text:
Although Dumbarton Oaks had offered periodic musical recitals during its first years while the Second World War raged, it was only when peace was reestablished in 1945 that the institution could contemplate the creation of a permanent subscription series. Designing a suitable music program for Dumbarton Oaks raised several challenges. For one, although director John Thacher had an interest in music, he was, in his own words, "neither a musician nor a musicologist," and did not have the understanding of music necessary to conceptualize much of the program. Washington, D.C., also already boasted a plethora of musical offerings—including the Friends of Music of the Library of Congress, to which the Blisses were subscribers—and this required that Dumbarton Oaks find its own niche in the city's existing music programming.
In the end, Thacher determined that a subscription-based series of chamber concerts would be the most suitable option for musical offerings at Dumbarton Oaks. He felt that Washingtonians "would not appreciate concerts which were free as much as concerts for which they shared the responsibility for success." In December 1945, a trial series of five concerts were held in the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room, paid for by the generosity of seven anonymous donors. These concerts proved to be the precursor to the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks, which was inaugurated the following year.
Under the guidance of a group of individuals enthusiastic about the inception of the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks, the general course of the musical programming was charted. Works from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries were to be preferred, since the Library of Congress series tended to favor compositions of the nineteenth century. However, by 1947 works by Beethoven and Schubert were being performed. American music was to be included whenever possible, as it was felt that American music was underrepresented in Washington. Furthermore, young composers were to be supported through the occasional commissioning of new works for concerts.
In the autumn of 1946, the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks was officially founded, with nearly $10,000 raised in subscriptions during its pilot year. The Blisses worked closely with Thacher during this formative period, providing their support and advice as necessary to promote the success of the program. The inaugural concerts, held on December 14 and 15, 1946, were "Two Recitals of 17th and 18th Century Music," with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, violinist Alexander Schneider, harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, and cellist Daniel Saidenberg. The next concert, on February 7, 1947, featured soprano Nan Merriman in a "Concert of Music by Young American Composers" conducted by William Strickland. The composers chosen for this avant-garde concert were William Bergsma, Charles Bryan, Edmund Haines, Homer Keller, Robert Palmer, William Strickland, and Robert Ward. In planning for these concerts, John Thacher had written Mildred Bliss:
Speaking of music, I thought we might have the first "Friends" concerts on the fourteenth and fifteenth of December. I was so much impressed by the singing of Jennie Tourel at Williamsburg last spring that I am making arrangements for her to sing at that time with [Alexander] Schneider and [Ralph] Kirkpatrick and a small chamber orchestra. Then it seems to me that it might be interesting, among other possibilities, to have one concert devoted to the works of contemporary, but apparently unknown, American composers. Bill Strickland, whom you may know, has been most successful in conducting these works, and from all I hear the musical festival at Wellesley last spring, in which he played a prominent part, was outstanding. I am sure that he would welcome an opportunity to arrange such a festival for us.
In her Town Talk column, Eva Hinton commented on the initial offerings of the Friends of Music program: "The first two concerts of the 'Friends of Music' subscription series at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks were acclaimed two of the loveliest concerts ever to be heard in Washington."
After the success of the first season, the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks, according to Thacher, "simply grew and evolved along lines which reflected the desire that the impact of the music upon the audience be felt as deeply as possible." He cautioned that the programming "should not play down to an audience" but instead should strive to "offer it only great music produced as perfectly as possible." Looking back on the history of the program and those involved, Thacher remarked that "over the years the 'Friends' became a closely knit group, who I believe felt that the concerts were their own. They spoke up when concerts were not up to standard; they cheered outstanding performances; and they were generous both with their contributions and with their ideas and suggestions."
The Friends of Music concerts are still strong nearly seventy years after the program's founding, adding a rich artistic depth to the varied offerings at Dumbarton Oaks. Maintaining the Blisses' tradition of having music performed in their home, the concerts continue to present some of the most celebrated and promising musicians to Georgetown in the splendor of the Blisses' former estate.]]>
EG: Elizabeth Gettinger.
AS: And Anne Steptoe.
JNSL: We have the honor today of interviewing James Carder. We are here at Dumbarton Oaks to speak with the Archivist. Do you guys want to start with a question?
EG: Sure. So, I guess just a sort of start up question – we see that you were a Junior Fellow here in the '70s?
JNC: Yes, I was.
EG: And so we wanted to hear how you first got involved with Dumbarton Oaks and what your initial impressions were.
JNC: I actually first got involved very modestly when I was an undergraduate. I was working on an excavation in Yugoslavia at the Palace of the emperor Diocletian and wanted to read an eighteenth-century description of the palace by Robert Adam, a rare volume of which the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine library had a copy. And I somewhat naively came to Washington to work in the library as an undergraduate and learned – then as now – that undergraduates don't have easy entree, but I did manage to get a photocopy of that book sent to me, which was otherwise hard to come by. I was on a Ford Foundation Archaeological Traineeship Grant, so there was money for doing that sort of thing. So, that was my first introduction in the later '60s, and then when I went to graduate school I applied for a Junior Fellowship and received it, as you said. It was a two-year – it turned into a two-year fellowship at that time and I finished my dissertation at Dumbarton Oaks.
EG: So, what was the fellowship program like when you first arrived here?
JNC: It was, I think, pretty much the same as it is today in many important aspects. Like today there were more Byzantine Fellows than Pre-Columbian or Garden and Landscape Architecture Fellows. One difference that I remember, and I think it might have been both a difference of chance and possibly a difference of design, was that there were more art historians in the mix of Fellows than there has been in subsequent periods. There were easily five if not six art historians in my group, which made for a very nice situation in terms of getting intellectual stimulation from your peers. Ioli Kalavrezou was a Junior Fellow as was Ruth Kolarik and Jeffrey Andrews and Kathleen Shelton. And Rob Nelson was a Junior Fellow in my second year. And besides that, Otto Demus and Hugo Buchthal and Carlo Bertelli were Fellows, and Ernst Kitzinger came occasionally from Harvard. And, of course, Bill Loerke was Director of Studies, so there were a lot of Byzantine and Early Christian art historians around. The other thing that I remember very much about my fellowship years was that there was a great camaraderie, and the Fellows themselves organized parties and all sorts of events, sometimes costume parties, where, for example, at Seka Allen's home, we put on elaborate silk and brocade clothes and masqueraded as some historical figure, real or imagined!
JNSL: What did you dress up like?
JNC: I think I was an emperor. It wasn't very – my costume wasn't particularly successful, as I remember, but I tried. Many of the staff, including Sue Boyd, who was assistant or associate Byzantine curator at the time, as well as Seka Allen – Jelisaveta Allen – a research librarian – were very conscientious in inviting Fellows to their houses or otherwise organizing events for them. There was a real spirit of being part of a group that was well taken care of.
AS: Did this social camaraderie extend between Byzantine and Pre-Columbian fellows, or was it more of a Byzantine community?
JNC: It did extend among all of the Fellows. I believe – and I really should check the archival record on this – that there couldn't have been more than two Pre-Columbian Fellows and maybe only two Landscape fellows, or possibly only one. The numbers in those junior programs – junior in the sense that they came later in the institutional chronology than the Byzantine Studies program – and really only began having Fellows in the early '70s. I remember Frank Alvarez in Garden and Landscape and Peter Joralemon in Pre-Columbian. But even though there were only three or four non-Byzantine Fellows, I think they were always included in the parties. Then occasionally there were Byzantine-specific activities, such as an exhibition at the Walters or something like that – then it was just the Byzantine group that went.
EG: How did you find the atmosphere here academically; was it an easy place to work on your dissertation? What resources were of the most value?
JNC: It was a dream. I didn't have too much to compare it to, though I'd had a Fulbright the year before I came here in Germany, and I was using primary material libraries in Wolfenbüttel and elsewhere and not necessarily so much using secondary resources. But I had that as a benchmark. But here, even before I came, I received communications asking what microfilms or -fiches I might need that I would be expecting to work on as they wanted to check whether they had them or not. And if they didn't have them, they'd do what they could to get them, which I just found wonderful and remarkable. I don't think I ever needed a secondary resource, a book or whatever, that they didn't have or couldn't get. And at that time there was a liaison person to the Library of Congress, and he had the wherewithal to make a weekly trip to the Library of Congress and bring back materials that Fellows and others had requested. I don't think that program lasted much longer, but it certainly was in effect the two years I was here and that, of course, just doubled the possibilities of doing research. So, I thought the resources at Dumbarton Oaks were terrific, as I believe people continue to think to this day.
AS: Were there any academic mentors that you met and became close with during those two years?
JNC: Yes. As you probably know from the history of Dumbarton Oaks, there actually were, in the early period, faculty members – permanent faculty members – here, and that was just being dissolved, in a way. But Ernst Kitzinger was still here – or at least occasionally – when I was a Junior Fellow. Although he was frankly more in Cambridge than at Dumbarton Oaks, though he did come to Dumbarton Oaks for several months and, so, he did have a presence. And he and I discussed many aspects of my dissertation. Hugo Buchthal, I don't think, had a professorship but he had an appointment of some sort while I was here, and he was invaluable. And then people like Kurt Weitzmann would come around, and he had asked me to write some catalogue entries for the "Age of Spirituality" exhibition that he was planning for the Met, so we knew each other in a way, and his advice was great. But I also think that my peers were terrific. We did the same thing that's done today, we gave progress reports on our dissertation topics or our research topics depending on our level. And it wasn't pro forma; people thought about them and critiqued them, and if there was some tangent that perhaps the speaker hadn't considered, someone in the group might say you should look at this book or you should consider this primary source of some ancient author and see what they have to say. I found it invaluable.
AS: How often did those occur?
JNC: Those research reports? I think on average once a week, as they do now, scattered throughout the academic term – followed incidentally by a sherry hour. There was also sherry served before lunch on Tuesdays, I think it was. I think Jan has now revived this and has it at his house, but that apparently was a tradition that Mildred Bliss had inaugurated before her death in 1969, and I don't know if it had continued unabated until my tenure here in the mid-'70s, but I think it then sort of fell off the board soon thereafter.
