text:
AS: Anne Steptoe –
JNSL: and Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent.
EG: And we are here today, it is the 16th of July, 2009, at the National Gallery of Art, and we have the honor of interviewing Therese O'Malley. To get things started, we were wondering how you first came to hear about Dumbarton Oaks, and how you came to work there, and what your first impressions were.
TO: I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania – art history major – when Elizabeth McDougall came as a guest professor to teach, and I took that course. I had not ever heard of it before that, but also it was also a somewhat new program, the garden history. So, it was with Betty that I started. I had been doing some landscape history on my own in Philadelphia, so I was intrigued by this professor from Harvard who was actually doing it full-time, because it really wasn't a very common specialty when I started.
AS: And it was from her you learned about the junior fellowship?
TO: Yeah.
AS: And then you were a Junior Fellow in '82?
TO: I guess so! Yes, I came as a reader first. '81-'82 I was a reader; we moved to Washington - my husband was at Georgetown doing his internship, and then I applied and then I was a Junior Fellow. Then after that I came here to the National Gallery as a research assistant, and never left.
JS: Who were some of the other Fellows of that time, both senior and junior? Who were some of the other figures at Dumbarton Oaks in the different fields?
TO: With me was Ann Friedman and Mary-Anne Ruggiero, two of the other Junior Fellows; in the other departments, Simon Ellis, Oliver Nicholson, Margaret, who's coming down as director –
JS: – Margaret Mullet! –
TO: – was a Fellow.
JS: She's Director of Byzantine Studies now.
TO: So, we were a very close group. It was a very nice interaction among the three departments; there was never any separation there.
AS: Could you talk a little bit about - we've heard many different things about the social side of Dumbarton Oaks, but it sounds like that was a particularly good time.
TO: It was a good time! We were already living in Washington, so we didn't live in the fellows' residence; we were in Georgetown. Maybe because of where we were located, which was right on P St. and Wisconsin Ave, our house became a very lively center gathering place; a lot of spontaneous parties. But Margaret was terrific, because she really had a sense of how to bring departments and people together. She set up a Thursday afternoon kind of – we didn't use the word happy hour, it was something, I forget – but it was really a great thing for the Fellows and Junior Fellows, and some of us were quite young. For me this was a very new experience, to be in a place like this, and it's true for most of us. It was so international, and learning about fields of endeavor that you'd never really heard about. One of the other Fellows was Gian Carlo – what's his name; you'll know him, he's a great linguist, I think he knew ten dead Ethiopian dialects or something, he's a fantastic guy, teaches in Parma, I believe. And archaeologists and historians and great, great scholars who would come through. Belting was there all the time, and the great coin specialist –
AS: – Grierson.
TO: Ševčenko, of course, was always there. Socially and intellectually it was a very important training period for people like me.
EG: Were there teas at that time or anything of that sort – regularly scheduled social functions?
TO: No, this was what Margaret did. There was a great Halloween party every year. Giles scared the living daylights out of us, because he would come totally in costume, and he was a rather imposing person. Anyway, I don't know if any of you know Giles Constable.
JS: They interviewed him last summer.
TO: He's about 6'10'' or something - he probably isn't, but he always seemed that way, looming. And he would come, I remember, completely bent over, shrouded in black, and move through the crowd and you had no idea who he was, and ugh. He did it a couple Halloweens in a row. But also his first wife was a very genteel, lovely woman, who really just added a wonderful kind of feminine, I don't know, warm feeling to the whole atmosphere. Judy Siggins was there then too, and Elizabeth Boone was great; the senior scholars – the way they reached out to the junior scholars, staff and senior Fellows, they reached out to the younger ones in a way that really, probably for the first time, for me certainly, you were treated as an equal, and encouraged, and they wanted to hear what you had to say. It was a terrific experience that way.
AS: Can you talk a little about what daily life was like? It sounds like there were many special occasions, but on a typical day as a Junior Fellow, what was your day like? What were your responsibilities?
TO: I was there before the whole renovation, so we had a very different area; we were quite separated down in the lower level, the basement. We got to work. We were usually there at the point where we're writing up our dissertations, so it was pretty serious work. I did a lot of work – being in Washington, this is like CASVA, too – Washington became a tremendous city for research in these years, and that's why it's so great today. But these are the years these things were building, and the Library of Congress was just a treasure trove. I'm an Americanist; I work on eighteenth and nineteenth century mostly colonial and early American topics, and my dissertation's on the Mall. So, I had my base at Dumbarton Oaks, and the library was great; it really was a terrific library even at that stage, for my topic. And also just to learn the discipline, to read outside your field, doing all this primary research but also learning how to write a dissertation in your field. My field was rather new and so we had everything, and we had Betty McDougall there, who was really pioneering, and then it's been followed by all these great leaders in the field. I myself was able to use the Library of Congress, the natural history, the botany library – not the National Gallery so much; it didn't have materials for me, but I used all the archives in Washington. Because of the planning of Washington – it was a federal program, so I worked in the White House. And of course, coming from Dumbarton Oaks, there was a certain entrée you got because of your affiliation. I really used the city. For someone else it might not be that way; maybe they're working on an Italian topic and they bring with them a lot of materials, but then the resource is there. Also because our field, landscape and garden history, is very interdisciplinary, and depending on what your training is, what your interests are, you'll need different kinds of library strengths. I was trained as an architectural historian, and Betty McDougall certainly had that direction, so the library had been built up very much to support that. Someone else interested in archaeology or in literary history of gardens would find other resources.
AS: At that point were there still runners to the Library of Congress from Dumbarton Oaks? At one point there were individuals who would go and get books for Junior Fellows and Fellows. Were you making trips?
TO: That's what we do here. I believe they were brought in. I'm trying to remember who that was; I don't remember who that would have been. But yeah, we did use – but I actually had a shelf there, too, so I would go there regularly and get books. In those days the Library of Congress was completely open; I could wander through the entire thing and just pull things off the shelves, and I had a desk up in the attic, so it was really nice access.
JS: Did you ever hear any interesting stories or anecdotes about Mrs. Bliss and Beatrix Farrand – perhaps from Betty McDougall or some of the older folks who worked in your field – about the gardens themselves and how Dumbarton Oaks developed as a center for this field, as a unique center, as I understand it, for garden and landscape studies?
TO: You know, I've written an article on that. It hasn't come out yet, but because I could – from your question, you didn't know a few things that I could tell you that would be useful for the history of D.O. Last April or the April before, there was a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks on the occasion of the reopening of the building, and all those papers are being prepared right now for publication. James is the editor. I wrote a history of the garden library. That might be useful for you to read. Yes, I've worked a lot on that topic, and it's a great history. It's a history not only of collecting, the history of the profession, history of the field, of architecture, history of intellectual activities in this country, history of Washington D.C. as it developed post-war, and the Blisses and Dumbarton Oaks played very, very key role in all of this. Actually I wanted to say that about one of your questions here, "there are physical changes, most notably the addition of the garden library." The garden library existed from the founding of Dumbarton Oaks.
AS: What was the building project in '64, then? Was that a reopening.
TO: It was a building, a physical building, at the same time as the Pre-Columbian pavilion. These things should be seen together, because you have two emerging areas of specialization in the history of art and the history of culture, which is the study of Pre-Columbian art and the study of gardens and landscapes, that the Blisses are very much supporting simultaneously. It's a very interesting contrast, because Philip Johnson designs this ultra-modern statement of a pavilion, and Mrs. Bliss is right there with him designing it – she's very much a key part about it, and if you read Philip Johnson's introduction to the book by Susan Tamulevich, which is a history of Dumbarton Oaks, he talks about his relationship with Mrs. Bliss. But at the same time she had commissioned Frederic Rhinelander King, who's a very old-fashioned architect, and he designs this very retro building that we have as the garden library, but it's absolutely simultaneous. What has not happened is the recognition of the history of landscape and garden interest in collecting as much as the Byzantine collecting, because that's always been very big, and with Harvard they made it the primary area of development, and also it has a much longer historiography and is just very much more an established field than other two, particularly garden history and landscape history, but Dumbarton Oaks really has been the cradle in this country of the field, a field which has now risen to be one of the more primary fields in art history. It's really seen with the new art history as being the kind of area of research that should be done. If you read Stephen Bann, he wrote an essay years and years ago about what the new art history will be, and one of the areas he identifies as the area to be looked at is garden history. This is long before his association with Dumbarton Oaks. So, Dumbarton Oaks, really beginning with Mrs. Bliss's own collecting interest – and that's a whole other angle: why was she interested in this, who else was interested in this? And there were a lot of very, very important women in America interested in collecting garden books, and they basically cornered the market and created a market for the collection of these kinds of material, Mrs. Mellon being one of the primary examples. Mrs. Hunt in Pittsburgh; in California there were a couple of women who were building these great collections. But anyway, I could go on and on about this. You'd better ask me another question.
EG: Did you get a sense of Mrs. Bliss's mission for the garden and architecture program?
TO: It's quite explicit. In the beginning, Beatrix Farrand had founded in Maine, at her own home, a small research center that had certain goals: the study of historic gardens, the training of gardeners and landscape designers, to become a resource center for information about local flora. She very much influenced Mrs. Bliss, but Mrs. Bliss already had an interesting collection; she had been collecting for a long time already. But they had been talking about the gardens and garden library since 1920. We have a 1922 letter which really lays out a lot of these goals that get carried through. The building of the garden is seen very much as a laboratory for the study of garden history. So, they're integral, and it took decades – things like the war. The Blisses, in all the years they owned it – I think a total of less than seven years, maybe, they lived there, is that what you've heard?
AS: They gifted it in '40.
TO: And all the time they were building it, the '20s and '30s, they weren't here, so it's something that from the very beginning of its purchase they identified as something that would have another life. But this is something that's happening in a lot of places in America. It has to be seen in the context of what Mr. du Pont is doing for Winterthur; he was building a center for the study of American culture. He was one of the first members of the board of the garden library for Dumbarton Oaks. There are very, very tight relationships between these people, and a lot of people in Europe. The whole Florentine expat community, the creation of Le Balze, La Pietra, I Tatti. That's all key and part of the social community they were dealing with; Beatrix Farrand's aunt is Edith Wharton, and she was very much a part of that whole Anglo-American community in Florence involved in building all these research centers, so it's not a unique situation, something that's happening. Also the Folgers were just giving that whole collection to Washington at the same time.
