilities
Alan Dirican, Director of Facilities
Buildings
Mario García, Facilities and Services Coordinator
Carlos Mendez, Events and Services Coordinator
J. David Cruz-Delgado, Building Assistant
Noel Gabitan, Building Assistant
dumbarton oaks staff
169
Staf members at the summer picnic, August 2013.
Jose Luis Guerrero, Building Assistant
Larry Marzan, Cleaning Assistant
José Pineda, Building Assistant
Adebayo homas, Building Assistant
José Enrique Tobar, Building Assistant
Engineering
Kenneth Johnson, Senior Building Systems Engineer
Michael Neal, Mechanical Maintenance Technician
Albert Williams, Mechanical Maintenance Assistant
Refectory
Hector Paz, Executive Chef Manager
Deysi M. Escobar-Ventura, Refectory Assistant
Dominador Salao, Kitchen Assistant
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Finance and Administration
Gayatri Saxena, Director of Finance
DeWahn Coburn, Manager, Financial Operations
Cindy Greene, Administrative Coordinator, Friends of Music
Jonathan Lee, Payroll and Beneits Coordinator
Maurice Sanders, Staf Accountant
Valerie Stains, Artistic Director, Friends of Music
Gardens
Gail Griin, Director of Gardens and Grounds
Ricardo Aguilar, Gardener
Miguel Bonilla, Crew Leader
Melissa Brizer, Greenhouse Specialist
Rigoberto Castellon, Crew Leader
Walter Howell, Gardener
Luis Marmol, Gardener
Donald Mehlman, Gardener
Nathan Neufer, Gardener
Pedro Paulino, Gardener
Manuel Pineda, Crew Leader
Marc Vedder, Integrated Pest Management Specialist
Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA)
Shalimar Fojas White, Manager
Megan Cook, Research Assistant
Fani Gargova, Byzantine Research Associate
Rona Razon, Archivist
Anne-Marie Viola, Metadata and Cataloging Specialist
Information Technology
Charlotte Johnson, Information Technology Manager
Pete Haggerty, Network Systems Administrator
JoAnn Murray, Information Technology Support Specialist
dumbarton oaks staff
171
Library
Sheila Klos, Director of the Library
Deborah Brown, Librarian, Byzantine Studies
Sarah Burke Cahalan, Special Projects and Reference Librarian
Kimball Clark, Cataloger
Megan Cook, Research Assistant
Bridget Gazzo, Librarian, Pre-Columbian Studies
Ingrid Gibson, Interlibrary Loan Librarian
Wendy Johnson, Copy Cataloger
Linda Lott, Librarian, Rare Book Collection
Sarah Mackowski, Acquisitions and Interlibrary Loan Assistant
Barbara Mersereau, Acquisitions Assistant
Sandra Parker-Provenzano, Head Cataloger
Sarah B. Pomerantz, Serials and Acquisitions Librarian
Toni Stephens, Library Assistant
Katharine Van Arsdale, Research Associate, Garden Archives Project
Museum
Gudrun Buehl, Curator and Museum Director
Christine Blazina, Docent Coordinator
James N. Carder, Archivist and House Collection Manager
Miriam Doutriaux, Pre-Columbian Collection Exhibition Associate
John Hanson, Assistant Curator, Byzantine Collection
Colin Kelly, Museum Exhibit Technician
Joseph Mills, Photographer
Cécile Morrisson, Advisor for Byzantine Numismatics
Juan Antonio Murro, Assistant Curator, Pre-Columbian Collection
Patti L. Sheer, Museum Shop Manager
Elizabeth A. Williams, Research Assistant, Byzantine Textiles Project
Marta Zlotnick, Museum Collections Manager and Assistant Registrar
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Publications
Kathleen Sparkes, Director of Publications
Joel Kalvesmaki, Editor in Byzantine Studies
Prathmesh Mengane, Database and CMS Specialist
Michael Sohn, Web and Graphic Designer
Sara Taylor, Managing Editor, Art and Archaeology
Lain Wilson, Web Content Editor
Security
Christopher L. Franklin, Director of Security
Randy W. Kestner, Lead Security Oicer
Elizardo Arango, Security Oicer
Nora Escobar, Security Oicer
Fikre Habtemariam, Security Oicer
Douglas C. Koch, Security Oicer
Rodolfo Marston, Security Oicer
Philip Moss, Security Oicer
Robert Page, Security Oicer
Anthony Suchaczewski, Security Oicer
Garield Tyson, Security Oicer
dumbarton oaks staff
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