JNSL: Did you ever hear any anecdotes from the older, say, the older Fellows or older scholars about Dumbarton Oaks while you were here as a Junior Fellow or any stories about some of the early days that caught your ear or that stand out in your memory?
JNC: I didn't – I don't remember much, if I did, and so consequently I think I didn't. I heard innumerable times the story about climbing over the perimeter walls to swim illegally in the swimming pool. I must have heard that fifty times from fifty different people or people reporting on their best friends who had come over the wall at night to swim, and otherwise I don't remember anything either boring or juicy. I'm not sure how much I was really aware, too, of the institution and its institutional history. I don't know how much I was aware of the Blisses, although I did meet Jack Thacher who was still alive at the time. I had a friend at the Carnegie Museum of Art, David Owsley, a curator, who knew Jack Thacher, apparently fairly well, and he suggested, since he knew I was coming as a Junior Fellow, that I – that Jack Thacher invite me over for tea or something, which he did. He talked about the Blisses, and I remember now that you mention it, thinking that I should somehow know more about the Blisses. It's too bad I don't have a time machine and could go back, as I know a great deal more now. But he talked about Mildred Bliss at this tea.
JNSL: And how did you come into your current position today? What was the story behind that journey?
JNC: When I finished my dissertation and left Dumbarton Oaks, I started as an assistant professor, first at Case Western Reserve University while someone was on sabbatical, and then I came back to Washington where I was at Mount Vernon College and then at George Washington University at the Mount Vernon Campus. And in 1989, I received notification from Sue Boyd that there was a notice of a job position – but it was a part time job position – at Dumbarton Oaks for someone to advise on the objects that are now formally known as the House Collection. Apparently, the president of Harvard University had received some letters questioning whether some objects were in the best care, and the president had written to then director Angeliki Laiou, asking if there was curatorial responsibility for these prints and drawings that were hanging on walls and that sort of thing. And so she realized in a way that there wasn't – there was a Byzantine curator and a Pre-Columbian curator and so forth, but the so-called House Collection was not particularly well situated in anyone's sight lines. So, I interviewed with her and was offered this job, and the first element of it was to do an assessment, a condition assessment of things – especially things of value – and things that were possibly in harm's way. And I did that, and while I was doing that assessment I was also trying to get any information on these objects, because there were no dossier files and, really, no sort of curatorial management for this part of the Collection – the House Collection, as we know it today. So, I was bothering people asking where invoices might be kept or where conservation reports might be kept, and so forth. And that caught Angeliki Laiou's attention. So, she asked me to start putting together a complete dossier for the House Collection. You can see the snowball moving down the hill here!
EG: When was that?
JNC: This started in '89, as an advisor; and I became a staff member in '92. So, I was here during her entire tenure. When Ned Keenan came, early on he talked to me and said that he wanted to revisit the new library project and even revisit it situated under the North Vista – that very controversial location where it had started out in the 1970s. He said, "I need to find all the plans and all of the correspondence and documents from the '70s to see where things were left off." And so he went around looking for them, and of course there was no Archives at the time and things were where you might least likely think they should be. But since I had also taken this route trying to put together things for the House Collection dossiers and had literally looked in the attic and in the basement and in people's file drawers – really just any place – I had something of an unwritten road map of where things were. So, I was actually able to put my hands on these drawings which I knew to be rolled and stored under this building in not the best of circumstances, and I also was able to put my hands on the correspondence files. But there was no logic to it, and they were in cardboard boxes, and I think they were labeled but there wasn't any reason to know that they were there. So he was both horrified – Ned Keenan was – and relieved, and he said, "Would you be willing to take on the reorganization of the archives in much the same way as you took on the dossier building of the House Collection?" And I said, "Yes." So, that's how I came to be House Collection Manager and then later Archivist.
EG: So, what were some of the goals of the archives project and what was the organization of it?
JNC: The mission of the Dumbarton Oaks Archives is to retain and conserve in perpetuity any item that is of importance to the institutional history of Dumbarton Oaks. And that, of course, can be interpreted broadly or narrowly, and a caveat to that is to understand the physical limitations of space, at least in terms of hard copy or hard object storage. So, not every scrap of paper that happens to have survived is fair game for the Archives because it would overwhelm the real estate. So, the first objective was to find out what was still around that really was critical to retain and, if it was in deteriorating condition, what to do to make an analog copy of it somehow to keep its shelf-life going. Then, to find a way to organize it so that it could be easily accessed by people who would want to see this material in the future, and to weed out things – but not capriciously – weed out things that shouldn't be saved. And so I spent the first two years of my life as an archivist just interviewing people in their offices and seeing and telling them that I thought that it was very fair game if they were actively using files or materials that these files should continue to reside with them, as that was a very good use of institutional space and resources. But, if they had things that were just clogging their file cabinets that they themselves felt should be retained for the institutional memory, these should come to the Archives. And so, things began to flow in, and it was greatly interesting to me to make coherency out of all these disparate files and images and objects. And the system I devised now can be added to very easily. For example, when Alice-Mary Talbot retired recently – although she had been a very faithful contributor to the Archives – she did one final sweep of her office files and took things out that she didn't think Margaret Mullett would necessarily need and sent them down to the Archives, and that's how it's grown. And it works pretty well, as I think you can attest because you've been using files from the Archives.
AS: What role do you see the Archives playing at DO?
JNC: It has an absolutely critical role in that we've never written either a periodic history, other than the annual reports or biannual reports, or an official history of the institution. There are a number of history-like discussions – the Pre-Columbian Studies program has a good one and so forth. But, there's a lot of very important institutional activity from the past that hasn't been chronicled in a historical narrative, but it is captured in the correspondence and in the interim reports to the president of Harvard University and so forth, and this material sits waiting for someone to rediscover it. And this material really informs us as to what happened and what people thought they were doing and how they went about their business as they defined it at the time. And it shows that there were mistakes and how people learned from them and how the institution moved on. I think every institution needs an archives and it should use its archives to find out who it was. Here we also use the Archives to check when scholars propose things to us – either fellowship applications or research proposals or what have you. We can go back and see what they've done for the institution before, what we have on file. It's not always complete, but it's very useful. And unfortunately when a scholar dies we often use the preserved archival material for writing an obituary, because sometimes we're the institution that has the best knowledge of the contribution that that particular scholar has made to the field of Byzantine or Pre-Columbian or Garden and Landscape Studies
JNSL: Could you perhaps comment on the uniqueness of Dumbarton Oaks in terms of an institution and what its mission is – both the museum and the professional library, the fellowship program, and its sort of general position here in Washington?
JNC: In a certain sense, Dumbarton Oaks is not unique, in that it's a research institute. There are many research institutes, and they tend to have all of the same phenomena: they have libraries, they occasionally have collections that support the focus of the research, they have a fellowship apparatus, and so forth. But Dumbarton Oaks is, to a degree, unique, and part of its uniqueness is the mandate of its founders, the Blisses. They wanted the institute Dumbarton Oaks to be in Washington, D.C., and although it was to be administered in many ways through Harvard University, they did not want it at Harvard, and during their lifetime they were very clear on that point. They thought things that happened at Harvard were perfectly wonderful and that the student body and the faculty interaction with the student body and all of these good things were what a university of great standing such as Harvard should have. But, for them Dumbarton Oaks was something other, it was, in a way, a retreat, and although they wouldn't have used and didn't use the term "ivory tower," in a way it was just that. Dumbarton Oaks was something other than an urban campus, it was sixteen acres of beautiful gardens, it had an ambiance of sophistication and, to a degree, elegance in the architecture and appointments of that architecture. It allowed people the breathing space and the environment in which to be reflective in their studies. And then, of course, the studies programs themselves are not your average studies programs. You don't have a choice in Byzantine studies between twenty different research studies programs so that you might apply to them all and choose the best one that responds. If you're a Byzantinist and are going to go to a research institute in America, Dumbarton Oaks' Byzantine studies program is probably the first and, to a degree, only choice, and Pre-Columbian and Garden and Landscape Architecture are very similar. In a way, the narrow foci of this institute ensure its quality and ensure its ability to remain vibrant and relevant. If we did twelve other things from ancient to contemporary abstract expressionist studies programs, we would dilute ourselves. You have to be very wealthy to do that. CASVA is very successful because of its high level of funding and amazing resources. But to be a CASVA you have to be very wealthy and you also have to be very astute at what you collect as research materials and what mix of people you bring together in a far-ranging research institute. So the very small focal nature of Dumbarton Oaks makes it unique, I believe.
EG: Could you speak a little bit about the relationship between the Dumbarton Oaks Archives and the Bliss archives at Harvard which I believe were moved to Harvard in the '80s?
JNC: In 1982, right? In 1982. That was, of course, before my time. I believe from what I've read is that the Blisses themselves had deposited at Dumbarton Oaks a considerable collection of their correspondence and memorabilia. How well organized it was and how topically organized it was I can't say because I know it was completely rethought and re-catalogued at Harvard and wonderfully so. The woman who took that on as a six-year project – I don't believe she was working on it full time necessarily, but I think she was working on it consistently – she did a really remarkable job putting together a first rate finding aid and so forth. Anyway, Dumbarton Oaks had this on its premises, and it had other related things that the Blisses themselves had not accumulated. And the librarians here put this material into folders and boxes because they were, I think and rightfully, concerned about it: one, in terms of making sure that it didn't get lost or misused or thrown out or left to deterioration, and two, they were concerned that they didn't really have the physical room to store it. Until the new library was built, the Main House, as you well know, served as the complete campus with the exception of the Fellows Building, and that really wasn't used for much other than the purpose of feeding and housing Fellows. So, the Main House was really everything: it was library, it was research space, it was meeting space, it was museum space, it was everything, and as Ned Keenan was fond of saying, it was at two hundred percent capacity when he came as director, and that was very true. There were bookshelves in the hallways, and there were often bookshelves in people's closets. And, you know, if you said, "I have 125 linear feet of Blissiana memorabilia, where shall I put it?," there wasn't an easy answer. So in 1982 under Giles Constable, it was decided that everything sort of pre-1940, the date of the Blisses' gift of Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard, would be sent to Harvard which was willing to accept it to establish the Bliss Papers, and that was done. And everything 1940 and after would remain at Dumbarton Oaks. But as I've said, not much was done with this later material until the '90s. It was in boxes and filing cabinets, and I don't think anyone much cared about these archival materials. The problem with the decision was that there is now a segregation: there is a sort of Bliss family, residential pre-1940 group and a Dumbarton Oaks institutional, post-1940 group of documents. So, there is a segregation. But, there is in fact a seamless continuity between these two groups of documents, and anyone who is researching the origin or the early years of Dumbarton Oaks has to use the Bliss Papers at Harvard to get the complete picture. So, it's a little inconvenient. On the other hand, Harvard is a wonderful caretaker and curatorial manager of such things and they're in perfect storage conditions and housings. Although I personally would like to have the Bliss Papers closer to hand, but I don't think they need to be sent back here. I'm not going to compare them to the Elgin Marbles, because I don't think we would have lost this material, but they're at Harvard and well cared for in a way that perhaps historically Dumbarton Oaks wouldn't have had the physical space or the staff to look after them.