AS: The integration you that you talked about between the gardens and garden history that was sort of a Bliss legacy or goal, was that true when you were a Fellow? Was there some sort of integration between the fellowship program and the physical gardens? Of course, everyone is busy with their own studies, but you do have a great resource in that there are beautiful historical gardens right next to you.
TO: Well, for someone like me, who works on American gardens, you could see I was interested in the design of this garden from the beginning. My dissertation wasn't about it, but you work in one of the best-designed gardens in America, and Beatrix Farrand is one of our greatest designers, so for me it was part of my intellectual pursuit as well. In terms of the experience of being a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, it was integral to our experience there, because we were there in the gardens as much as possible, and we were talking in the gardens, and meeting in the gardens, and using it for our communion with each other, so it was integral. In terms of the horticultural collections, I wasn't looking at horticulture at that point there. I was looking at horticulture in Washington in the eighteenth century, nineteenth century, not – this is something very different.
JNSL: What was the most exciting project through the years that you've been pleased to be a part of in terms of your associations with Dumbarton Oaks? – a symposium, or so on. Your fondest – ?
TO: That's hard to say. I was a Senior Fellow for I don't know how long –
AS: – about ten years, I think.
TO: Always picking the fellowships. There's a lot of responsibility there, because you're building the field. You're very conscious of the fact that you're building the field. That was great. You see what's out there and you get to choose who you think is the best, and then you get to meet them and encourage them and they become your colleagues, so that's always been a tremendous thing for me. But then I did the Downing Facsimile; that was a book – there's a facsimile series for the garden library, and there've been a couple, a half-dozen or so. This was a good experience for me for editorial reasons. What they do is they look for a notable book in the collection that's not widely available, and then they reprint it and someone writes an essay with it. So, that's what I did with Downing's treatise on the history of landscape gardening. This was around the 1840s. Dumbarton Oaks had a good edition of it but it was missing something. We were able to collaborate with the Library of Congress and get pages from theirs and insert them, so that what we actually published was a better edition than Dumbarton Oaks has. That was, for me – I learned so much in the process of doing that kind of publication, and it's stayed with me, because now that's what I primarily do here – our publications with CASVA. But the John Evelyn project was something that was very dear to my heart, because I was working on Evelyn – this was during John Hunt's time there, and he of course had worked on Evelyn. I was able to go look at the manuscript which was never published; it was this great work, this magnum opus that was never published; it was a comprehensive history of gardens. Parts of it have been published over the years so we know some things through published form, but the actual manuscript – people just never could see this thing because it's massive. It's a mess that has all these interleaved editions and everything. We did a big project to bring together a person from Wiliamsburg – and John Hunt was behind all of this – who had been working on a transcription of it, and we made the transcription available to a handful of scholars, who read it and then came and gave a symposium. Then we published the symposium papers and then John, through Pin Press, has published a facsimile of that book. So, this is a multi-year, long-term project involving lots of people, but it's a very key work that is now well-known by many, many people and used, and it's a very nice collaboration. So, that kind of thing that you can pull off, never as an individual – you need a team of people, you need cooperating institutions – you can really do something big and important. And I did appreciate very much one little detail, in that the garden symposia are very successful. Anytime you mention gardens you have at least two different audiences that come together, an amateur audience and a scholarly audience, and they mix up beautifully. We always have usually a sold-out crowd. John Evelyn was so esoteric; people came and didn't make it through the whole thing. What I appreciated at the end of it was – and it led to a lot of discussion – that, you know what, that's what Dumbarton Oaks can do; it can do a scholarly conference. We don't care who comes. We're not selling out; the point is not to be popular. That high point of quality for that place, I think should always be maintained.
AS: That was an unusual symposium, in that it wasn't only esoteric in subject, relatively speaking; it was also much more specific than most of the symposia topics. Is that fair to say?
TO: Yeah, probably true. I'm thinking of Loudon, the one on Loudon. We've done them on individuals; there was one on Downing, there was one on Loudon and the picturesque. But about one manuscript, I can't think of another parallel to that. Although what that manuscript represented, it was the history of the Royal Society, basically. It was the history of the foundations of garden history, actually. Really, on the face of it, it looked very narrow, but if you look at the papers, it was really quite broad. And that's the way we sliced it, basically, to blow it up, to make it a much more complicated and broad topic.
EG: Did you work on any interdisciplinary symposia with Pre-Columbian or Byzantine studies? Was there anything like that at the time?
TO: Interdisciplinary was always three departments. I know there have been; I've attended them, but did I work on them? I can't remember working on them.
EG: So, those are more rare than most?
TO: Oh, they're very rare. That was a big party trick, to come up with a topic that brings together the three fields. Joachim was able to do that at some point. What we have done, we've done programs with CASVA and Dumbarton Oaks, and we did one on sustainability in agriculture. That was quite interdisciplinary.
AS: How over the years have you interacted with the museum and its collections? The garden collection is a little bit different, we've gotten the sense, than maybe some of the other collections at Dumbarton Oaks.
TO: See, this is a particular – how should I put it. I'm always bothered by the fact that the library, the garden materials are never considered part of the museum. I just think that the objects that are in the garden library – we have a very important collection. And there's no one big catalog on the garden library, and there really should be. You know, they've just published that square one on the museum – great hits – there absolutely should be one on the library and the collection of prints and drawings and paintings that are in there. They're very important. But your question really was about – you mean the Byzantine and the Pre-Columbian materials, and my interactions with those?
AS: No, I think your interactions with the garden materials – did you interact a lot with the collection?
TO: The library collection?
AS: It's strange to talk about the collection, because it's not treated as maybe as official as the museum collection in Byzantine or Pre-Columbian, but is there a lot of interaction between Fellows and the collection in garden history?
TO: Absolutely. People write dissertations on things in that collection. They write books on them. The Downing book was about a book in the collection. I've just published a book called The Art of Natural History which is through here. I edited it with Amy Meyers, who is also a former Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. We published an article on this great manuscript from Prague, and there's just so many examples of – this is this great manuscript that's in Dumbarton Oaks's collection that has never been really published. I also just recommended to an exhibition that's going on in England and at Yale the Mrs. Delaney manuscript that we have at Dumbarton Oaks that nobody ever really has looked at. But it was on display a year or two ago in the garden library, and I knew about it because I'd been reading all the correspondence about Mrs. Bliss's purchases for this article on building the collection, and I saw that they had bought this book by Mrs. Delaney and I didn't know they had it, so I tracked it down. It's going to be in this exhibition at Yale now and in London. So, I am constantly referring to the collection and have been since day one. It's a very important, very diverse collection there. There's a wonderful letter by Thomas Jefferson about slavery there. She collected a lot of first editions and a lot of manuscript letters from all fields. She had all these early Jane Austens. Fantastic collection. So yeah, I did use it a lot. Everyone used it a lot.
EG: Has there been any sort of exhibition at Dumbarton Oaks of documents or manuscripts or objects in landscape?
TO: Many, many exhibitions.
EG: Were you involved in them?
TO: No, I haven't done any exhibitions. No, that's something usually the Directors of Studies would do; that would be their role. But they always use those vitrines, you know, that are in the hallways outside? There are some great photographs of using the Music Room to display botanical books. Have you seen those?
EG: I don't think so.
TO: They just set up tables and put all the books out, for special occasions, when people come in. No, this was way before the symposia. They didn't start until pretty late, the symposia. But they would, in those vitrines, put out exhibits of objects when they related to the particular symposium.
JNSL: You're in a unique position, through your association here at CASVA and at Dumbarton Oaks to comment on the role of Dumbarton Oaks, both the gardens and the museum and the collection and the fellowship program, all of that together, as it sits in Washington. How do you see its place as opposed to a lot of other wonderful museums in the city and so on, in terms of public mission as well? That's a complicated question. How do you see the mission of Dumbarton Oaks in the city of Washington?
TO: Well, maybe I could approach that by talking about how the various research institutes see themselves as part of the network of them within the city. We're so fortunate to be in a city where museums are largely public, and there's a very, very keen awareness that the city belongs to the people. We're really – basically we're out sitting right here on the Mall. There are a lot of different kinds of audiences and Dumbarton Oaks, like we are here – we are very lucky to be able to serve multiple audiences at the same time. We can have, as we do, so many public programs and access, but we can also have closed programs so that we can address a professional audience. So, Dumbarton Oaks does the same thing. They have open hours, they have public lectures, they have publicity that reaches everybody, but they can have a meeting of five world experts on a very, very specific topic, thereby affording the advancement of knowledge. They're also a university-owned institution; they're private. They don't have nearly the burden we have, as a public institution, to maintain our public access. But we're very lucky because we have a huge department of education that does all kinds of public programs, all public programs, and we also have CASVA, which can do professional programs. I don't know the extent of the public programming at Dumbarton Oaks currently, but I do know that it exists, so I see them as fulfilling a very important mission to serve multiple audiences, and serve them really very, very richly. Does that answer that question?
JNSL: Yes, thank you.
TO: We have an organization we all belong to called – what do we call it. Well, we have a couple of organizations; we have ARIAH, which is the Association of Research Institutes in Art History, and Dumbarton Oaks and the gallery are two of the founding members of it, and there are now about twenty-two organizations in North American that have residential research fellowships, and we meet a couple times a year to discuss shared problems and things like that. Dumbarton Oaks is a very active part of that network, and then there's a Washington-based consortium – we call it the Collegium, actually – of I think there are probably about sixteen research institutes in Washington in the humanities that get together to do the same thing. So, it's a very important member of these things.
EG: You've spoken a little bit about this already, but I was wondering if you could tell us how you see Dumbarton Oaks's role in the field of garden and landscape studies as a whole, and if you see that role as having changed over the years.
TO: The role has always been – because it was so early and so constant a force of energy, it's absolutely critical to the development of the field, which you have to realize has really developed over the past thirty, forty years from almost nonexistent to a real powerhouse now of academic and scholarly activities, and Dumbarton Oaks has just pushed it all the way along. If you look at the alumni of Dumbarton Oaks, you're reading a list of all the major authors, professors, activists in the field. I'm biased, but I'm not completely biased, because I've been at a lot of other places that do support it regularly, but they're not as big a program, so dedicated. Institutes from all over the world look at it and try to participate with what Dumbarton Oaks does, in its publishing and its support through fellowships and its scholarly meetings. There are people who never miss the Dumbarton Oaks symposium; it just happens every year. Oh, there are people who take all kinds of sides, there's a lot of argument through all this and people have sides and opinions and they won't come for two years because they're mad at the topics, but they'll come back. And each Director has lent their own tone to it and their own particular interest and direction, which is so important. It really has changed that way, but art history is always changing too. It would be terrible if it was the same as it was forty years ago, it would be really terrible. So, you have to keep changing your direction; I think what's good about the board of advisors or the Senior Fellows is that you always bring in people from different areas. You don't want to have a board made up of people who don't argue. It's really important to have different points of view and methodologies represented among the board, so that they pick people who are constantly reflecting diversity of the field.
