Dumbarton Oaks Fêtes New Programs and Spaces

Your independent source for Harvard new s since 1898 CAMPUS NEWS Dum barton Oaks Fêtes New Program s and Spaces Museum s and Collect ions Joe Mills Gram m y-winning vocal en sem ble Room ful of Teeth perform s at Dum barton Oaks. Dum barton Oaks Fêtes N ew Program s and Spaces Cunningham/Quill Architects 10.7.14 Room ful of Teeth, the Gramm y-winning vocal ensem ble who perform ed at Dum barton Oaks Research Library an d Collection on Sunday, serves as perhaps an apt m etaphor for how discrete disciplin es com e together at the University’s Washington, D.C.- based center for the hum anities. The diverse sounds of yodeling, Tuvan and Inuit throat singing, and m ore fam iliar styles of belting reverberated off the m edieval tapestries that line the m usic room ’s ornate walls. “Exploring these old singing traditions, but bringin g them together in new creations, is m uch of the core of Room ful of Teeth,” the group’s founder and director Brad Wells explained in a behind-the-scen es session that kicked off a m arathon day of revelry. TH E M U SI C OF Much the sam e can be said of Dum barton Oaks as it celebrated a season of progress in its efforts to foster links am ong the often disconnected scholars of Byzantine, PreColum bian, and garden and landscape studies who com e there to work (see “Hom e of the Hum anities,” May-J une 20 0 8). Sunday’s festivities m arked several significant expan sions for Dum barton Oaks, which heads into its seventy-fifth-anniversary year in 20 15: the com pletion of renovations to a newly purchased apartm ent building for its visiting fellows; a new program in urban landscape studies, including fellowships and public program m ing, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and the inauguration of a residency for early-career m usicians, whose first recipient is Pulitzerwinning com poser and Room ful of Teeth m em ber Caroline Shaw. 2 Dum barton Oaks Fêtes N ew Program s and Spaces “Adaptability to change is not a quality for which the hum anities and universities are supposed to be particularly receptive,” Porter professor of m edieval Latin J an Ziolkowski, the director of Dum barton Oaks since 20 0 7, explained to the audience in a speech before the evening’s concert. But as funding and support for the arts and hum anities have evaporated, he continued, Dum barton Oaks has had to adapt, finding new ways to reinvent and reinvest in its original m ission. “We here have em braced it, but in our own style and on our own term s. The results, in m y view, have been spectacular.” The biggest of these strides com es in the form of the nearly com pleted Fellowship House, an overhauled apartm ent building with spaces for 26 resident fellows at 170 0 Wisconsin Avenue, a short block from the m useum ’s m ain entrance. Dum barton Oaks purchased the property in 20 11; renovations began in 20 13 to transform the Eisenhower-era office structure into a high-tech, sustainable apartm ent building that is expected to achieve LEED Gold status (as reported in Brevia, Novem ber-Decem ber 20 11, page 59). On Sunday afternoon, celebrants—who included Harvard faculty and staff m em bers visiting from Cam bridge, as well as m em bers of the local music and architecture com m unities—got a preview of the new building, which was designed by architects from Cunningham / Quill. Visitors wandered through the quiet studio, one-, an d twobedroom apartm ents, stepping around kitchen appliances still to be connected before the early-Novem ber m ove-in date. The building includes a soundproof, state-of-the-art practice room for the resident m usician, as well as gathering spaces for conferences an d presentations—currently im possible in the over-program m ed apartm ent building a halfm ile from the m ain cam pus where fellows currently live. Still to be installed are a num ber of elem ents that will further connect the new building to the m ain cam pus, including sim ulcast capabilities, photographs curated from the m useum ’s collection, and a “vertical garden.” Overall, the new space will foster m ore casual encounters am ong the center’s diverse visiting fellows, and Ziolkowski says this is where the real power of tim e at Dum barton Oaks will com e. “I want them to have a year of quiet, I want them to love the seren ity and the beauty and have the chance to hunker down,” he explained in an interview. “But the fact is that we could just send checks to people where they are, if there wasn’t som e further goal. And the further goal is to get them to grow through exchange.” Adding to that exchange will be the two new fellowship program s celebrated on Sunday evening, each of which is uniquely tied to the institution’s efforts to bring its original m ission into the twenty-first century. Charged with m aintain ing the estate of Robert Woods Bliss, A.B. 190 0 , and Mildred Barnes Bliss and serving as a center for Byzantine 3 Dum barton Oaks Fêtes N ew Program s and Spaces studies, Dum barton Oaks added fellowship program s in pre-Colum bian and garden and landscape studies a quarter-century after the Blisses’ donation to Harvard. The n ew fellowship in urban landscape studies, which director of garden and landscape studies J ohn Beardsley highlighted at a reception before the concert, will tie Dum barton Oaks to dom inant conversations in design today, and, by bringing historians and designers together, help further “integrate the design disciplines with the hum anities,” he said. The residen cy program for early-career m usicians builds on the Blisses’ separate interest in m usic, and further links it to the intellectual life of the institution. The Friends of Music series, inaugurated in 1946 and continued in a series of seven paired concerts that run through each academ ic year, has had little form al interaction with either contem porary m usic or the fellowship program . Sunday’s Room ful of Teeth concert highlights just how m uch this is beginning to change. Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, for which she becam e the youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music last year, began the even ing’s program . Trained as a violinist and currently a doctoral candidate in com position at Princeton, Shaw spent a year after college traveling around Europe studying form al gardens, a topic clearly close to Dum barton Oaks’ institutional heart. Perhaps, Ziolkowski reflected, “the perfect candidate.” The excitem ent of renewed program m ing and renovated spaces can already be felt. “My charges, the Pre-Colum bian fellows, are quite often com ing fresh from the field, they’re com ing from working in rem ote sites in isolated locations,” program director Colin McEwan reflected. “And the sense of com m unity at D.O. is palpable. And for som eon e like Caroline to m eet with them is bringing worlds that are far apart together.” All contents © 1996-20 14 Harvard Magazine Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policyogle+ 4