AS: After the Archives, you've had the opportunity to work on a number of publications, lots of cataloging projects. Can you talk a little bit about some of the most memorable projects?
JNC: Yes. I started using the Bliss Papers in order to complete the dossier files for the House Collection, learning, as I just explained, that many of the pre-1940 documents were at Harvard. And since many of the objects that the Blisses acquired that are now at Dumbarton Oaks were acquired before 1940 – in fact the vast majority of them were – much of their dealer correspondence and any other kind of ephemeral reference to an object that might be in the House Collection would be at Harvard rather than here. So, I was able periodically – usually yearly – to get a small budget line item to go to Cambridge and sit in the Archives for a week or so and just call up box after box after box of correspondence and either key-enter it into my laptop or get a Xerox of it and enter it into the dossier system. And that really allowed me to get a much better understanding of where the Blisses came by their Renaissance, Baroque, Western Medieval, Asian, and other collections, the documents for which didn't end up in the Byzantine Collection department because they weren't relevant. As you can imagine, for one good document you read five hundred that are very interesting but aren't relevant, so I also knew to a large degree what else was going on in the Bliss Papers, and I soon realized that there was a player out there in the Blisses' life, Royall Tyler, who was just absolutely instrumental in forming the Blisses'– that is the Dumbarton Oaks Collection. I mean, but for Royall Tyler, I think the collection as we know it today would not exist. And as it happens, the Royall Tyler Papers are also at the Harvard Archives. These are a long series of correspondence between 1902 and 1952 mostly from Royall Tyler to Mildred Bliss. And when I was asked to do some catalog entries and essays for an exhibition in Athens, Georgia – when Byzantine objects and American paintings from the House Collection were asked to go on loan there – I alerted Rob Nelson, then at the University of Chicago, now at Yale University – who had been asked to do the Byzantine Collection essay for that catalog – that he should look at both the Royall Tyler Papers and the Bliss Papers at Harvard. And he did, and it opened his eyes as it had mine, and so we then began to think about how useful this correspondence would be if it could be transcribed, annotated, and published in whatever format – hard copy or perhaps electronically, or both. And so, we wrote up a proposal, and the project was put into the works. And so, now when I go to Harvard, I'm also looking at the Bliss-Tyler correspondence. The correspondence starts in 1902 and ends roughly in 1953, the time of the death of Royall Tyler, and I'm through '35 on it. The '30s is the most voluminous part of the correspondence run, and '35-'39 is still a sizable chunk, but in the '40s and early '50s it drops off, so I'm about eighty percent done with the transcription. I've written an introductory essay to what will be the first chapter, and I've annotated the letters from that first chapter. I'm hoping soon to do the second chapter, and Rob is working on the '20s and '30s material – he's working on the '20s material now. And when the '30s' correspondence is transcribed, that will chronicle the meaty, Byzantine-centric part of their buying and corresponding. So, we hope in a year and a half time, if that's not too ambitious, to have this at least in a good draft form. It's going to be huge – that's the unfortunate part of it. It's – if you publish every letter, which I think we should, even the ones that say "Thank you very much, it was a delicious meal," and they occasionally do that, although these are intellectual people who take some time to write what they want the other person to know about life as they see it and art as they know it. I think if we publish it all, it's going to be very lengthy. If it's in hard copy format, it would certainly be two or more volumes, and there's cost implications there. If we publish it electronically, it'll be very usable by people in the future no matter how it ends up, because you can search it – if the spelling is correct, hopefully it will be. And, for example, I was talking with Gudrun – I don't know how anecdotal you want this interview to be, we can scrap this at the end if you like – who was interested in why the Blisses never acquired significant enamels, Byzantine enamels. And I said, "Oh well, you know, they really wanted to and they wrote to Tyler and Tyler to them about getting a significant enamel," and she said, "Oh, that's very interesting. I'd always wondered if they just didn't like enamels or what." And I said, "You know, once this document is done, you'll be able to, even in a Word format, type in the word enamel and just graze through their correspondence finding every time the world enamel is mentioned. It'll just be easy to sate your curiosity as to what the Blisses were doing with enamels, or icons, or manuscripts, or Stravinsky, for that matter. It's just going to be much easier to do research on the Blisses, if anyone is interested to do that. So, those were my two primary uses of the Harvard Archives, for the House Collection dossier files and this Bliss-Tyler project. And, in the interim, every time I've found something of interest to me about the Blisses or about Dumbarton Oaks, I've typed it in a document, a so-called chronology, called "master chronology," that is easily three hundred pages long now in Word format, and is just date, line item, and the source, taken both from primary materials such as the correspondence and secondary materials that tell the life of the Blisses and Dumbarton Oaks.
EG: Is that something you intend on publishing someday?
JNC: I don't at the moment, although I think a history of Dumbarton Oaks is long overdue. Certainly this chronology will remain at Dumbarton Oaks, and it can be migrated to whatever technology is used in the future.
EG: So, in terms of your role as the manager of the House Collection, could you speak a little bit about what your impressions were of the Blisses' mission in collecting the House Collection and about their acquisitions there?
JNC: Yes. If I could answer it slightly differently, I would say that when I came as a Junior Fellow to Dumbarton Oaks and long thereafter when I talked to people at Dumbarton Oaks or colleagues at Dumbarton Oaks I always had the strong impression that the Blisses collected Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and rare landscape books and sometimes botanical prints and manuscripts, and that they had a focus of collecting that brought about the collections as they were then displayed. And then they had some household furnishings and some paintings and sculptures, but in a sense just as they had clothing and a wine cellar: these were part of the comme-il-faut nature of being a wealthy resident. Since I have taken on a curatorial role as House Collection manager, I realize that the Blisses were considerably broad in their collecting interests. And we tried to make this point in our first special exhibition, "The Collector's Microbe," where we talked about how the Blisses not only collected Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, but also Asian and American and this, that, and the other. And I see my role as House Collection manager not only as a true curatorial position to protect and catalogue the collection as it has come down, but also as an advocacy position to make sure that the Blisses' vision for Dumbarton Oaks, in terms of art, isn't interpreted in as narrow a way as I understood it initially and I think others have understood it. And this is proven, I think, much beyond a shadow of a doubt, when you look at what they collected in the '37 through 1940 period when they knew that they were gifting the property and its collections to Harvard. That's when they bought a Degas and a Riemenschneider and a Rouault and other great paintings and sculptures knowing that they weren't going to ever really live with them, but believing that this "home of the humanities," the famous phrase that Mildred Bliss uses in the preamble to her will and testament and was used other times in her correspondence, needed to have these great things; that great art inspired great conversation which inspired great research. And the same was true with music. There is absolutely no reason to continue musical offerings at Dumbarton Oaks in a Harvard institutional fellowship arena, because it wasn't a music research institution. But the Blisses were adamant about that and really hoped Harvard would find the wherewithal to continue some kind of musical programming. And the Friends of Music series, which was inaugurated in 1946, was the result of that. All this they saw as being for the Fellows. The music was for the Fellows. The art was for the Fellows. The garden was for the Fellows. Yes, they eventually were opened to the greater and broader public, but that isn't the Blisses' initial interest. The uniqueness that we talked about earlier in the Blisses' vision was that this was for scholarship and fellowship enrichment. So, I see that also as part of my job description to try to make the House Collection a little bit more integral to the institutional wealth.
JNSL: What is the most exciting project that you have been a part of in your time at Dumbarton Oaks, of all these wonderful things, the one closest to your heart that brings back the happiest memories?
JNC: Had you not qualified your statement at the end, I'd have given you a couple. But, the most exciting event – clearly and without a doubt – was the planning for and all of the activities that ensued with the building of the new library and the renovation and rehabilitation of the Main House, including the Music Room. This would be the thing that is dearest to my heart and that makes me the happiest. But the whole renovation will stand out in my memory after I leave here as being my most important contribution. That said, it was arduous and it was painful and it was time consuming and often laborious, and I often thought I never, ever wanted to do that sort of thing again. There are the seemingly never-ending meetings over minutia on plans and the inevitable problems that come up when you're planning for new architecture and the renovation of historically significant architecture. But, it really was terrific; I learned enormously from it. I had great colleagues and superiors – Mike Steen, certainly, who was project manager on a consulting basis, and certainly the director Ned Keenan – and working with great architects, I really loved that. The renovation of the Music Room ceiling is probably my fondest part of the project, especially because the results were, to my mind, so stellar, and I worked with great people on that project as well. But the removal of a world class collection from its housing, the incredible amount of detail work of making sure you knew every object's condition and crate housing and shelf storage housing and this and that and then bringing it all back and making new mounts and new vitrines and designing all of that in the interim before it comes back…. Again, I never want to do it again, and probably won't have to, but those are once-in-a-lifetime curatorial opportunities that would probably be distasteful to many who are not curators, but I think are just the meat of what you do when you're in charge of a great collection.