JNSL: Cross-fertilization!
TO: Yes.
AS: As far as your experience as a Senior Fellow, what were the major discussions and projects that you remember from that time?
TO: Well, projects, you mean dissertations topics? There actually are projects; there are a few projects that would come along. One was someone who was looking at, throughout the Middle East, lodges; they were very scattered, I remember that one. Scott Redford, I think. The garden at Pukler-Muskau, there was a request for support to help restore it; that's a garden that borders Germany and Poland, so when the walls came down there was a reunification of this garden, and so there's a great conservation effort there, and so we supported that. I'm trying to think. It was a long time ago. I do remember one project for someone who was looking at the idea of ruins in early eighteenth-century colonial development in Maryland, specifically, the idea of – you know, there's been a lot of bad literature about how Americans didn't really get to think about gardens until they were well-established, they weren't fighting the Indians anymore – that's a quotation. So, looking at early colonial material and understanding better the importance of gardens and landscape issues was a new way to – she was an archaeologist who was looking at physical evidence of this, but she wanted to look at the conceptual background of building ruins in a colonial plantation, what that might mean. That was a good one, I thought. There are lots.
AS: I think while you were a Senior Fellow, that was when – the famous 1944 conference at Dumbarton Oaks – I think there must have been an anniversary?
EG: An exhibition or something, at that time?
AS: It was a major project.
TO: Fifty-year anniversary.
AS: Do you remember anything about that?
TO: I just remember that it happened. I wasn't participating in that at all. Didn't Joachim do the show on that, and he wrote the essay on it and everything? That was wonderful. Anytime anyone gets time to look at the history of the institution, I think it's terrific. That's what I've been trying to do with the garden library, because it tells you a lot about the times.
JNSL: You mentioned the international character of Dumbarton Oaks, and I was wondering if you could comment how is – if in your field is Dumbarton Oaks is unique in that sense, in the types of people that it can bring together, in the United States, or what face does it present to the international community as an American institution to your field?
TO: Well, to have an institution that has a dedicated library and fellowship program and meetings and publication program in this field is unique, I think. I'm trying to think. At York they were trying to create a center for the study of the garden, and it's had ups and downs, but that was more of a training program. This is not a degree-granting institution, and that's very important to it. So, in many ways it's the only place to go. You can go to places to study particular cultural – if you have a focus on western America, for instance, the Huntington is fabulous, because you can do anything; their library is just incredibly rich for an exploration, western history and all that, plus a lot of other things, but it's not about landscape. It's about that cultural topic, through which you would focus in your own area. But to have a library that is dedicated so much to the approach or the topic of landscape and garden history, within which you would focus on American or French or Germany, that's really something. I can't think of anywhere else – has anyone come up with anywhere else that you could think of? I know there have been attempts, and it really hasn't happened.
JNSL: It struck me, too, how many of the Directors of Studies have not been Americans. We've had a handful in garden and landscape, but there have been several Europeans, too. I guess that's true of all the fields, though.
TO: I think that's true of art history, and history, and American academics. But maybe Dumbarton Oaks has always – the Blisses were diplomats, so there has always been a completely international community, surrounded and connected. It's where the UN was established.
AS: As far as the Directors of Study go, what were your interactions as a Junior Fellow and then a Senior Fellow with the different Directors of Study at the time? Were there a lot of interactions?
TO: Oh yeah, constantly. Giles was scary, because I was then just beginning, but he was just so important in terms of imbuing you with confidence, making you feel serious because he was serious with you. Robert Thomson – he was there part of the time I was on the board, and also Angeliki was part of the time, too. They preside over the meetings, so you have to convince them of what it is you want to have happen – so, you have that kind of exchange. Joachim I knew very well, and I continue – we're actually publishing a book together right now. We worked on one of the study volumes together at Dumbarton Oaks. So, he's someone that I have continued to see and work with. John I think is terrific because of his very different approach to things. I think this idea of having exhibitions in the gardens is brilliant, and I can't believe it hasn't been done before. But he's the one to really make it happen, because of all his experience with contemporary art. Michel I worked a lot with, because he's been here for the past ten years. He was always very good about bringing his Fellows here; we would try to mix up the Dumbarton Oaks and CASVA Fellows. We have a very important event at the opening of the academic year, where we invite the new Fellows in town to come together and meet each other, but I always try to get the garden Fellows over here as well, and make sure they get to use the library and that kind of thing. He was very keen in helping me to find a research project that's now actually being published, Keywords in American Landscape Design, because he had published a book like that on French landscape. Also his whole broadening globally the interest in landscape was extremely important to the field. You asked me about the international view of Dumbarton Oaks; no one could ever fault it for being elitist, European focused, or an old-fashioned art history bastion at all. He really blew it open with both the global expansion but also the look at contemporary design, which in fact harkens back very much to Mrs. Bliss's original intention, because the first group of Fellows were all architects, landscape architects. They weren't historians because there weren't historians yet. That was just really beginning. So I think John is just going to really advance it in that direction of contemporary design and the interaction of art in the garden. I think that's great.
AS: Did you notice any difference in tone between administrations – as far as the overall Dumbarton Oaks Director? Was it different to be a person at Dumbarton Oaks under a Constable administration as opposed to a Thomson or a Laiou administration?
TO: Yes, it was different. It always is different. But it is what it is.
JNSL: Were you there as a Junior Fellow when Elizabeth Taylor was living across the street – were you part of that? Did you ever see any fun glimpses?
TO: Just the buses that would slow down. They still slow down. But they would just slow down. I can't say I ever caught a glimpse.
EG: Just sort of broadly, have you noticed any changes in Dumbarton Oaks in the time that you've been there, from the '80s to the present, in terms of academic life or socially? That's sort of general but –
TO: Well, I guess you could say yes and no. Because there are always little differences, always changes, and there are changes in interest and in what's getting supported because of those interests changing. Changes like art in the garden is a very great change – things like that – and there are practical things that change too. The security has increased tremendously. There are shifts in authorities. But on the other hand, it's still the place you go to to get a certain kind of work done, and you know you can get it done there, and it still maintains a very important profile, not only in the individual fields, but in academic life in general. It has not slipped; it has only gotten greater. So yes and no.
AS: I think that's all the questions I had. Is there anything we left out?
JNSL: Any closing comments, or – ?
TO: No, let me see if I had anything here. We talked about the different direction. You didn't list Ned Keenan, but of course he was a very big innovator at Dumbarton Oaks. He loved to brag about how he hid the Pre-Columbian – you've heard this, I'm sure – he hid the Pre-Columbian card catalog for a year – this is the myth, anyway, who knows – before anyone ever mentioned that it was missing. He deserves some credit for updating digital scholarship in that regard. No, I think that's everything you had mentioned.
EG: All right, well, thank you for talking with us today.]]>
JWC: My name is James Curtin, and I'm here with Joshua Wilson, and we have the great pleasure of interviewing Natalia Teteriatnikov, on June 24th, about her relationships with Dumbarton Oaks over the years. So, our understanding is that the first time you came to Dumbarton was when you were a Junior Fellow in 1982. Is that correct?
NT: Yes, it was 1982 and '83, and it was the time when, I think, Margaret Mullet was here as a Fellow too, so it is even more enjoyable to remember that time. I got the fellowship and I worked on the subject of apse decoration of Cappadocian churches. And I received the letter, I remember, from Madame Thierry from Paris, that her student works on this subject, and imagine my surprise when I'm supposed to give a paper at Dumbarton Oaks, and I had completely changed my subject. So, I change it to the liturgical plane of Byzantine churches in Cappadocia. And at that time, Dumbarton Oaks had wonderful staff, and I was able to get an idea—the people like Joan Thomas, who worked on private foundations, private ecclesiastical foundations, was especially important for me, and chatting with Mike McCormick, and many other people were absolutely wonderful. So, this time, of course, was different from the way it is now, because Dumbarton Oaks was more formal, but less regulated. I'm saying more formal—I mean that, for example, Joan Aston who was in charge of the House Collection, and she was also in charge of the concerts, did not allow men without tie to enter the concert. So, this was different time, and the time changed gradually. I remember the lunch we had—I think, the last lunch, formal lunch at the symposium— where we enjoyed to have flower bouquets over the chocolate mousse. This was of course discontinued with a limited budget, and after that we had lunchboxes. But I think Dumbarton Oaks' atmosphere, then and now, was always welcoming, focused on research, but also paying attention to people. And I think that people need my personal time, and I'm sure many of my colleagues memorable. So, I'm a positive person and I always remember good times.
JWC: Was Dumbarton Oaks something that you had heard a lot about while you were still in school before you came here, or how did you come to first hear about it?
NT: Well, I studied at the Institute of Fine Arts, and Thomas Matthews was my advisor, who obviously suggested to me to come for one of the Dumbarton Oaks symposia. And when I was there, of course, like everybody else, the physical setting and the library and the scholarly atmosphere was very, very attractive. So, Dumbarton Oaks was a dream, it was not just a—I mean, it was a legend that, in name, we did know about. We just dreamed that we may be a part of it one day, and for me, I was very grateful that this happened.
JWC: So, when you first came to Dumbarton Oaks, you must have known Giles Constable as the Director, and also Judy Siggins. Can you say anything about how that administration facilitated research for yourself and other Fellows that were there at the time?
NT: I think extraordinary good of Giles Constable. I think he even had a nickname as "the abbot in the monastery." He was one of those people who sort of try to democratize—right?—Dumbarton Oaks and make it more open. My personal account was especially his discussions. So, I remember with Mike McCormick, he was so excited about the monastic beards, the fashion of wearing a beard in monastic setting. So, many other things: he was a very stimulated person, very encouraging. As for Judy Siggins, she was wonderful. She helped me a lot when—I'll tell you later about the various projects, and especially the grant I wrote for the Weitzmann Archive—but she was a person during my fellowship here—she entertained in her house, which was of course not her house, but it was the left part of the cottage house in Dumbarton Oaks. She entertained Fellows and staff. She organized wonderful Halloween parties, which we enjoyed, and people used to come in great costumes, like, for example, Elizabeth Boone was dressed up as the Statue of Liberty; it was spectacular—I remember it—as it was. Again, she organized parties for us and many other things. So, she was a very generous person. But, professionally, she was extremely helpful and efficient, so I couldn't say more about it.
