Dumbarton Oaks

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The Dumbarton Oaks country house
Area map of Dumbarton Oaks
Hestia full of grace . 6th century tapestry (Egypt)

Dumbarton Oaks is a 19th century country house in federal style , the American twist on classicism . The house is surrounded by famous gardens and is located in Washington, DC in the Georgetown district . It houses the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection , one of the world's finest collections of artifacts from the Byzantine Empire .

Country house and gardens

The country house was built in 1800. In 1920 it was acquired by Robert Woods Bliss (1875–1962) and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss (1875–1969). Robert Woods Bliss had long served in the US diplomatic service. His wife was a well-known art collector and the daughter of Demas Barnes , a member of the US House of Representatives who had made a fortune by investing in the laxative " Fletcher's Castoria " , among other things . Various architects made structural changes to the house, including the famous Philip Johnson (1906-2005).

The gardens around Dumbarton Oaks are approximately four acres. They were designed between 1922 and 1947 by the well-known landscape architect Beatrix Farrand in collaboration with Mildred Bliss. The gardens include a series of terraces built into a hill behind the house. The other garden areas are less clearly structured. Individual sections of the park will as Star Garden, Green Garden, Beech Terrace, Urn Terrace, formal Rose Garden, Arbor Terrace, Fountain Terrace, Lover's Lane Pool, Pebble Terrace, Camellia Circle ( Camellia Circle ), Prunus Walk, Cherry Hill ( Cherry Hill ) Crabapple Hill, Forsythia Hill ( Forsythienhügel ) and Fairview Hill called. The entire garden is open to the public.

A larger orchestral work by Igor Stravinsky is called Dumbarton Oaks: Robert Bliss commissioned Stravinsky to compose a concert on the occasion of his thirtieth wedding anniversary in 1938 . This is how the Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra came about , which is usually referred to as the Dumbarton-Oaks Concerto.

In 1944, Dumbarton Oaks hosted the Dumbarton Oaks Conference . It was an international conference that prepared the foundation of the UN .

The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

The country house is home to the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection , a study center whose activities span the fields of Byzantine Studies, the science of the pre-Columbian cultures of America, and the history of landscape architecture . The Dumbarton Oaks Study Center publishes a scientific journal called Dumbarton Oaks Papers .

In the course of their lives Robert and Mildred Bliss had acquired large collections of books and objets d'art, which they housed in Dumbarton Oaks. In 1940 they brought their collections and the house and the associated property to a foundation, thus establishing the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection , which was to be administered by the Trustees of Harvard University . Initially, the new study center was to be available exclusively to Byzantine Studies. Later the field of activity was expanded to include pre-Columbian cultures and the history of landscape architecture. Dumbarton Oaks libraries hold more than 100,000 volumes. A number of academics are permanent resident scholars. In addition, around forty scholarships are awarded annually for a shorter research stay as a 'visiting scholar'.

The Byzantine Institute of America

The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection also houses the archives of the private Byzantine Institute of America , which was founded in 1930 by Thomas Whittemore and Paul Atkins Underwood and ceased operations in 1962 due to insufficient funding.

museum

The publicly accessible rooms of Dumbarton Oaks house the art collections of primarily Byzantine and pre-Columbian art, which go back to Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss, but were expanded to a small extent after their deaths.

Byzantine art

The most extensive sub-collection includes works of late antique , early Christian and Byzantine art. In particular, Dumbarton Oaks is considered to be one of the most important collections in the world, showing Byzantine art in its entire geographical breadth and in the development of ancient and early Christian art. Many of the objects are made of precious materials such as gold, silver, enamel or ivory, so that the exhibition rooms are reminiscent of a medieval treasury. The collection includes several ancient mosaics from Antioch unearthed by Princeton University archaeologists in the 1930s. The collection also includes a large part of the silver objects from the Sion treasure .

  • Mosaic from Antioch, 2nd – 3rd cent. Century AD

  • Part of the Sion treasure, 6th century

  • Rosette-decorated ivory box, 10th – 11th centuries Century

  • Icon with St. Peter , 3rd quarter of the 13th century

Pre-Columbian art

The collection of pre-Columbian art was built up by Robert Woods Bliss from 1912. While most of the pre-Columbian objects in museums at the time were presented from an archaeological point of view, Bliss focused on aesthetic aspects; H. he understood the works explicitly as art objects. Geographically, this sub-collection extends from Mexico ( Olmec , Teotihuacan , Maya , Veracruz-Classic , Mixtec , Aztec ) via Honduras and Colombia to the Andes region. For the pre-Columbian collection, Philip Johnson designed a separate exhibition wing made up of eight small, round, glass-walled pavilions that merged into one another and opened in 1963.

House Collection

The "House Collection" includes a number of works of art from Europe, Asia and Egypt, of which important are on display in the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room. These are partly outstanding individual pieces, such as a Madonna by Tilman Riemenschneider or paintings by El Greco and Edgar Degas .

  • Music Room by Dumbarton Oaks

  • El Greco: " Visitation " (approx. 1610–1614)

  • Edgar Degas: "La Repetition de Chant" (approx. 1873)

literature

  • Joachim Wolschke-Bulman: Fifty Years of Dumbarton Oaks. From the temple of garden art to the scientific garden historical research institute . In: Die Gartenkunst 3 (2/1991), pp. 319–338.

Web links

Commons : Dumbarton Oaks  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers , approx. Late 1920s-2000s ( Memento of January 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b Cyril Mango: The Byzantine Collection . In: Apollo - The International Magazine of the Arts . 119, 1984, pp. 251-259.
  3. ^ A b Denys Sutton: An Oasis of Scholarship . In: Apollo - The International Magazine of the Arts . 119, 1984, pp. 232-236.
  4. ^ Kurt Weitzmann: The Saint Peter Icon of Dumbarton Oaks . In: Apollo - The International Magazine of the Arts . 119, 1984, pp. 260-263.
  5. ^ A b George Kubler: Ancient American Gods and Their Living Impersonators . In: Apollo - The International Magazine of the Arts . 119, 1984, pp. 240-246.
  6. ^ Pre-Columbian Collection. Tezcatlipoca. In: Dumbarton Oaks. The Collections Online. Accessed May 31, 2020 (English).
  7. ↑ Mary Ellen Miller: Four Maya Reliefs . In: Apollo - The International Magazine of the Arts . 119, 1984, pp. 247-250.
  8. ^ Pre-Columbian Collection. Mosaic Mirror. In: Dumbarton Oaks. The Collections Online. Accessed May 31, 2020 (English).
  9. ^ House Collection. The visitation. In: Dumbarton Oaks. The Collections Online. Accessed May 31, 2020 (English).

Coordinates: 38 ° 54 '50.1 "  N , 77 ° 3' 48.1"  W.