AS: If we could go back a little bit to your curatorship of the House Collection, to what extent have acquisitions been active after the Bliss days?
JNC: The House Collection is not an actively acquiring collection. That said, we do still acquire, although not in the way or to the degree that the Byzantine or Pre-Columbian or rare book collections from the library might collect. They would want to collect great examples of their particular genres, if they can be acquired legally on the marketplace. That is their mission. Their collections are not necessarily static as they were deposited by the Blisses. The House Collection, on the other hand, is. What remains from the House Collection is a kind of finite collection of Blissiana material, some of which was sold off to increase revenue for collecting in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian. We don't do that any longer, but we do acquire for the House Collection occasionally. We acquire furnishings when things wear out, especially Middle Eastern carpets. We also – although we haven't done much of this in my tenure – we also buy Blissiana material, if it's relevant. We would certainly try to buy any portraits of the Blisses that came onto the market. And they had their portraits made many times – Mildred Bliss, in particular – but they didn't choose to retain them. The one painting of Mildred Bliss that hangs over the fireplace in the Refectory they actually gave away to a friend, who later gave it back to Dumbarton Oaks. If there was some significant object that the Blisses had owned that had left Dumbarton Oaks, we might try to get it back if it was relevant to us. There have been pieces that have come up for auction – furniture in particular – that we know the Blisses owned that we haven't tried for. We just don't need it.
JNSL: Was anything ever stolen? Was there ever any – as far as you know, were there any issues with that?
JNC: There have been a few thefts, particularly of things in the gardens. The Pan figure that sits in an arched bricked area pointing towards the Acadian pool that's called Lovers Lane Pool was stolen twice and returned once and not recovered the second time. The artist who did that sculpture was Francis Sedgwick. A cast of it had been acquired or given to his daughter, and she still had it. So, after much convincing and effort, the daughter agreed to make a new mold from her sculpture from which our Pan was recast. One of the eighteenth-century putti riding dolphins that are in the Fountain Terrace was stolen, also twice, once recovered, and once not. And fortunately they are an exact pair – they're not bilaterally symmetrical, as bookends are, they're literally the same object cast twice, so we made a cast of the existing one. There are two in the garden, and one of them is modern, cast from the other, which is the original. Smaller things have been stolen, but theft has been minimal.
EG: So, could you tell us a little bit about the interaction with the House Collections with the Fellows and the scholars and if that's changed over time?
JNC: I don't know if it's changed over time in the sense of predating my arrival here, because I don't really know what happened vis-à-vis the Fellows and the House Collection. When I first came, we used to do an orientation for the Fellows, which is still done, but that orientation also included a tour through the house and especially the areas where there was significant architecture and interiors or significant House Collection objects that might be of interest to the Fellows. They also had a tour with the Byzantine curators of the Byzantine Collection and they had a tour with the Pre-Columbian curators of the Pre-Columbian Collection. The House Collection tour got dropped after five years or so, I don't quite remember, because the schedule of what the Fellows did upon arrival just became somewhat onerous and the House Collection was expendable. So, we've never done that again except by request. And certainly when we reopened, there were a number of requests that I take people through the house and show them what happened during the renovation, and this involved taking both the docents and the Fellows. Also, occasionally, Fellows are interested in House Collection objects, especially the western medieval ones, and so of course they come to my office and, like any reader, they sit and read the dossier files and look at the historic photographs and so forth, but that's somewhat unusual. And every now and then someone is interested in the Blisses so they come and ask questions.
EG: Is that also true of the Archives? – interest in the Archives?
JNC: I have a lot of interest in the Archives from the studies programs, especially the directors. They change fairly frequently, as you know, sometimes every five years, sometimes every ten years, so they often, depending on their interests and the way they want to define their ongoing or upcoming projects – they want to see what's happened. Sometimes they have that material in their offices, but frankly a lot of the historical material is in the Archives, so they check out what they need. Also, by chance, I have a number of scholarly files that relate to research or projects that were given to Dumbarton Oaks by, especially, Byzantine scholars, although in one case by a Pre-Columbian scholar, and when Fellows are working on similar topics, they come and use these materials. However, I've had about ten Fellows in the twenty years that I've been here do that, so that's not a huge number.
EG: Is there much relationship between the House Collection and the Byzantine and Pre-Columbian Collections in terms of organization and exhibition?
JNC: Yes and no. The three Collections are all part of the same department, which is the Museum department. There's a little bit more of a sophisticated curatorial apparatus for the two primary collections, Byzantine and Pre-Columbian, less so for the House Collection, but we meet sort of on equal grounds otherwise. The exhibition space, so-called, for the House Collection is the Music Room, and it is by plan and tradition a different type of exhibition space than the gallery type of space that the Byzantine and Pre-Columbian Collections use. We have decided to retain a kind of residential, Edwardian, Kunstkammer look for the Music Room – no wall labels, no vitrines. Yes there are spot lights and there are a few museum fittings, but they are meant to be discrete. The only – I'm not quite sure how to answer your question, that's why I said yes and no. So, let me end by saying the new thing that we've done recently since the Collections were reinstalled is to bring collecting at Dumbarton Oaks and the Museum Collections at Dumbarton Oaks into something of a unified focus. And the Bliss Gallery – which was inaugurated with that reinstallation – has a vitrine which, as of tomorrow, will have an inaugural exhibit of animal bronzes, which come from at least two of the Collections. We had wanted them to come from all three of the Collections and they could have, but the Pre-Columbians needed their very few animal bronze sculptures for the permanent installation. We will probably do a hard stone exhibition there at some time, which will be House Collection Asian, House Collection European, Byzantine, and Pre-Columbian, in order to show that the Blisses were interested in artworks made of hard stone from many cultures, and that way refocus attention on their collecting and collecting interests rather than on the cultural nature of the collection. And that certainly was true, as I said a moment ago, with the inaugural special exhibition – hallway exhibition – titled "Collector's Microbe," which put objects from all three Collections into the same vitrines and onto the same walls in order to show that this was a Dumbarton Oaks collection in the singular, our literal and legal title – we are the Dumbarton Oaks Research Institute and Collection "singular," and I think that use of the singular was purposeful – I think that was by choice.
EG: Other than the creation of the Bliss Gallery, the House Collection has always been housed in the Music Room?
JNC: Housed, in a public sense, in the Music Room. Housed, in an institutional sense, throughout the building, so the paintings and furnishings that you see on the first floor – what we call the first floor gallery, the hallway between the museum wing and the Founders Room, for example – the paintings in the Founders Room and so forth, these are all House Collection items, including the Founders Room itself, the boiseries, the wall paneling of the Founders Room – these are all accessioned House Collection items. They are now actually on public display to a degree because we've just started running docent tours on Saturday by sign-up appointment, but that's a very new and historically unique moment in our public persona. But, we've always had House Collection objects used the way the Blisses wanted them to be seen and that is as beautiful things to delight, inspire perhaps, staff and Fellows and scholars. So, there's a public space and a private space, and there's a big storage space where a number of things don't see the light of day at the moment, because there's no room for them.
JNSL: Are you aware of any attempts either in the immediate past or the more distant past to take some of the stories associated with Dumbarton Oaks and its history and turn them into any kind of dramatic or sort of novelistic element? Has anyone ever shown an interest in doing that, because when I listen to these stories I think sometimes it sounds like it would make a great movie, or make a great play, or make a great story?
JNC: I've never heard of such a thing. I do think that a history of the institution needs to be written.
JNSL: That's something that several people whom I've interviewed have said.
JNC: And I think through the Oral History interview project and through the archival holdings, both the Bliss Papers at Harvard and the ones that we've now talked quite a bit about, it's all there. One might identify additional people to interview once one started writing a history, as always is the case with biographies or institutional histories. But easily eighty percent of it is already there, it just needs the time and the interest.
EG: So, have you noticed any significant changes over the time that you've been here since your undergraduate 'til the present, in terms of the academic or social or even physical setting here at Dumbarton Oaks?
JNC: Let me start with the physical setting. The physical setting was in need of renovation by the time that Giles Constable became director. He pointed that out in the interview that I did with him, and he wrote about it in his biannual report several times. He points out that well-made buildings are not like the buildings that he or I, as he put it in his interview, might buy because we can't afford to buy better-made buildings. We have to replace the roof every twenty years, whereas roofs on better-made buildings last for fifty years in all respects. But when he came to Dumbarton Oaks, the fifty year time bomb was about to explode. And it was absolutely true – the infrastructure of the physical real estate of Dumbarton Oaks was in dire need of renovation. And he was the one that reinforced the third floor – the attic floor, which is now used for the publications office space – in order to house shelving for the Byzantine library, and in Thomson's tenure, the courtyard gallery was built and all of that space underneath which had been just dirt was excavated to form a connection between the basement of the Garden Library and the Pre-Columbian Collection and underneath the Music Room, which allowed for offices and shelving and storage space and so forth. So, the physical plant improved fairly steadily. Air conditioning was added in the Constable era, and the physical plant continued to improve steadily in the years that I knew the institution. It improved dramatically in the '90s and at the turn of the century with the acquisition of new real estate: the director's house and the apartment building La Quercia, which took a certain amount of pressure off of the existing real estate, including some questionable legal pressures: the old director's house, now the Refectory, probably could not have housed a family of more than two people because using the upper floor as a bedroom space might have been considered illegal from a life-safety aspect. There were reasons to move on and certainly in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the decade we're in, the building of considerable new physical space – the library, the gardeners' court – and the renovation of the existing physical spaces was a remarkable change. That's the easy answer. Socially, I don't know. I was in my twenties when I was a Junior Fellow, and the parties and the swimming pools activities and going into Georgetown for impromptu, on-the-cheap dinners and beers was great fun. Do Fellows still do this today? Probably. I think when you interview some of the younger Fellows or staff, that's an interesting question to ask. I see Fellows being very serious here. They're very nice and when I interact with them on a social level I always enjoy that, but I see them being very serious, and I have a feeling that was always the case. That hasn't changed, but possibly the pressures of the world and the paucity of job openings in academic humanistic professions and just the need to spend your money wisely and move on and get your research and your dissertation done or your next book done and so forth leaves you little time to have a beer and a pizza. I don't know. You had a third prong on that question?