JWC: It's funny you mention the Halloween parties. Someone else also spoke about that. Was that the same year that Giles Constable dressed as the Grim Reaper and scared everybody, or was that maybe a different Halloween party?
NT: It was a different Halloween party.
JWC: Alright. So, I have one other question about your early time here and then we'll transition to your professional work with the image archives, and that was that, during the time you were here, you knew Curcic personally, right? Is that correct?
NT: Yes, yes. Slobodan Curcic, from Princeton.
JWC: That's correct. And he went on to later become a Senior Fellow here as well. Now, to what degree would you say that men like him and other Senior Fellows interacted with the Junior Fellows and—I guess the question I'm getting at: do you think there was contact between the Junior Fellows and the Senior Fellows such that they sort of shared what they knew with the younger generation of scholars?
NT: Yes, it definitely was. I certainly consulted with Slobodan on my work because I dealt with architecture of Cappadocia and he was a great specialist and great scholar. And, later on, when, after I finished my dissertation, I went to work at Princeton as a Research Assistant in the Princeton Index, I worked with him on the exhibition Byzantium at Princeton where I wrote on the manuscript collection of Princeton. And he was actually organizer for the exhibition. He advised me to work on this collection, and I was so surprised that I was able to work on manuscripts which were discussed previously by Professor Weitzmann himself and by other people—so it was really encouraging for him to give me this project, and I am very grateful that it was published in his catalogue.
JWC: Very good. So, as I said – to transition to the photo archive: first, what was the name of it when you came? Now it's the ICFA.
NT: It was the archive called Visual Resources. And when I came in 1996, it actually had only black-and-white collection, and that's it. So, when I came, there was no one in the department except Amy Heidelberg, very nice person who was an assistant, and who was supposed to leave in about two weeks; so I was fortunate that I knew Charlotte Burke, the previous curator, who was a very nice person and also contributed to the archives, especially from an archival point of view. So, she explained to me how to type the labels and, you know, a little bit about the stuff, about the supplies. At that time, this was a very important part of the department, because all the photographs were mounted on boards, and labels were typed and dry-mounted. And this was a tedious process. So, I needed to know these details in order to further deal with the archive. Anyway, Charlotte was very, very helpful. And then I simply analyzed the archive, and I realized that it actually full of photographs of general views, basically, and some details, because scholars at that time interested in style, and therefore they photographed faces, hands, sometimes the figure or occasionally a scene. But it was difficult to have an idea of the decorative program; or even the interior of the architecture was difficult to understand from these photographs. So, dealing with Cappadocian churches, where I myself photographed a great number of churches, I focus on the detailed photographs of the interior, on the full covering of monuments. And that's what I taught scholars from whom I order photographs for the archive. When I came, there was a decision to add the Princeton Index to the Archives, and that was, I think, a wise decision. The idea came from Herb Kessler, who was an advisor at that time, and he was a wonderful advisor, and he, of course, was a student of Weitzmann at Princeton, and he knew Weitzmann. So, his suggestion was good, and I wrote a grant, with the help of Robert Thomson, who was very much encouraging of the project, and Judy Siggins, and applied for a grant and received $94,000. It was one of the largest amounts of money Dumbarton Oaks received at that time. Of course, I had to justify why this archive was important for Dumbarton Oaks, because the original was at Princeton. So, I had to analyze the Weitzmann Archive, and fortunately I knew him personally from Princeton. I felt that this archive was extremely important since Dumbarton Oaks was a center of Byzantine studies, and scholars would have an easy access to the archive, but also it was an advantage—if we had an archive and also the negatives, our scholars will be provided with the photographs, which very hard to get. So, the project was so difficult because I had to hire a photographer who had to live at Princeton for three months, to find an apartment, to get along with Weitzmann, and to photograph the entire archive. So, all this has been done, and he moved back to Washington. So, the second part—another part of the project becomes he started to print the photographs; and the photographs should be on the fiber-based paper, because we're required to have high-quality paper. But the equipment for fiber-based paper was old, and, at that time, there was a change in the use of paper. RC paper become popular on the market, and all the equipment for drying photographs, for drying the fiber-based paper, was not available. So, his equipment collapsed. And I received hundreds of emails from Angeliki Laiou, who was the Director at that time, who really even wanted to stop the project, because she was really responsible for its completion. And I certainly put the pressure on the photographer, so miraculously he was able to pick up the equipment in some second-hand store, and the project was finished. As a result, we had 17,000 photographs, all of which were catalogued by the person I hired for this archive. I certainly had to check every photograph with folio number and so on, to make sure that it is properly organized. In addition, we had to organize the negatives and provide the cross-references between the negatives and photographs, because we provided photographs from this archive to scholarly community. So, we finished this archive – this project – in time, but this was a really difficult project. The next step was – I just did want to add a little about the Princeton Index. So, when I got the Princeton Index, I was – I didn't say anything about the Princeton Index here, right?
JWC: You said a little bit, but –
NT: A little bit, yeah –
JWC: – tell us more.
NT: Now, the Princeton Index was added to the department, but, for me, the importance was that we could use the Princeton Index as an authority for object names and for the subject names, for the cataloguing of the entire collection, because, when I look at the collection, I realize that the same subject called different names, and so on and so forth. So, the Princeton Index was, at the beginning, an authority file. Later on, of course, the Getty is standard for art and architectural terms – was online; and the Library of Congress National Geographic standard for geographic names of countries and cities was also online. So, we used these resources, but I wrote, in addition, a glossary, and I'm sure that Rona probably saw it. I wrote two glossaries of architectural terms, with a description and object type terms, with a description for the cataloguers, because I hope that these standards will help to improve the collection. When I came in our collection, there were some monuments called three different names, and filed in three different locations. For example, there was the Lavra in Mt. Athos, the Monastery of Lavra. It's called Lavra, it's called the Great Lavra, and the Monastery of St. Athanasius; and all the materials were filed in three different locations in alphabetical order. So, that was the reason I was trying to establish the standards and establish the way things should be catalogued. I also created the lists when I did my acquisitions. When I received the photographs, I would prepare the detailed list for the cataloguers with a bibliography and identifications. I also checked all the information after things were catalogued, dry-mounted, and so on, because it was necessary to make sure that everything was fine, because of the difficulty of the materials. Now, again, when I came, we had lots of transparencies and slides and color transparencies were not in the cold storage in those days, and they continued to deteriorate, and I was trying to get the refrigerators. And in 1990, I first got two refrigerators, and I put five thousand slides in these refrigerators and all archival fieldwork films, which were in the department when I came, and I put them also in these refrigerators. In 1993, Robert Thomson asked me whether I would like to get the fieldwork archives, and especially the Van Nice Archives, and some Byzantine Institute materials, and I certainly was excited about it. These materials were located in the library somewhere not far from the office of Irene Vaslef, so she showed me these materials, and I certainly welcomed them to our collection, although we had very little space. These materials were – partially, it was not clear for me at the beginning when I received everything what belonged to – which archive is the Byzantine collection, which archive belonged to Van Nice, and so on and so forth. So, there were tubes and Van Nice materials. I had a brief meeting with Van Nice at that time, and he asked me one thing, just to keep all the materials together, so I tried as I could, but later on when I properly arranged these materials. Now, I started first to deal with the drawings, and before re-housing the drawings and storing them, because they were stored in very rusty metal cabinets – actually, map cases. There were three map cases: two small map cases and one very large one. So, I went to Harvard, because Harvard at that time received three hundred thousand dollar grant, to restore and install, actually, Richardson's drawings, and it was publicized in the Harvard newspaper. So, I went there and learned about the installation of these archives and the materials. So, it was certainly helpful, and here in Washington I went to the National Gallery and to the National Archives and looked at their display and arrangement of all the drawings, and, sure enough, they were in the metal, modern map cases, archival folders, and so on and so forth. So, I used the materials – I bought two map cases. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough space and archival materials such as folders, paper, tissue paper, and so on and so forth. And I started to sort of access them, to catalogue them, on EmbARK, and then, in the year 2000, when we began digitization project, I digitized all of these drawings. That is why, right now, the current staff could easily put them on the Web. Now, we – there was, of course, much more to the discussion of the fieldwork archives, and hopefully I will talk about it tomorrow, but I just want to add that some of the materials – other materials came later, in several installments. When we were about to move to the new library, in 2005, the – I think the Assistant of the Director brought me some boxes from the archive – it was from the Byzantine Institute archive – and large number of materials came from James Carder. These were in folders, some were just loose materials and photographs, which I later identified. For example, I can tell you – an interesting example: we have now a wonderful exhibition of Diaghilev called, "Ballets Russes," which is in the National Gallery. I don't know whether you saw it, but I advise you to see it. It's a wonderful exhibition. And when working on this archive, I saw a tiny little – I think it's a water-color – color image, a color image of an oriental man, and there was a little inscription in Russian called Скороход which is a runner. Well, I immediately recognized that this image belongs to the theatrical part of the Diaghilev Ballet, and it was from, probably, the costume design. And Whittemore, who certainly knew everybody in Europe in those days, in the 1920s and '30s, when Ballets Russes was so popular in Europe and in Paris, particularly. He certainly knew the artists who did this particular image, and probably from, I think, the ballet of Scheherazade. Anyway, this is just a little thing which is a memory for me, which I hope may be even published, which I connected with the exhibition, which is right now in the National Gallery, and you can see similar images there. Anyway – so, all these materials, I organized. I didn't have a chance to work on the Van Nice paper materials, but I did work on the Byzantine Institute and Thomas Whittemore materials on the conservation of Hagia Sophia and on conservation of Kariye Djami and many other archives. I added some of the archives as well, and I wrote a very detailed manual of all the archives – very detailed descriptions, which I think was used as a basis by current staff. And I think what I've heard that it's probably some – some changes were made, technical changes were made, but it was put on the Web, because it was basically complete in its content and the description. So, I certainly learned a lot dealing with this archive and I continue to use this archive in my publication. I'm really grateful that I had this unique opportunity. In the year 2000, we started digitization, and that was a very difficult project. For this, we established standards, of the city names, country names. As you know, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries changed, and cities, which belonged to one country belonged to another country; and our collection reflected all of this. So, after all this situation with the countries settled – I waited for several years – then we started. All staff worked on that: on the city, the names of the city. We used, of course, the Library of Congress standards for the geographic names. Even our volunteers worked on this project. So, we had to shift the entire collection, photograph collection and slide collection, in the photograph collection, which changed all the names of the countries, shifted all materials which belonged to each city and so on. It was incredible project because things should be retyped, the names should be retyped and applied to each photograph. The same should be done for the slides, because in the slides we didn't use full name of the country but we used the abbreviations, and the abbreviations also came from the system of abbreviations of the Library of Congress. Now, during the project on EmbARK, I think the entire Dumbarton Oaks was involved. I had two choices: either to choose the library program for computerization, or to choose the EmbARK. And my choice was with EmbARK, because at least we will be able to have and retrieve materials together with the Byzantine Collection, because we had similar objects. But I went and I saw Harvard's project, and I gave advice at that time to obtain this program, but unfortunately at that time the decision was different. So, we had no other choice. Now, there was a sort of two programs which were going on simultaneously: the EmbARK program and digitization program. So, we digitized almost all our slides, large format, color transparencies, and the drawings, Van Nice drawings, and the Byzantine Institute drawings, and this was a very difficult project because we dealt with the Image Delivery System company, and they constantly redo the images, either because they were placed upside down or backwards and so on, and it was so difficult that finally, in about 2004, the project was discontinued. Even some of the incorrect images are still on EmbARK – I know that, because we were not able to change them, because we no longer dealt with the company. So, the project was stopped because we were supposed to move to a new library. Now, with the EmbARK project, there was also lots of work on the object names, on the monument names, and I'm sure that all department created this list, but this list should be constantly updated because, if you introduce one monument, that means the city and the name of the monument can also be added to the list. So EmbARK was really continuous project, and everybody dealt with that: my staff at that time, myself, and Katherine Hill, Smiljka Soretić. Before Katherine, Michelle Savant worked on the project as well. So, it was a big project, and not always enjoyable, but, as a result, we did digitize – how many? probably close to fifty thousand images for a very short time, for four years. And that means all images had to be processed. I checked myself every image many times, because you have to check how it was done, the color corrections we did constantly, and so on and so forth. And the color corrections were necessary because many color transparencies lost their color. For example, Underwood – when he photographed Kariye Djami, he had small budget. I read about it in his archive. And he didn't have the money to buy really good, new film, so he bought often expired film, and that's why there was a considerable change of color. So, we tried very hard to somehow restore the images. The images were very important, I can tell you know that. If you go to Kariye Djami, the image of the Virgin in the knave lost the right eye. Therefore, Underwood's material is very important. For example, the Archangel Michael image in the Parekklesion. I just recently found my own image – digital image – which I photographed several years ago in Kariye Djami, and I noticed that the inscription – the monograph of Michael was barely visible, but it is very well visible in the Underwood picture, published in his two volumes. I'm sorry; three volumes. The fourth volume was published later. So, that is – I'm just telling you this to show how valuable these archival materials and photographs are. Now, there was also lots of work on the restoration of the color copies. The one which you see here, as the centerpiece of the Anastasis, is one of the fourteen color reproductions which were made by the Byzantine Institute. Some belonged to the images of Hagia Sophia. This one and others were reproductions of images from Kariye Djami. These reproductions of Kariye Djami were done by Phillip Thompson. I discovered that he did it. He was a British painter who worked for Underwood. Earlier reproductions were done by the Byzantine Institute, but I found these – some of these reproductions, for example, of the Anastasis were in rolls and stored in the boiler room. For me, the task was to restore all of them and to exhibit them, but how? Dumbarton Oaks didn't have the money. The first big exhibition we did in 1998, Dumbarton Oaks gave the money for conservation of three big panels. So, we did a wonderful exhibition on the restoration of St. Sophia mosaics, and we were able to exhibit these panels and other materials from the archive, and my book on the Fossati restoration and the Byzantine Institute was published by Dumbarton Oaks. The second time when we restored them was in 2004 when Holger Klein, a professor of Columbia University, suggested me to do the exhibition of Kariye Djami and to take some of our materials. I actually suggested him to apply for a grant to restore color reproduction. There was one trick I knew to apply for grant from the Kress Foundation because it was Kress Foundation who gave money for the restoration of Kariye Djami and publication of Underwood three volumes. So, all of this was beneficial for our color reproductions. When Van Nice passed away in 2004, I organized our first exhibition in the hallway of Dumbarton Oaks to honor his survey – architectural survey – of Hagia Sophia. Van Nice was extraordinary person. I was fortunate that I was able to talk to him when I was a Fellow. I remember when we were sitting in the Fellows Building at lunchtime; one scholar, who's name I will not mention, was passing by and said, "Hi, Bob. Are you still doing Hagia Sophia?" And Van Nice always had a sense of humor and he said, "Of course. Is there anything else?" And when I went through his drawings, of course I knew him so well, near one minaret of Hagia Sophia, which was drawn very carefully in small details, there was a curse. I found a curse, which it said, "In millions of years, don't draw this minaret. We had ten exhibitions after that, and Alice-Mary Talbot, who was really supportive in making this exhibition – she was personally involved, and I must say very enthusiastic. I'm very grateful for her and for her help and support. I did mention – can I come back a little bit?
JWC: Yeah, yeah.
NT: I should mention that after the exhibition was opened in 2004, after our color reproductions were restored, we sent them for an exhibition to the Columbia University gallery. It was really a great success. The exhibition was opened at that time there was a great exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, "Faith and Power." And then this exhibition traveled to the Krannert Art Gallery at Urbana-Champaign in Illinois, where I worked with Bob Ousterhout who worked on the installation of this exhibition, and that was really fun to work also with Bob at that time. I traveled together with Stephen Zwirn from the Byzantine Collection. It was even more pleasant to have scholarly interactions and discussions. The next trip was to Istanbul to a Koç Museum, where another exhibition on Kariye Djami took place in 2007, where the catalogue was also published. There were two catalogues. One, Restoring Byzantium in 2004, and in 2007 a catalogue called Kariye organized by Holger Klein and Bob Ousterhout . I wrote an article for both of them on the Byzantine Institute and the restoration of Kariye Djami, where I published many photographs, some drawings, and so on and so forth. Also, we were able to publish albums which I found just by occasion in our department just before – during our first move to the new space. We had also moved at the end of the – during the early 1990s we got new space, which previously was occupied by the library. So, at that time, we were cleaning up all kinds of materials and there were albums which were stored above the supply cabinet, which was in a passageway through which everyone in Dumbarton Oaks used to pass through. The albums were behind the door. The door was always open, so you were practically not able to see them. So, when I opened the door, I saw the album. When I started to look through, I realized that one was a piece called "Byzantina" but the second one contained photographs of yacht and people. And then, I slowly start to recognize an image of Thomas Whittemore and then his friend and then I identified this album. He's actually – it was records of his trip on this yacht to Greece and Turkey. So, the album was included in this exhibition on Kariye Djami in the Koç Museum. So, there are many other things, perhaps some things you would like to ask me.
JWC: Yeah, I know we had heard a few stories about the Kariye Djami. Is it true you found that initial set of prints – you said in the boiler room – you were doing a walk through with Henry Maguire. Is that correct? He pointed them out? Is that a story you could tell?
NT: I was told, yes, by Henry Maguire that there were – it was a while away. I don't want to misrepresent what I am saying. But, I learned probably from Henry, but also from the staff of the boiler room that the copies were there. My fear was that I open – and because it's very dry there, I was afraid that it would be a really serious restoration. Fortunately, the canvas was in a pretty good condition. I found, when I found the conservator – his name is Arthur Page – when I went to his studio on 7th street, we discussed the way these panels should be laid out. For example, if we wanted to exhibit Anastasis in three panels – because it is an apse decoration and the surface is curved, but the painter of course did a flat surface. So, we did it on three panels. It was my decision because I thought it will really show the authenticity the way artists work. I choose the material for the backing of the panels, because I thought it would be easier to display them, as you can see now. A few panels which were not restored are still in the archives and I think they are still on the rolls. There was another exhibition in the Prince George Community College, organized by Svetlana Popović. She also asked me whether we can give our copies for this exhibition, and I certainly was happy about it. Two of our images were included in the exhibition and in your little booklet. I wrote a paper which is unpublished yet, but I hope I will be able to publish it, on the color reproductions from Dumbarton Oaks, and I gave a lecture because she organized a series of lectures, and she invited different scholars to talk. The subject I spoke on was of color reproductions – Dumbarton Oaks copies. That was practically beneficial. What can I say? Those are sort of things which we did there – many more are still to come. Of course, during the years I had great opportunity to deal with people and to have many friends, who either lived at Dumbarton Oaks, like Alexander Kazhdan and his wife Musja, were my close friends. I always want to remember them, because they were very hospitable to scholars. Lots of people have the chance to be in this house. Have chance to eat dinner, or sometimes breakfast. They were always hospitable. They had one secret, which I wanted to tell you. They liked to serve quince jam. Kazhdan always admired Dumbarton Oaks – the gardens. And he, walking through the garden, he discovered two quince trees. He also discovered when the fruits are ripe, they fell down and squirrels come and eat them. So, he knew the time when the fruits were about to fall and he was checking the fruits and tried to get them first before the squirrels come. So, he bring it to Musja, and they make a display before all the friends come and enjoy the scenery, and they later on enjoy the jam. So, this is a Dumbarton Oaks hidden story [laughs].
JWC: Everyone has a story either about parties they went to at his house or his hospitality.
NT: Right. He also had a very welcoming office in the library where he had little card catalogue with tiny little cards which he brought from Russia. And he made them very small because that way he was able to bring them through the custom border. And then he continued to use the tiny little card. Whenever you come to ask him for a bibliographic reference, he – with his very thick eyeglasses would start to look through those tiny little cards, and would always find the solution to your problem or question.
JWC: In another interview, someone mentioned the cards. You know, when he came here, he was really supposed to be going to Israel, right? But he came to the United States instead. And he shipped all of his books and especially this card catalogue here. They thought that may tip off the government that he was actually coming here, but he needed to have his card catalogue.