EG: Academically.
JNC: Academically. Oh, the standards here have always been very high, remarkably high I think, in everything – the choice of people that come. I know that sounds slightly self-serving, so forgive me. But the publications, the programs and projects that the institution has sponsored – I mean, Dumbarton Oaks has a stellar record, and I don't say that because I'm "in-house." I think I could write a critical review if I had to, but you know, you look at the history of what this institution has done in the world and here in its self-appointed research areas or interest areas, and it's just remarkable, it's remarkable.
AS: Has the evolution of the faculty to speak of here at Dumbarton Oaks changed the academics?
JNC: The Blisses and the early administrators wanted some kind of faculty presence, a kind of senior mentorship, I believe from what I've read. Let me back up to say that I think the Blisses initially just wanted senior research people here. When more junior people came and were given a kind of task working half day on their dissertations and half day on putting together a census of Byzantine objects in America or, if they were text people, looking at textual references for objects. (If you haven't read David Wright's paper on the early years of the institution, I highly recommend it to you.) I think the Blisses and the administration realized that there needed to be a kind of mentorship program for the more junior people who came – that this was something that would be very valuable. And because of the Harvard association, a kind of academic model was first chosen where there would be professors. But, it didn't make a great deal of sense because they didn't have students and they didn't give classes, per se. I mean, they might offer seminars maybe or give occasional lectures, but they didn't – it just wasn't a good model. And if they became tenured – initially a few of them did – what did they see their role to be? Did they see their role to be tenured faculty who fortunately didn't have to teach so they could spend one hundred percent of their time doing research, or just what? And so it was hard, it was a very hard model to keep going, and I think they were right in doing away with it, and in providing academic leadership and academic mentorship in other ways through having a coterie of like beings of all stages of life physically in one space. As is true now with the symposia and catalogue projects and the coin and seal seminars that are run in the summer, people with similar interests can come from different institutions and talk together, talk to senior members, talk to junior members. Dumbarton Oaks facilitates that, makes the bread and butter of that happen. It would only happen otherwise through email or through something much less interactive.
EG: So, sort of in closing, could you talk a little how you see the role of the Archives and the House Collection in the future?
JNC: The Archives should be exactly what it is today, only better. It should have every significant bit of Dumbarton Oaks institutional, intellectual history that's pertinent to the institution, housed there. It should be user-friendly, it should be – in a conservation sense – secure and well maintained. If we ever enter into an economic period and a digital period where things like that can be more easily accessible through digital technology, then that should happen. It happens obviously to a degree because everything you're doing will eventually become, if it hasn't already, part of the Archives and this comes in digital format, so the transition is underway. The House Collection should also carry on as it is, should maintain its course, ensuring that its role in both the Blisses' lives and in the institutional life of Dumbarton Oaks should not be forgotten. Its status should be maintained and honored because many of the art objects – by no means all, but a good many – are museum, world-class pieces that show a great level of connoisseurship and interest by the founders of this institution. Maintenance of this Collection should be insured, because it isn't inexpensive to maintain an art collection. But Dumbarton Oaks has and, I hope, will continue to do so. And I think that it should. In bad economic times, or when the world has moved on, one has to make choices, and it's possible that things will change, but for the moment I think we should stay the course for both the Archives and the House Collection.
JNSL: Thank you very much.
JNC: Thank you very much.
JNSL: It's been wonderful.]]>
On April 22nd and 23rd, the Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry performed the final concerts of the 2011–2012 Friends of Music season. The self-conducted group of young musicians (the Criers, as they call themselves) made its Washington, D.C. debut last year right here at Dumbarton Oaks. We were so impressed by their musicianship, energy, and freshness, that we immediately invited them to play for us again this season, and they did not disappoint. Their impressive performances of music by Heinrich Biber (Battalia), Ludwig van Beethoven (the "Serioso" String Quartet, arranged for string orchestra by A Far Cry), Osvaldo Golijov (Tenebrae), and Benjamin Britten (Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge) were warmly received by Friends of Music audiences. The Washington Post's Stephen Brookes attended and reviewed the concert.
According to the New York Times, A Far Cry "brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied." The orchestra was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of seventeen young professional musicians and since the beginning has fostered those personalities, developing an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. The Criers maintain strong roots in Boston, rehearsing at their storefront music center in Jamaica Plain and fulfilling the role of Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.]]>
Many famous or soon-to-be famous musicians performed at Dumbarton Oaks over the years, and several have reminisced fondly about their concertizing there, in both the residential and institutional periods. Among them is the keyboard instrumentalist, Ralph Kirkpatrick, who wrote:
In the spring of 1934, I was invited by Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss to play in her beautiful music room at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington. As it later turned out, this was to be but the first of more than 50 concerts in which I participated in that same room between 1944 and 1979. In a letter of 23 April 1934, I included an account of this little concert, [telling Mrs. Bliss] ". . . there were a few gratified members of my audience who really caught and admired real musical value and who really meant something when they talked of transcendent beauty."
—Ralph Kirkpatrick, "On Playing the Clavichord," Early Music 9, no. 3 (July, 1981), 299.
From its inception, concerts offered by the Friends of Music at Dumbarton Oaks were remarkable. Major works, such as Bach's Brandenburg Concertos or Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise, and world-renown artists, such as Karl Münchinger and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, quickly established a tradition of programming of the highest caliber. Using chamber orchestra forces, the Friends offered, for example, Mozart's symphonies and violin and piano concertos. In 1949, the composer Benjamin Britten accompanied tenor Peter Pears in a concert of Britten, Purcell, and Mahler songs. The composer and pianist Francis Poulenc made his American debut at Dumbarton Oaks in 1948 and returned in 1952 for a concert with Pierre Bernac where they premiered Samuel Barber's Mélodies Passagères. This song cycle, set to the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, had been commissioned for Dumbarton Oaks by William Strickland.
The Friends also sponsored early appearances of soon-to-be internationally famous artists such as Leontyne Price (1957) and Joan Sutherland (1961), both appearing at Dumbarton Oaks before their acclaimed debuts at the Metropolitan Opera. And, notably, the Friends endeavored to offer concert performances of then little-heard works, such as Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1953) and Handel's Julius Caesar (1957), all in an effort to broaden the musical programming of Washington.
Occasionally, recordings resulted from the Friends of Music programming. This was especially true between 1947 and 1952 when pick-up orchestras were assembled at Dumbarton Oaks, and they rehearsed with famous conductors and soloists. On at least three occasions, recordings were made featuring what was called the Dumbarton Oaks Chamber Orchestra. Although it is unlikely that the instrumentalists remained the same on all three recordings, it is certain that the recordings resulted from concerts given in the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room that were then recorded within the week for posterity. The three vintage recordings that resulted from Dumbarton Oaks concerts are:
IU: You are welcome.
ABF: Can you tell us about how you and your husband, Paul Underwood, first came to Dumbarton Oaks and about your memories?
IU: My husband was teaching at Cornell, and I came down in advance to find an apartment here, when he was granted a fellowship as a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. And he had written in advance to say I was coming to Washington. I had never been in the city before. It was 1943 – the war – and I found it rather overwhelming, but I went to Dumbarton Oaks and introduced myself, and John Thacher was very gracious. And his – maybe his secretary, I don't remember what position she held – turned out to be a classmate of mine in college. So, they were both very gracious, but they were not much help about apartment-hunting. But I finally found one in an apartment building and I went back to Ithaca, and my mother and husband and I came to Washington that fall, so it must have been September, probably, 1943. And my introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Bliss – by the way I had been rather impressed, even on my short interview with John Thacher, by the rather rarefied atmosphere at Dumbarton Oaks in those days. But when I came here my first introduction to the Blisses was a series of concerts that were held in the Music Room, and at that time open only to, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, and to the Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks and, of course, the Director of Studies also, and the head of the study of garden architecture and so on, and the Pre-Columbian, but no outside people. And they were wonderful concerts – really it was a great privilege to be there. I think probably Mrs. Bliss did most of the selection of the people who performed there. But I still remember my first meeting with her. Of course, we were advised that formal attire was rather expected. And we lived in Arlington and we had no car, so we had to travel by bus – we were rather poor too – we traveled by bus. You know, I had a long evening dress, and my husband was in formalwear. And we enjoyed the concert very much, and at the end Mr. and Mrs. Bliss were at the entrance to the Music Room, and we would make our way out and thank them for the concert. So, this was the first time we had met, and Mrs. Bliss looked at me and she said, "Oh, your dress is such a lovely color. I wonder if I might have it for cushions later." I looked at her; I thought, "How am I supposed to react to this?" you know? I thanked her very much. I don't know what I said – I really don't – but I was rather startled. So, that was not a very good beginning to our acquaintance. But she, you know, she thought she was – she didn't know how the other half lived. And she didn't quite know how to approach, so she wasn't very comfortable, I suppose. I assume. Anyway, that was my initial impression of her. And then after that I didn't have much contact with Dumbarton Oaks at first, because I was rather bored, and I wanted a job, so I applied to the Signal Corps and they were very interested at first because I had taken a course on crypto-analysis at Cornell that one of the professors was giving. It was just for his entertainment, really, but several of us took it – among the students too. And so when they heard that I had taken this course, my interviewer was very interested. Oh yes. But he asked me if I had any relatives abroad, and I said, "Yes, I'm French. I have relatives in France still." And he said, "Oh well then, I'm sorry. You're a security risk." And I said, "But they're on the right side!" He said, "No, I'm sorry, we can't consider you." And so I went home, and I was rather distressed, and in the same building was a young lady, a young woman – we had met at Cornell; she was in the Music Department – we were friendly with her there and we continued to be friendly here, and she said, "Well, try O.S.S.," and I said, "No, if the Signal Corps won't have me, O.S.S. isn't going to have me." O.S.S. – you're too young to know – is the predecessor to C.I.A. She said, "Try; I know they're looking for people." So I went to O.S.S., and they took me. So I had a job, and that was fine. And then the next thing you'll be interested in – well, my husband was happy at the change at Dumbarton Oaks, and the Director of Studies was Koehler at the time, Wilhelm Koehler; I think his first name was Wilhelm . I was rather sorry at that, because being French, I would have loved it if I had been there when Focillon was the Director of Studies, but he was gone, and it was a German instead. And I knew that Mrs. Bliss was very much of a Francophile. Anyway...what was I saying?