NT: [Laughs] I understand.
JWC: So, you have laid out the whole history of the image collection from the time everything was still in boxes in the boiler room until now, which is digitalized and available online, in part. How has that changed the way that scholars who are coming in to use the collections interact with it? Do they – I'm sure they come in less now because there are things online – what is the shift in the dynamic?
NT: Yes, it's a good question. I was happy to have the Princeton Index, the photograph collection, and the fieldwork archives, because that, as you pointed out, changed the dynamics of the department. Whenever I gave an introduction or whenever individual scholars come and I learn about their project, I was trying to help. For example, not just simply explain how to use Princeton Index but how to explore it for scholarly research. Even now the Princeton Index is online and you can use it to retrieve some information, but I knew at that time that even the physical presence of the drawers and cards in the Princeton Index can provide important information. Even for myself when there was a jubilee of the Princeton Index, the director asked me to write an article for the visual resources file. I wrote on the subject "The 'Gift Giving' Image" the adoration – the case of the adoration of the Magi. And the reason I wrote on this subject, I just opened the draws. I just opened several draws and I saw a numerous number of the subject used. Because the Princeton Index reflects what is in the monuments. How much, how often, this subject was used throughout history. And I asked the question, why? So it was interesting for me to go through the sources and through the visual images and to understand that the image – the adoration of the Magi who brought silver and gold to Christ – were actually used as an advertisement, you know. The priests used this image in their ceremonies, like an advertisement. Please donate money for the church like the Magi did. That is what the Princeton Index actually encouraged me to do. Because the idea I got from the Princeton Index and I tried to actually help scholars always to find the information. Also, to use the information together with the photograph collection, because the images which were in the photograph collection were very high quality. For example, when I just came and I saw huge drawers with the photographs from the Byzantine Institute secondary file. And Charlotte Burke told me, "Well, these are the photographs which we use for sale." You can sort of resell them when the requests come, and I look at them and I said, "No. We will keep them." And I think I was right, because these were done on the fiber based paper, which give a really good depth and quality of the image. It is hard right now – virtually impossible – to produce such images. So we have some seconds. That is good.
JWC: That's pretty comprehensive. Can you talk more about the digitalization? You mentioned some of the difficulties in updating it and putting them in the computer.
NT: Yes. I can tell you more about the difficulty. The difficulty was, for example, to digitize the slide collection. Because we had to take the film from each slide, rehouse it in a different frame, number it to provide orientation, create the list, and give it to the image collection – the company called – when we got the slides back, we had to put them again in archival frames, print new labels, provide all the new catalogue number, and so on. So, it was absolutely incredible job, as you imagine. Fifty thousand slides rehoused twice, practically, to create constant lists and so on, and to create the records, and file after that. Fortunately, when we moved to a new library, it was big planning of course, we planned to get the new refrigerators, which include most of our important slides and color transparences and we did, but we had to take them out several times because there was flood. We put slides on the lower level, than we move them. Then there was flood, you know. Those things happen quite often. We had several floods during my time. For example, when I just acquired the new fieldwork archive tubes and put them in the folders, we had terrible flood and some of the drawings got wet. So, me, Astrid Williams, we came at that time, it was Saturday or Sunday. We rescue them. We just open everything and spread them all out. So, then we have to put everything back. These accidents, of course, happened I'm sure elsewhere in the building. The building was old and we had to deal with that quite often, but because of that the collection suffered. When we already prepared the black and white collection for moving to a new space in the new library, another flood happened. Lots of people from the building came to the rescue and helped us to open up all the boxes and to spread the photographs on boards. So, there was a mixture of everything. Even until now, I think there were probably some mixed somewhere but hopefully one day everything will be straightened out. We straightened out, but it was a big job. Now, when we moved to a new library, I had to create a new system of displaying of these materials. And I have to tell you an important fact that the collection was always open to scholars. At the beginning, it was open any time. Even if I work late, scholars were able to still work there. But when I came, the collection was completely open and there was no security at all. All the doors, even my office, were all opened for many, many days. And I tried very hard to make the collection closed and to get keys and everything. Finally, this happened. Of course, it was not in my favor because people got used to having easy access and actually take things. Not because they really wanted to steal, no, but they get used to take some negatives, maybe bring them back, maybe they will forget. But I notice of course that many things were missing. This was a time the collection continued to be open for scholars and used. When we closed the doors, scholars were able to come and work by themselves on the collection. Open the door to take any board with a photograph or a slide. But they had – the only rule was to put the replacement card. When we moved to a new library, I was told that it will be a similar system. I had to organize the collection and archive in such a way that scholars would be able to work by themselves. I created the system of labels. I bought the new boxes with the plastic sleeves and typed the labels and inserted them in the sleeve. The labels give information about media, country, city, and so on and so forth and the catalogue number. That way, if we added new materials to the collection, we can always shift the collection, print new labels, and insert – not retype – but insert in the sleeves. So, that was an easy way – an easier way – of doing that. Of course, perhaps it was – I actually went to the Getty archive and I saw that in a similar way materials were displayed there, only some materials were stored in special storages and were taken when scholars had a special request. But practically scholars had a self-service. Of course, this was my time and I hope that materials we provided, and at least some system which I introduced were useful for the new staff who, of course, introduced new archival system of the cataloguing, perhaps useful for and it should probably provide consistency with other archives. From the point of view of content of archives and shape of the archive, I hope that during my time myself and my staff were able to contribute to Dumbarton Oaks and to scholars who used it.
JWC: Do you have any stories about individual scholars who would come in and use it? Maybe some of the bigger, more important – either catalogues or exhibitions that were made using the Dumbarton Oaks material that maybe wouldn't have gotten done if the collection hadn't been organized the way it was?
NT: Well, I think that a lot – in my time, we had a lot of scholars. Of course, Internet was not available at the beginning. And I remember scholars like Doula Mouriki, she was a very famous Greek scholar who used to come here on a regular basis. She would stay in the collection until ten at night. I'm sorry – I stay in and work on my own things, but I let her work because I understood how important it was for her to have these materials. And she worked on the mosaics of Naouminea at that time and published two volumes – wonderful two volumes. Well, I'm sure every book you open includes materials from Dumbarton Oaks. Just recently, I just check one book in my own library written by John Meyendorff. It's about imperial unity during Justinianic times. And the book all illustrated from Dumbarton Oaks. Of course he thanked me for the illustrations, but they were Dumbarton Oaks. It's so funny because it was so long ago. It was early 1990s and most of the photographs just came from Dumbarton Oaks. For me, it was very pleasant to see such great photographs. At the beginning, I just look at the photographs, but when I saw them, I say "oh, what wonderful photographs," but when I look at the credit I realize that these are our photographs, so that is really beneficial for me. And I must say I am also grateful for the current staff because whenever I come, people are very helpful. When I come for the – although I knew of course the fieldwork archive, but you need to go many times if you work for different projects. I was able to get more materials for the article I submitted to Dumbarton Oaks, which will be published next year – in a year – on the south vestibule of Hagia Sophia. I'm working on the book on Hagia Sophia. I'm just polishing it. I got most of my materials from Dumbarton Oaks, from the – the staff was very helpful to me. The Byzantine Collection; the samples, you know some of the materials are in the Byzantine Collection – the samples of mosaic, tesserae, and the plaster. They are there. I work on them, and that is extraordinary material, without this material I would not be able to do, I would say, complete work for what I am doing now.
JWC: Outside of the other Princeton Index sites, are there any other collections that you know of that are as comprehensive where you can do the same type of work?
NT: Yes. Well, there are other collections which I included, actually, in the manual for the fieldwork archives. I went to study the archives at Harvard: the Bliss Collection, also, the Whittemore collection. There are sixty-seven boxes of the Bliss Collection. Of course, we have the basis. They have more historical secondary materials. Very important for Dumbarton Oaks? Not specifically, but I learned a lot about the background, the role of Harvard, and the role of some individuals with whom the Blisses were in touch. Actually, when I look at the website on Dumbarton Oaks on Wikipedia, I noticed a wonderful article about Dumbarton Oaks, about the Blisses actually. But one important thing was missing. It was the Blisses roles in their help to restore Christian monuments in Istanbul. Also they gave money for exploration and restoration elsewhere. They help the Red Cross in Europe in 1915. That's how they met Whittemore, who actually went to Europe to help refugees, and Whittemore went to Russia and so on and met people. So, the role of Blisses is enormous because they understood the significance of – it was not just simply a charity, they understood the significance. Of course, they helped people. They were very helpful, but also they work also to restore important monuments – and Kariye Djami and Hagia Sophia the monuments which you can find in any book. I think their role in this is very important. And also Dumbarton Oaks's role in this was extraordinarily important because Dumbarton Oaks after Thomas Whittemore died in 1950, Dumbarton Oaks took over the project and continued to restore both Hagia Sophia and Kariye Djami. There were other projects, but this site is not actually – is omitted from the article like I read, and this was one of the important parts, and the Blisses', of course, role of helping people. I've found some notes, in Harvard archives, that lots of people came, especially during the war and asked for money and they always gave $50, $25, you know. Just for people who came to them asking for help.
JWC: That about does it for me. If there are any other important things you think we haven't covered or if there are any other questions?
NT: Well, I will think about it and will probably will tell Rona tomorrow.
JWC: Well, thank you very much for coming in today. We appreciate it.
NT: My pleasure. Thank you.]]>
EG: Thank you for having me.
JWC: You came to Dumbarton Oaks for the first time in 1998 as a Summer Fellow. Is that correct?
EG: Indeed.
JWC: And how did you find out about Dumbarton Oaks?
EG: It was through announcements at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and announcement also in the Modern History department at Oxford. So, I was vaguely aware of a delightful place with great resources, but I had no idea what was there. I asked two of my supervisors from Oxford, then from Thessaloniki, to send reference letters in support of my application, and I was very happily surprised when I'd made it to the fellowship.
JWC: How well known is Dumbarton Oaks in Thessaloniki or in the UK among the people in your field?
EG: I'm sure, in the UK it was very well known, but sometimes in Byzantine studies or indeed numismatics, we tend to work in small "silos," so as a student, we tended to understand better, get a grasp of a place through the account of our supervisor or a committee of professors. In my case, this was not the case—lets put like this. So, it was a bit of improvisation. I also was aware of all the great reference catalogues written by a guy, who I first met in Belgium at the International Congress, Philip Grierson. So, his articles and his books have made a lasting impression on me, and I was very eager to see the place where all this took shape.
JWC: Other than these catalogues, what other resources drew you to Dumbarton Oaks? It doesn't seem like there are too many numismatists here.
EG: No, there are not. But the place is simply booming with excitement and wonderful resources. By training, I am an archeologist who pursued, eventually, graduate studies at Oxford in numismatics. So, this is a wonderful place with many, many wonderful books. Many of them are never going to be acquired by other libraries, because other libraries or other institutions don't have the resources. So, I came here for the collection, but mostly for the wonderful library. Little did I know that I was going to meet the most extraordinary person here that summer.
JWC: Was that your husband?
EG: This was Philip.
JWC: Your husband was here at the same time, though, right?
EG: He was here in 1999–2000 when I came back as a regular Fellow.
JWC: To what degree would you say that the museum is integrated with the collections you were just talking about, or integrated with the Byzantine Studies department here?
EG: This was the first time in my entire life as a student and as a graduate student that I had the chance to work in a coin room on the opposite side of a great guy. He was in his 80s, Philip. He was just opening drawers for me, making these precious coins available, answering every question I had, and simply helping me to acquire a base of work and an ethos which still follows me. So, this is a collection in the basement of this building, which has possibly the best relation with the rest of the Byzantine collection because coins are notes, some kind of, I don't know, some product of a society—a reflection. So, there I was with the best possible reflection of Byzantine society next to a guy who was very eager to be my mentor and my tutor. The reason I'm here today and I teach at the summer school is because of him. I think it was the best summer of my life.
JWC: Oh, wonderful! Can you tell as anything about the research that you did here and what made that particularly informative to you?
EG: The research I did here focused on coins from Thessaloniki and coin finds from Thessaloniki, especially from Palaiologan sites. So, Philip was writing at that time, he was finishing or he was proofreading his final volume at Dumbarton Oaks, volume five on Palaiologan coins. He was so happy to – not only to share information, but to be surprised by new things which come up in the course of an excavation. So, the result of that summer was my first thorough article on a coin from Thessaloniki, a new type, and also an attempt to understand Thessaloniki in its wider economic context in the later period. That's why I dedicated it to him, and this was the beginning of my relationship with the UK. Living here and on the strength of what I had achieved here, I was invited by him and Mark Blackburn in Cambridge for my Fellowship at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
JWC: You came back again, you had just mentioned in 1999-2000. You were working on another coin find. This was a different coin find?
EG: I was working on the Via Egnatia, which was the topic of my dissertation. During that semester, because this was a kind of rushed semester after I had to take up my new position as Keeper of Coins at the University of Birmingham, I was able to work on my dissertation. Also, it was a key moment in my encounter with Dumbarton Oaks, because here I am and I am just starting my Marie Curie fellowship on a continuation of that project.
JWC: We were looking through your folder and there is correspondence you had where you were talking about the new position as keeper of coins, and my understanding is they had asked you if you wanted to take the position right then, or if you wanted to keep your Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks. And you said, "Well, I'd prefer to keep the Fellowship." You ended up getting both. What made you feel so strongly about D.O.?
EG: This is—Dumbarton Oaks is such a special place. It looks like—I can't translate it in English. This is the island Odysseus ended up before Ithaca and he didn't want to go anywhere else. It's a place where scholarship can be achieved, but also personally I come out as a better individual. So, it's a hugely formative period, whether it's a month, two months, or a semester or a year. Looking dreamily at that committee which was about to appoint me in a rather dreary basement [laughs] this time at the Barber Institute at the University of Birmingham campus, I couldn't think of a better place to spend my semester rather than here. In a very joke-y way, I suggested that they would be better off and wouldn't spend money on training because this could have been achieved here. I left thinking I've had it. They're never going to appoint me; they'll want someone else. And I frankly didn't care. This is a wonderful place. It turned out well and they were waiting for me.
JWC: Can you tell us some of the major differences you saw between when you were a Summer Fellow versus a regular Fellow? Was there a difference between those experiences?
EG: I think the major difference was the lack of—lets, say the continuous presence of someone who was very close to my field. As a Summer Fellow, I was able to work intensively in the coin room with Grierson. As a regular Fellow, I had my lovely little office and I enjoyed very much the company of the fellow Fellows, but I lacked this kind of continuous tutoring. Most probably you might say, this was not appropriate at this stage of my studies, but we all need this little sort of kick in the ass to continue [laughs.] So, as a regular Fellow, I could make use of the wonderful library resources, and mind you this was in this house, so the atmosphere was quite different. I missed this kind of rapport with the objects and with an advisor.
JWC: Can you tell us about any of the other staff members you had contact with here? Either Alice-Mary Talbot of Byzantine Studies or Ned Keenan? What types of impact did they have on the life of a Fellow?
EG: A great deal. Especially the directors of Byzantine studies—Alice-Mary in 1998, Alice-Mary again in 1999-2000, and now Margret Mullett. They have been amazing in the way they interact with Fellows and allow them to blossom. Even if you don't have someone who can be very close to you, the mere fact that these people are available for lunches and for consultation and for—some Fellows may have a bit of a bad time and they, you know, they're great in so many levels. They were nurturing, and they have a very complex roll to fulfill. I'm also grateful – I can single out two directors here, directors of Dumbarton Oaks. The first one in the summer of 1998 was Angeliki Laiou. She was then the departing director of Dumbarton Oaks. Despite the move and there was a lorry outside – it was quite taxing all of this moving. I remember I dropped a little card to say, "Hello, I'm a Summer Fellow and I would like to thank you for having me here." The next thing you know, I got an invitation to have tea with her and she talked about scholarship and the importance of remaining resilient. She said, "you get on with your work, do wonderful things, and one day you might have the chance to teach what I teach now," that is the Crusades, and give the Byzantine angle. I thought this would never happen. This spring semester I was teaching the Crusades. It's interesting how it's a cycle and all of these wonderful vibes and aura you get from people, they follow you. I would say these are landmarks in Greek—I deal with the Via Egnatia, we call them "ododeiktis" [οδοδείκτης] or milestones, and they allow you to find a nice path in life, and a path which makes you proud as an individual, a human being, and not as a scholar. The second director is the current one, Jan Ziolkowski. And once again, the place functions well because in thanks to the people who are there. I can see how my tutees now this summer – students – are happy because the structures are here and they feel appreciated, valued, and nurtured – so, very, very good people. Of course, the museum people are equally key. If Philip wasn't able to open the cabinets, now what? So, we have Dr. Morrisson from Paris. It's a great joy working with her. And people like the current director Gudrun Bühl, Marta Zlotnick, the registrar, and John Hanson, they all enhance the experience of students. All these objects – the ones behind the class cases and the ones behind the cabinet door – can only be available thanks to them. The person I miss terribly is Stephen Zwirn, the assistant curator, an extraordinary man. And of course, the director then of the collection Susan Boyd. Also, may I add, all these old friends of Philip Grierson. Copyeditors, ladies working in the publications. I was like a spoiled grandchild. I was being taken out to operas and concerts and private clubs in Washington by all these ladies, you know driving little cars in their 80s and feeling very happy.
JWC: Can you tell us more about the museum? I know you take classes here now to have hands on experiences with the collection. Why do you think that's important, and what does Dumbarton Oaks offer that other places can't?
EG: Not having the hands on experience is the greatest disadvantage. I learned, I was taught numismatics as an undergraduate through books. Some of them now are considered the archeology of numismatics because possibly the university didn't have enough money to buy new ones. So, I learned numismatics by reading Sabatier. This is a very old book. Before the 20th century. And then I became engrossed in the study of coins and economy and all kind of aspects of daily life by coming into contact with coins at excavations. I was excavating in Philippi as part of the Aristotle University archeological team. There, this kind of close encounter makes you someone who really wants to take things forward. So, if the students don't have these types of opportunity because they don't go to archeological digs, the closest they can get to this experience is through handling sessions. Unless they have this experience, it would defeat the purpose of the exercise to have them here – lovely resources, but if the coins are locked away and inaccessible, I think we have a failure.
JWC: Are there many numismatists who come here to study the collection that you know of? Because you've spoken very highly of the people who keep it here, is this a place that a lot of others in your field flock to?
EG: Not really. Not really, for two reasons. The first one is that most of the collection, but not the entire collection, was published by Grierson and the 11th and 12th century coins by Michael Hendy, Philips's former student. You might say that numismatists don't tend to come here because they think they know everything about the Dumbarton Oaks collection through the collection. This is not entirely true because there are sections that have been completely unexplored, and then these publications—not old publications, but publications from the second half of the 20th century, now there are so many new discoveries so we can revisit things. The second aspect is that people very, very rarely associate scholarship now these days with a visit. They want to have things on a digital image. For me, I think this is not very good because unless you understand things work in a collection and in the case of the library, unless you go and have access to the actual objects, you are missing a lot of things. I pity the people who don't make the effort, especially as Dumbarton Oaks hosts some wonderful symposia. They don't make the effort to make an appointment to come and see the objects, either coins, or other artifacts.
JWC: Can you give an example of some of the best artifacts that are in the collection that people may come to see?
EG: There are several which tell you the story of the life and afterlife of objects. One of my favorite ones is a unique solidus, a gold coin, of Emperor Anastasius, an administrator and careful economist for his time – so late fifth century. I'm sure he would have put to shame many of these modern economic planners and financial gurus. He introduces this – he legitimizes power by minting a coin, a gold solidus, with him and the widow empress who made him emperor. So, Empress Ariadne marries Anastasius and he becomes the emperor. It's interesting how people, emperors, manipulate images to pass a message. We have some coins which have been mounted here as objects which were given to high officials, or a kind of diplomatic gift. You have some wonderful other things. You have silver plates, I like very much the sculpture Dumbarton Oaks has, and some of the most amazing Byzantine icons with saints with these kinds of haunting eyes, which follow you everywhere. I love pre-Columbian art. I love the gardens; I'm a sucker for the gardens. I'd say my favorite bit is the Byzantine galleries, beautifully redone by Dr. Bühl. The way also these objects can talk to you thanks to new technology. So, I like the introduction of tablets. I think you are pioneers here to do so. I feel ashamed in Birmingham we haven't yet ventured into this.
JWC: What can you tell me, if anything, about the relationship between the collection here and the collections at other Harvard institutions, like the Sackler? Is there much scholarship that goes on between the two, or things of that nature?