CW: You got a job at O.S.S.
IU: O.S.S., yeah. So, my husband was getting accustomed to Dumbarton Oaks, and he was quite happy. And he had studied publications of Koehler at Princeton, so he knew all about him, and so on, and it was very nice, very comfortable. And then, what happened next? Oh, there came the Conference –
CW: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference in '44.
IU: Yes, that was set up preliminary to the San Francisco.
CW: Right.
IU: And at that time we lived on the estate. We lived in the villa that had been originally the kennels for the dogs parading through the estate, when it was under the Blisses.
ABF: Was this by the garden? Were you right nearby the garden?
IU: It's in a hollow of the estate, and when it was turned over to Harvard, they changed it – no, before that, they changed it into a villa for Mrs. Clark, I think her name was, who was the curator, the librarian of Mrs. Bliss's rare books collection. And at that time, as I said, our apartment was in Arlington, and it was very hot. No air conditioning, of course, at that time. And I was working long hours too, at O.S.S. sometimes, when we had a report to get out. So, she said, "I'm going away for the summer for two months. Why don't you come and stay in the villa?" So we thought, "Well, fine." She had no kind of air conditioning, but it was in the hollow. In fact it was a little bit dank, but it was cool, it was cool, and there was room for my mother and Paul and me. And that's where we lived during the Conference. And it was an amusing time, because I can still remember our laundry man coming to the villa with our laundry, furious, angry. He said, "I'm an American citizen, and I have to come here under armed guard to deliver your laundry."
CW: Because the Conference was still going on.
IU: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And my husband said to me, "You know, Irène, I go up in the elevator, and there is the Secretary of State, and he greets me, and I know he thinks I'm one of his young men," you know. "Every morning, we go up and we greet each other." So, it was a really amusing time. I remember he called me once and he said, "I forgot to pick up our eggs;" – which were delivered at the front entrance – "do you mind picking them up when you come home?" So, I said, "Okay," so I rang the bell, and of course it was after working hours at Dumbarton Oaks, and I don't know who it was who answered, but it was one of the bright young men still there, and I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm Mrs. Underwood," and he said, "Oh yes, the Underwood eggs," and he got them for me.
ABF: Did you meet any big political personalities while you were there?
IU: Not political, but we met the President of Harvard, because he was part of the Conference, and he lived in one of the suites, I don't know whether it was the east end or the west end of the Fellows Building. Are you familiar with the Fellows Building?
CW: We live there, yes.
IU: Oh, you live there. I think it was probably the east little apartment there. And so we would spend evenings with him. It was very interesting. But other than that we didn't meet any of the others, no, no. But the scholars were still permitted to use their studies, which by the way were still under the roof where the domestics lived before it was given to Harvard. You know, I used to tease my husband and say he was in an ivory tower during the war, but he said, "No, you don't know what the offices, our studies, are like, under the roof, with no air conditioning."
CW: Right, it must have been hot.
IU: It was very hot. But that changed shortly thereafter, and then they were moved down, and they each had their little offices, and it was very nice. So, what else? Well, that was about it during the war, yeah. And then I left O.S.S., I went to the State Department briefly, when they were going to divide O.S.S. into the C.I.A. and part of it went to the State Department, and I was going to the State Department to hold the French desk until the rest of it came over there, and they wanted to be sure, because the man was leaving who was on the French desk at that time in biographical intelligence. So, I went there briefly, and I hated it. I really hated the State Department. It had a lot of red tape, which we never had in O.S.S., because they were mostly from the academic world, or refugees, and we were free spirits, but not in the State Department. So, I decided to leave. And anyway we wanted a child, and my doctor said, "You have to rest. You can't work these long hours." So, I had worked at the French Supply Mission, which was an easy, easy job, and then my daughter was born.
ABF: That was 1947?
IU: She was born, yeah. How did you know that?
ABF: We did our research.
IU: And I had a difficult time adjusting to being at home, so Dumbarton Oaks was very paternalistic in some ways, and I had a job, a temporary job, with the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Do you know anything about that?
CW: No.
IU: No. Well, it was a research tool set up for scholars, and we were – well, I'll let someone over there describe it for you – but anyway, I worked on that for a time. And then Mrs. Bliss had a collection of the letters of Franz Liszt, and she wasn't satisfied with the translation that she had had made, so she asked Libby Bland – do you know about Libby Bland?
ABF: No, who is that?
IU: She was – at that time I wasn't sure whether she was really the curator of the Byzantine collection or whether there was somebody above her; I've forgotten – but later she became curator of the Byzantine collection of art. And Mrs. Bliss asked her if she would do a new translation, and Libby asked me if I would help. So, I said yes, I realized it was a pretty bad translation. I don't know who did it, if it was just a student or what. So, we both worked on that, and that was a temporary job. And then after that, sometime later, I was in charge of photography at Dumbarton Oaks – not the taking of photographs, no no, but the collection, organizing it and getting into the files and so on.
CW: Photographs of the collection or the gardens, or everything?
IU: Everything, pretty much – mostly of the artwork. No, actually, this was only of the artwork, the Byzantine Collection. But those were all temporary, part-time jobs, and then after that my husband went to Turkey for the first time I think in 1949, was it, or '50?
ABF: Well, in 1950, he took over Whittemore's position.
IU: Yeah, but before that he had gone. That was very amusing. Whittemore – you probably know about Thomas Whittemore – was getting on in age, and A.M. Friend, who was at the time Director of Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and who had been my husband's professor both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, thought, "Well, somebody has to take over the Byzantine Institute; why doesn't Dumbarton Oaks do it? And why doesn't somebody learn about the work while Whittemore is still there?" So he sent my husband over as a sort of a – casing the joint, to see how things were going. Whittemore was a fantastic character. He was really something.
ABF: When did you meet him?
IU: I never met him, but I heard all these stories about him. So my husband gets to Istanbul and he knows there's an Englishman on the staff of the fieldwork under Whittemore, and so he makes contact with – oh dear, what is his name? I've forgotten.
ABF: It wasn't Ernest Hawkins?
IU: Yes, it was Ernest Hawkins. And Whittemore was very possessive of anything to do with the work, so he gave my husband a tourist's introduction to the work, you know, but not in the way they actually did the work, and all that, but he took him around to see it. But my husband and Ernest would meet in coffeehouses, and Ernest would tell him more about what was going on. So, my husband had a pretty good idea by the time he had finished his first trip to Istanbul, and then when Whittemore died – in the State Department, actually, he collapsed – Dumbarton Oaks took over the Byzantine Institute, and my husband was sent there as the director of the fieldwork, to take Whittemore's place and to take over. And I think he – well, I know he really enjoyed it, but it was a tricky position, because I don't know how – Whittemore was a very persuasive character, and how he managed to get Atatürk to agree to change these churches which had been turned – well they were either not used at all, and nothing was done about them, or Hagia Sofia, the greatest church in Istanbul and the one that the Greeks still revere, had been turned into a mosque, and somehow Whittemore persuaded Atatürk to turn all the Byzantine churches back into not churches, but museums. And so that's how the work started, trying to preserve the mosaics and the wall paintings.
CW: Right.
IU: Yeah, I don't know what got me on that, but anyway. What else can I say?
ABF: Was your husband excited about taking this job which would take him away from D.C. to Istanbul for such a long period of time?
IU: Well, originally he went from April to I don't know, I don't remember the dates, but November, maybe, or maybe a little earlier than that. The rest of the time – you couldn't do it in the wintertime; it was too cold – no, he was all right with that. I mean, he didn't like to travel, that's true. But he stayed put in Istanbul, except when he went to Cyprus. Of course they started doing fieldwork in Cyprus too. And he had a young Turk who was on the faculty of Robert College become more or less his mouthpiece between the Turks and taking care of official documents he had to give and so on, except once Ercüment forgot about taxes, and my husband had to appear in court, I think, and it was rather iffy, but – so, I don't know how long he did that before we joined him. I think our first trip there – you probably have this down pat, but I don't.
ABF: Was it 1952?
IU: '52, I think, yes.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: Was it '52 or was it...?
ABF: Your first winter – he writes about your first winter as being in 1953 and it was so cold that you had to put on all the clothes you brought with you.
IU: That was the second trip we took. We went earlier than '53.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. We went – I think –
ABF: – would that have been '51, maybe?
IU: '51, I think, yes, '51 we went.
CW: You, and Sarah went with you?
IU: Yeah, she went the first time, yeah. And then we came back. And then we went again in '53. We came back in '52. I don't know have the dates pat, but anyway, we were there from '53 to '55.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. And our first trip – well, my husband had gone in '50, '51, and '52 – no, when did I say? – when did we first go there?
ABF: '51, I think.
IU: '51, yeah. But he had gone there in '50.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: And prior to that he had been there once before.
ABF: Right – because there's correspondence from that time.
IU: And then we decided we would go together, and we went for one season and came back to Dumbarton Oaks, and then we went in '53, again as a family, and stayed until we came back in '55, yeah. And from then on he commuted, without us. Sarah and I stayed here. But the first time we went, that was really quite exciting, because when we were on the plane, they told us that unfortunately they had to circle, because the landing gear was sort of iffy, and they didn't know. So, they had to lighten the load of the fuel, so they went round and round, and my daughter at the age of four had been very good, really, on the trip, but she got sick at that point from the circling, you know. And then they decided, well – this was in Ireland – we're going to land, we're going to dive, we're going to go up and dive, to see if that will loosen the landing gear, so they did that. It didn't work. So, they said, "Now we're going to land." And who was on the plane but Danny Kaye? And we thought, you know, while they were doing all this, we thought, "Well, he should come out and entertain us."