EG: It's very difficult to say. First of all, the collection of Dumbarton Oaks consists of two parts. One part is the Whittemore collection. The Whittemore collection belongs to Harvard. The other bit belongs here to Dumbarton Oaks. It has been on loan, the Whittemore collection, to Dumbarton Oaks for a number of years so that it can be incorporated and studied as a whole. This year as a visiting faculty at Harvard, I was able to use part of the Whittemore collection, which is now housed in the Fogg Museum, but it is very different. Harvard is all about using the collection for undergraduate and graduate teaching. You might say we make more use of the coins there at the moment there than here. But here, I think the collection is mostly linked to scholarship, which has already been achieved and new directions of research. Harvard and the Fogg are very big into classical coins. The Whittemore collection has just enhanced the amazing collection of classical coins, so the Byzantine bit of Dumbarton Oaks. Here, the strength is Byzantium and remains Byzantium. Thanks to the consultant or the advisor of numismatics here, Dr. Morrisson, Dumbarton Oaks is still able to buy new things. I doubt Harvard does the same for the Byzantine coins.
JWC: You said that there is some new scholarly research going in different directions, maybe. Can you tell us about that and the changes maybe that are being made?
EG: I think because so much has been published, there are two things Cécile can talk for herself, but there are two things which are very interesting and promising. The first one is our new types, and she has bought quite a few. She has outbid us at Birmingham on a lot of them, but forgiven now [laughs.] Because of the resources, because we know so much because of the previous scholarship, I think Dumbarton Oaks can build and research more with new types. This is the appropriate place to do so. It is not an auction house, it is not a university which is not very strong in Byzantine studies. This is the place where Byzantine studies are nurtured and there is such a big community. The second piece is that this collection, because it has been so wonderfully published, can now be digitally photographed and digital records can be improved upon. Eventually, this collection will be searchable on the web. I was recently at the American Numismatics Society teaching at the summer program, and they admitted that they're not strong in Byzantine coins so they're looking up to Dumbarton Oaks to lead the way and create a more accessible scholarly medium for a global community.
JWC: What would you say after all of this about your actual roll with Dumbarton Oaks? Do you see yourself more as a scholar to use their collections, or how would you characterize this?
EG: Until this year, yes. You described exactly what I was doing. Dumbarton Oaks, I think this year onward—it was different. So, I came here to do or to contribute to what Grierson and Morrisson were doing, have been doing – what he was doing for so many years. There is a new generation of students who come here. Sometimes you feel surprised because you want to be in their position. You say, "Oh, am I the tutor, am I one of them?" You come here, I come here, as someone who wants to know more about what I'm doing, to interact with a wide range of scholars. This is a very big bonus because most of our links – we have to have lateral thinking to be very esoteric people. So, here are the people who can help us make these transitions from what we do to exploring wider issues, so that's great. You come as a scholar doing your research. You come as a person who can converse. I came here this year as a tutor. And also you make great friends. Byzantine studies or humanities can be a very intimidating place. Intimidating places, and also places where there is either a lot of competition or a lot of loneliness. Here, barriers come down. You can't possibly be nasty to someone when you have lunch, or when you see them in their swimsuit, right? [laughs] This kind of friendship and relationships follow for life. I think my husband is the best example.
JWC: Can you tell us more about these social relationships that are developed here and how that makes Dumbarton Oaks unique? What are some of the major things that you've encountered here?
EG: I think some of the previous people you interviewed, they mentioned these kinds of gentle atmosphere, which you know, looks back to patterns in private clubs or learned societies, et cetera. I couldn't agree more with them. This is a place where you make friends, and these friendships follow you. The people I met in 1998, I still keep in contact. We are doing a project on Silicia, Armenia with one of my colleagues at that time, who is now at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, Mikaël Nichanian, the Armenian specialist. The group of 1999-2000 was simply superb – all these people – brilliant, very hard working – Konstantinos Smyrlis, who is now in New York, NYU I think – Efstratios Papaioannou at Brown. So, a historian, a literature person. Shirine Hamadeh, she was dealing with Landscape Architecture – a great Ottoman landscape specialist. We keep in contact. Dimiter Angelov, my husband. He was always the kindest Fellow who was driving me everywhere because I am useless and I don't drive. And he was patiently waiting for me because at that time the library was closing at 11 and security guards were fearful that I was going to be mugged, killed, or something like this on my way to La Quercia. So, when you feel happy about life, after the end of a very long day, you go out, you have a drink. You cook for people, or you accept their kind hospitality. This makes the experience all the more special.
JWC: You mentioned a few individuals who were in other areas of study. What can you tell me about the conversations you had with them and how that has affected the way you see your own field, if at all?
EG: Very much. I am very interested in architecture and urban history, and my conversations with these people have been just enlightening. You have here at Dumbarton Oaks the director of Garden and Landscape studies before the current one, he's a Frenchman I think Michael Conan, yes? He'd take us out in his car to see great examples of modern architecture. This was great. This makes you feel rejuvenated and ready to explore this kind of areas. Pre-Columbian studies ditto. The former director of pre-Columbian studies who is now the director of Peabody Museum at Harvard – we are regulars. We take their and our son every Saturday because I have the fondest memories of this lovely man here and his time here. And Landscape Architecture Fellows, the same. Unless we tried to understand the point of view of other disciplines, we are completely lost in our microcosm, which is very, very bad. I think I asked Grierson once, "Philip, what is your secret of why you write so beautifully and I don't fall asleep when I read your books? Is it because you like people?" He was a very youthful 96-year old when he died. He told me, "Well, observe me. I go to movies," and he had a collection of 2,000 movies in his library. He said, "I am a member of several book clubs, I love theatre, and I love music." So this kind of man of Renaissance, this is the profile which can be achieved only here.
JWC: Something I was curious about, but I may be totally off base – is there much connection between the numismatics that you study with Byzantine coins and the parallel systems that maybe you'd see in pre-Columbian societies? Have you ever had conversations with individuals who study the monetary systems there at all?
EG: Not at all. I'm very keen to – I think this year we did something in the history of money course, but while I was here, no. It's very strange – you have a point. Why can't we have a meaningful conversation about this as well? No, I don't understand why we didn't have this conversation. Perhaps, there is always time to have it. Especially I was exploring this exhibition that is in the corridor of the Main House on very strange artifacts from these societies. I thought, why don't you make more of an effort to connect on other levels than conviviality, et cetera. You might have spotted Indiana Jones, et cetera. There are quite a lot of elements to have a more meaningful discussion. I don't think this has been either nurtured or encouraged – all directors now, Ned, Jan – that we should become more easy bedfellows, but yeah.
JWC: Do you have any stories or things about Dumbarton Oaks that are memorable to you that you could tell us about?
EG: I think in 1998 I was completely enchanted when I set eyes at the swimming pool. I thought this is coming out of a movie like the Great Gatsby, or something. I couldn't believe I was here as a visiting Fellow in this grand landscape. We had lots of picnics and lots of wonderful conversations in the gardens. This I remember very fondly. Then in 1999–2000, you know we were very serious people, but nevertheless we had a great party on Halloween. I remember dressing up and everyone was dressing up. I have still the photographs. Perhaps if one day we have enough scholarship and we have these little books called variorum, where they reprint all of your articles, rather than having a very serious picture, you could have a picture as Harlequin or Columbine, as is the case. Even people like Clive Foss, a very famous archeologist, came in disguise [laughs]. I wanted to mention another famous Byzantinist who came as Cleopatra. It was a very convivial atmosphere and no one took themselves too seriously. This I appreciate, not always to keep up a façade, but to be themselves.
JWC: You mentioned the garden and the pool. A lot of the things you see around the house are vestiges of the time the Blisses were living here and their lifestyle. Is there much of an imprint that the life of the Blisses left on Fellows and staff here? It's all around you, but is it something that occurs to you in day-to-day life?
EG: There are several things –first of all the actual furniture of the house. It's so evocative. I have to say, although I really, really like and appreciate the size of the library, I very much miss the rapport we had with the old one. You could practically find books in every single room. I did two building projects at Birmingham University. One of them – the grandest one the new coin gallery – I was trying to find a suitable architect. The architects they presented to me were simply not up to the job. I thought they were very, very bad. I found someone and I gave him books to read about the eastern Mediterranean culture—Rome, Byzantium, Greece. He came back with an evocative plan. What I appreciated was not only the plan, but his idea and firm view that whatever we create has to produce this kind of evocative setting which is much better than our actual house setting. He said, if people feel happy, much happier than in their little flats or whatever, they come here, they stay here for longer and they make discoveries. The new library is a very nice place, but looks sometimes like a – I don't know, a drug store. It's very sterile. Even the chairs, aren't comfortable. I have some issues with the chairs [laughs.] But here, I remember going all the way up to the top floor to find periodicals, sitting on the floor on a hot day, and you feel blessed and privileged to be here. The best scholarship is written in this house because of the surroundings. Another point, which is completely irrelevant but is very romantic, is to go to this beautiful Music Room and see the love and care, it still emanates of this couple. These people, they didn't have children, but they clearly had a very strong bond. He commissioned music; he bought lovely things for his wife. This is something my husband should be, you know, be inspired by [laughs.] They set a great example.
JWC: With the Music Room, did you ever go to any of the Friends of Music performances while you where here?
EG: Yes. My observation was that I felt privileged because this was free for us and I saw also the society of Georgetown, which comes and appreciates music. For me, music – I play music – I think music should be enjoyed by many more people. What I did this year when I brought my Harvard class for a visit, I asked one of the mediaeval Ph.D. students, who's a musician, to perform a little piece of music created for the crusades, because it was a crusades course, in the Byzantine gallery. I thought, if we can make music more readily available to a wider audience here, this is a success.
JWC: Was that during the public hours he was playing?
EG: No, [laughs] of course not. It was on a Monday when the museum was closed, so it was a little test to see how a young person can transform a museum setting into something else. I think everyone was very happy, including Gudrun Bühl, who thought it was wonderful.
JWC: What did she play?
EG: Well, she played several pieces. She played, I think – why these pieces were important was they ranged from the thirteenth-century troubadour songs, all the way to seventeenth and eighteenth century, kind of images, western Europeans had about the crusades.
JWC: Are there any other things that maybe we've neglected to ask that you would like to discuss?
EG: No, you're such thorough interviewers. Come on. I would like to thank you.
JWC: I appreciate you taking the time to stop in with us. Thank you again.]]>