CW: To lighten the mood a little bit.
IU: He was in first class. But he didn't come out, and he had quite an entourage with him. But they went up and they dove, and the landing gear came out, but in landing they burnt one of the wheels, so they couldn't go on with that plane. I don't know. So we had to get off the plane, and they changed, but we went on finally. And when we got to London the next day, where we were changing planes, nothing was in the paper about the Underwoods being on the plane, but "Danny Kaye" – a banner headline – "In Near Crash." So that was my first experience in Turkey. And it was very pleasant, because we had rented a villa up the Bosporus, or Dumbarton Oaks had rented a villa up the Bosporus, in what had originally been, of course, a Greek village, and it was charming. And there were a Greek family who I think Alexander had worked for – Whittemore – anyway we became friendly with them, and it was very pleasant. And the head of Saucony-Vacuum, one of the big oil companies, for the whole of the Near East, had been a friend of Thomas Whittemore, and Whittemore had put him up whenever he came to Istanbul, and in fact when my husband came Whittemore put him up – I don't mean Whittemore, I mean what was his name, A.V. Walker. Walker was his name, the head of the oil company – and he was very – he liked us, and he liked Sarah too, my little girl. She was very good with him, and he was very good with her. Except he would invite us to lunch sometimes, and there would be the former Spanish ambassador, the former whatever, or the current somebody or other, you know, high up, and he would invite Sarah too, at the age of four, the first time we went there. And I would always wonder, "What are we going to go through this time?" I remember at one lunch, she was at his right hand, and she turned to him and said, "You put crumbs on my seat," and he laughed and he said, "Yes, I did." It was weird. And then the time he was at our house, and so was the head of Robert College, Dr. Black, and his wife, and there was Sarah – she always came, I mean – so in the middle of lunch she turned to A.V. Walker, she said to him, "Mr. Walker, you have a beautiful garden," and then somehow I could see her thinking, and she turned graciously to Dr. Black and Mrs. Black, and said, "Mrs. Black, you have a wonderful garden." So she handled that quite well. Actually, this was not her first trip. This was – no, it was her first trip, I think. Yeah.
ABF: If she was four, then it must have been the first trip, I think.
IU: It must have...well, I don't know, because when we went back I put her in a French school, Notre Dame de Sion, she hated that, although she knew a little French, because my mother and I spoke French, but I never attempted to speak French with Sarah, which was my mistake. I really should have. But my husband did not speak French; he understood it and he read it, but he didn't speak it. He had a few words, of course, but so – what did I start to say?
ABF: Your daughter, you put her in school.
IU: Oh yeah, I put her in that French school, and she hated it. And so I put her in the English High School for Girls. Each nationality that had trade relationships with Turkey – France, Italy, Germany, I don't know what else, but those were the big three – they each had their own schools. Of course, they had to teach Turkish, which my daughter flunked, and Turkish language and history, I think.
ABF: She was tiny, wasn't she?
IU: Yes. This was the second trip, not our final trip, when she was five, maybe. But she's small now, she still is. But I put her in the English High School. When we came back, Sirarpie der Nersessian was at Dumbarton Oaks. She had been my professor at Wellesley, and in fact I had done special honors with her at Wellesley, so when she greeted me in the library – I knew she was at Dumbarton Oaks, but the first time I saw her, I was in the Georgetown Library, and she came in with her sister, and you know, we embraced, we were friends. And her sister looked at her and she said, "Are you always this affectionate with your students?" "Oh," she said, "no, no, no, no, but this is special." So when we came back from Turkey I told Sirarpie that Sarah had been to her school, and Sarah was right there, and so Sirarpie turned to her and said, "You went to the English High School? That's where I went to school. Tell me, is the salon still to the right of the building? Do you have to curtsy before the mistress?" Sarah said, "Yes, yes." It's so funny, you know: my child and my professor going to the same school in Turkey. Well, Sirarpie, as you probably know, had to flee Turkey at the time of the massacre, and I remember when Jack Thacher asked her to attend a dinner he was giving for the Turkish ambassador, and Sirarpie was – really she didn't want to go. She thought, "I can't take this." She and her sister had both fled with nothing, nothing. And you know they had to work their way eventually to Paris, but first they had to work in Switzerland and so on, until they got to Paris, and they were finally able to establish themselves there. She went to the Sorbonne. But they had a brother who changed his name to a Turkish name, and for years they didn't speak, and we knew nothing about him, until finally – I think Sirarpie waited until the second time we went to Turkey to tell us that yes, she had a brother there; before that she had never mentioned him. So, it was very hard for her to attend this dinner with the Turkish ambassador, but she thought, "Well, I'm at Dumbarton Oaks. What else can I do?" So, that was that. What else can I tell you?
CW: So you lived in an apartment, or in a villa, that Dumbarton Oaks owned?
IU: Right.
CW: At first.
IU: They rented that the first time. But the second time we went my husband had rented a house – not a house, yes, a house – in the city itself, and it was an old Turkish house, and well, it was an unhappy time in our family, because I had a breakdown while he was away in Salonica, attending a conference, and it was a very bad time, but he came back and we eventually moved to an apartment building, which was better, because there was a French family there – in fact, there were two. One of them, he was the manager of the gasworks in Istanbul, and the other one was a man that my family – and oh, he was the one that Paul had come to know, because being manager of the gasworks for the city, he had to okay the pipe work and everything. When they laid new foundations for a new building or dug up an old building or whatever, he was involved. So, he had become interested in archaeology. And he became interested in the work of the Byzantine Institute, and so my husband and he were good friends, and so I already knew these people. I had met them before. And they were in the same building, and that made it much easier for me. And then I also did volunteer work at the Y, Y.W.C.A., teaching a very small group of young women English. And that was amusing. But I made the mistake of asking them, I said, "I love Turkish cooking. I want recipes." So, they gave me recipes, but unfortunately every time we had a meeting, they would say, "Did you try this? Did you try that?" And I never did, of course, because Turkish recipes, you have to prepare them in advance, everything is done in advance, so you're very relaxed at the time, but I wasn't going to do that when I had a maid; why should I? And they always wanted to talk about movies, and I didn't know about that. You know, movies weren't my great interest at the time. And when we had lived on the shore of the Bosporus before, in the villa, there was a very nice Turkish family next door with two grown daughters, and I think they were still going to Robert College at the time – yes they were – and they became very friendly with us, and they loved Sarah, and they were forever talking about movies and wanted to know all about the stars, and I couldn't help them very much, but – and I think we went once or twice to the movies together, but they were very nice. Unfortunately, when we came back I looked them up and the younger daughter had insisted on taking a job, and her parents would have nothing more to do with her. She would have stayed home, and they would have selected a husband for her, and it was very sad. And so my daughter went to this high school, and that was very pleasant. And then came the riots in fifty –
IU: I can't remember when they came.
CW: In September '55?
IU: Probably.
CW: Over Cyprus.
IU: Yes.
CW: Yes.
IU: And I remember I was visiting, spending the evening – I went from our apartment to another apartment building down the hill on the same street, where there was an English couple who had two sons, and the two sons went to the English High School for Girls, which was co-ed, never mind that the girls were still in the title, but – and our driver would take our three children, the two boys and Sarah, to school every day, and we became friends with this English – he was, I think, at the British Consulate. I don't remember what position he had there. So, I was spending the evening there, and we were having a very nice quiet time, and suddenly my husband came over, and I said, "What?" and he said, "You have to come home right away, right away." So, I said, "Okay. What's happened?" He said, "Well, there's rioting in the city, and you'd better come home," so we walked home – it was just down a few blocks – and as we walked home there was this group of men coming up from below with clubs, whatever they could grab, and they were coming up the hill looking very, very serious, and Paul said, "Hurry, hurry, we'll get home." So, we went home, our bell rang, and it was the janitor of our apartment building, looking very upset – he was Turkish. And he said, "Madame, do you have a Turkish flag?" And I said, "No, I don't have a Turkish flag." Well, the building was owned by Greeks, and he wanted to be sure that we had a sign that, you know, said, "We're okay; no, we're not Greek." But we didn't have it, so we said, "No, we can't help you. We'll just have to take our chances." Well, nothing happened, except down the street there was a little grocery shop, and they ruined that completely, and the main drag, all merchandise – the refrigerators, whatever – were in the streets. They totaled all the shops; the Greek and the Armenian and the Jewish shops were all totaled. And then we saw them the next day – but the next morning, my husband was worried, because on his staff he had both Turks and Greeks, and he thought, "I wonder how things are," and when his driver came in the morning, he said, "Alexander, you have to take me into the old city, because I don't know what's happening there." And so he agreed, and they drove into the Old City, and he found that the Turkish members of his staff had taken in the Greek members for the night, so they were safe. So that was good. But later in the day – oh, Sarah wasn't home: she had been spending the weekend at Robert College, because the president had a daughter, and they had just come – the Valentines became good friends with us – had just come that summer to take over the position of president of Robert College, and Sarah had been spending the weekend there with their daughter; she was a year or two older than Sarah. And I said to Paul, "I want to go up to Robert College and get Sarah. I want her to be home with us." And he said, "Yeah, I think you're right, maybe," and I said, "We'll take some bread with us," because we were sure that all the shops had been looted all the way up the Bosporus too. So we called, got hold of Alexander, and said, "You've got to take us up the Bosporus." And he said, "Oh, I really don't want to," because he was from Syria, I think, and he was a Christian, and of course nobody was supposed to know that, and he was afraid for his life, you know, if they discovered it. But he finally agreed to take us. And it was all right; we got there okay. Except for, when we got there we found that the Valentines had just received the day before their pictures and other things from the States, and they were busy hanging up pictures, very calmly. We entered their living room and said, "What are you doing? Do you know what's happening in town?" "No, no." They didn't know anything about it. And I said, "We've brought you some bread, because we were afraid you were running out of, you know, bread, anything." Oh, they were just amazed that anything had happened. So, we got Sarah; we got home okay. But a day or two later the World Bank was meeting in Istanbul at the time, and among the members of the Bank was Crainer T. Young, he was a friend of the Blisses, and they knew Jack Thacher, and they were interested in the art and so on. They were in Istanbul because of the meeting of the World Bank. Crainer was not familiar with the city so my husband asked me to accompany him to wherever he wished or I suggested he see. Unfortunately, I had not realized he was an avid photographer. He began to snap the all too evident signs of the recent rioting – merchandise strewn all over the main drag from all the Greek shops etc. I asked him to put away his camera, "In this tense atmosphere, we might be attacked." "You're right, he said." She wasn't with us; it was only Crainer. So, we got together, and he had his camera with him, and we went into the city, and the stupid man was taking pictures, and you know, the main street was filled with this merchandise; nothing had been cleaned up. And it was just horrible, and he was taking pictures. And I said, "Crainer, put away your camera; you know, they'll see you, and we'll be attacked if we continue." "Oh," he said, "you're right; you're right." So we got through all right, and it worked fine. In fact, as we were going home later that year, I mean going back to America, we met them in Naples and we had dinner together, and it was very pleasant. And Mrs. Young said to Sarah, "Would you like to see the kitchen?" She said, "Oh, yes!" So, they went off to the kitchen together, you see, which the Italians were always happy to have people do that in the hotels; you know, you could go and see whatever was being done. So, Sarah enjoyed that. But that meeting and the World Bank, and of course the Turks were ashamed to have the World Bank see all this destruction, but it was their doing. And then that fall – November, I think it was – we left – or maybe late October – we left for the States.
ABF: Did you see the Blisses in Istanbul?
IU: No, they didn't come out, but the – I never remember whether it's the Kress or the Kresge –
ABF: Yeah, the Kresses.
IU: Kress Foundation. They came out while we were there, and they were entertained.
ABF: It seems as if your husband was not only working on the restoration, but dealing with all these potential benefactors who were coming through, or handling all of the finances, and these letters make it seem like he –
IU: Well, I wasn't aware of all that he did. He didn't hide things from me, but I didn't think to ask very much. And unless I was personally involved – I didn't entertain the Kresses when they came, but I know there was a dinner for them at Robert College, and we were all together, and so I met them – but he probably saw many more people that he didn't tell me about, that I don't know, unless I was involved in some way.
ABF: It seems very remarkable, looking at his letters, all that he was managing to do while he was there.
IU: Yes. Well, as I say, he didn't tell me all that happened. He protected me, as it were, I think. But he enjoyed it, and we had this good friend who became his assistant, really, and he took care of the official part with the Turks – a very good friend – and he used to take us on sightseeing tours, and have us to his house, which was an old Turkish home with decorations of flowers, of course, because they could never have figurative decorations now. And it was really lovely; we enjoyed meeting, you know, the real Turks. And unfortunately, he's retired now from the faculty at Robert College, and he's not doing very well in old age, not accepting it very well, which is bad, and I haven't seen him. I saw him last – I don't remember when my last trip to Turkey was, in the '80s. I did see him then, but – we correspond at Christmas, but that's not great. So that's about it.
ABF: And do you remember seeing other Dumbarton Oaks scholars while you were there, like I know that Kitzinger came and stayed with you in October 1963?
IU: He did?
ABF: That's what the letter said.
IU: I'm going to see if I can see these letters, yeah.
ABF: They're there, at Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: I don't even know the name of the director. Joe, what's the name of the director?
ABF: Ziolkowski.
IU: Oh, yes, somebody told me that.
IU: Does he have a family?
ABF: Yes.
JM: He has a wife too; it's a very good addition to Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that, because the one before that, I don't think – well no, well yeah, he's Director. But it's still Alice-Mary, right, who is Director of Byzantine Studies, but she's going to retire, isn't she?
ABF: Yeah, mhm.
JM: She's gonna stay one more year.
IU: One more year, yeah.
ABF: Yeah, Alice-Mary told us all about you.
IU: She did?
ABF: She did. She had very kind things to say.
IU: She did? I remember once Philip Grierson was giving a little cocktail party before dinner – and dinner too, I guess – outside, and I was early, and I didn't want to be early, so I was looking into this – there used to be a sort of an antique shop at the corner, I think – and I was looking in the window there, and so I was sauntering around, wasting time, and Alice-Mary came by, and she said, "What are you doing on a street corner, Mrs. Underwood?" So I said, "Well, I'm early, I'm early." Oh, dear.
ABF: I'm just wondering if we could go back for just a second to sort of the early days and if you could –
IU: Yes, you should have stopped me.
CW: No, no.
ABF: No, no, we wanted to hear it as you remember it before we asked questions. But do you remember going to teas with Mrs. Bliss or any of those other sort of rituals besides the music concerts?
IU: Oh, I meant to tell you about the teas. Yes, the teas were originally in the Music Room, which was not – they were too formal, really. It was cold, and I didn't enjoy that particularly. But then they moved to the Founders' Room – I hope it's still called that. It's on the right-hand side down the hall.
ABF: In the Main Building?
IU: Yes, yes. At the main entrance, the main entrance to the house, beyond that, when you still go down the hall, there's a relatively small room on the right, which has – I think it has bookcases; I've forgotten now – and it used to be called the Founders' Room, I think.
JM: I think it was called the Study, and the larger room was the Founders' Room.
IU: Oh, was it? The larger room, I know, is now called the Founders' Room, but I thought the other one was – well no, probably. I don't know, I don't know.
JM: I'm as confused as you are; I've only been here 33 years.
IU: No, but I've forgotten. My memory is not reliable. Anyway, you think it was called the Study. Well, that was a smaller room, and it was very nice, and Mrs. Bliss would occasionally appear, even though Harvard had had the gift for some time now, you know, of Dumbarton Oaks, and usually it was the scholars, and they didn't have to come – I don't think my husband ever came. I don't know whether he did or not. But the younger Fellows would certainly come, and Mrs. Bliss's maid, the maid who had been her personal maid – and I don't know whether she still had duties at their home in Georgetown – but she would be there at tea time, and she would make the most delicious butter sandwiches, just butter – they were so good – on very lovely bread. So, one day Sarah and I were walking in the gardens, and I had on a denim skirt, and she had on denim slacks, and she said, "Oh, let's go to tea." And I said, "Sarah, we can't go to tea. Look at us!" And she said, "Oh, come on, Mom. I know everybody there!" she said. So, I let myself be persuaded. And unfortunately it was one of the days when Mrs. Bliss had chosen to come. And we were sitting around having tea. And as I said, Mrs. Bliss, she always tried to be friendly, you know, but she didn't quite know, so she turned and she said, "And to whom does this belong?" pointing to Sarah. And I said, "She's mine, Mrs. Bliss! She's mine!" You know, our encounters were rather strange, Mrs. Bliss' and mine.
ABF: Do you remember Mr. Bliss as well?
IU: No, no. He didn't show up very much. Well, I knew him, of course, and one of the things I remember, when he died, Mrs. Bliss, who I think had a rather soft spot for my husband, who was quite handsome – they met in the hall, and she said, "Oh, Underwood" – everybody was by their surname; she never – "I wonder, you know, Mr. Bliss, we found that he had many shirts that he didn't wear, and I was wondering if you would like them." He was just as thunderstruck as I had been in my encounters. I said, "How did you handle that?" That's one encounter he told me about. And he said, "Well, I didn't quite know, but I finally said, 'You know, Mrs. Bliss, Mr. Bliss was a much taller man than I, and I'm afraid perhaps they wouldn't fit me.'" What else could he say? I thought it was such a strange suggestion, you know. But I knew who he was, of course. We shook hands, and I went through receiving line after receiving line, and there he was, so of course I knew him. But I remember their golden anniversary, they had a reception, and there was a line to go to greet them. It went from R Street all the way to the front bit, to the main entrance of the house, you know; people waited to see them. And we were in line, we were near the R Street entrance, actually; suddenly, the word came down the line, "Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood; Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood." My husband was very reserved, and finally it reached us. And Paul was looking at us, and I said, "Well, Paul, she wants to see you; you'd better go." So poor Paul, he had to walk all the way up to the front of the line; I don't know why she wanted to see him at that point. I never did learn why she called him. He probably told me, but it didn't stick. That was so funny. Oh dear. But I really didn't know Mr. Bliss. He seemed very nice, you know. He didn't spend much time at Dumbarton Oaks. She, of course – her great interest was the garden, and she still planned, she and her landscape architect – Farr –
ABF: Beatrix Farrand.
IU: Yeah. – planned a water garden, and I mean it was pebbles imported from Scotland, and I don't know what's happened to that part of –
ABF: It's still there.
CW: By the pool, yeah.
IU: Is it still a water garden? I mean, is there water on it?
CW: It's just pebbles now; it doesn't have water.
JM: The design was flawed and wouldn't hold the water, and they redid it at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, and they did it wrong, and it didn't hold again.
IU: Now it holds? It never held? Before that it was a tennis court. And I remember during the war diplomats would come there and play, you know, and there were also victory gardens on the grounds that the staff had, little plots where you could grow vegetables. We never had one; we were not gardeners. So, it was a great experience, really.
ABF: Did it seem as if there was a very clearly defined social hierarchy among the scholars who were working there?
IU: No.
ABF: With regard to who was invited to lunch there?
IU: When ambassadors were invited to dine at the Fellows Building, I don't know who hosted the dinner – Mrs. Bliss or Jack Thacher. When the French ambassador came, the Underwoods were invited – I assume because of me. And when the Turkish ambassador was invited, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, an Armenian scholar, was invited – because she was born in Istanbul? I don't really know whom Mrs. Bliss invited to their home from Dumbarton Oaks. I remember there was Fanny Bonajuto, for example. Have you heard of her? She was assistant to Julia Warner, who was in charge of publications at one time, and Fanny came from a very good family in Italy, and she had married a Sicilian prince, and so she was a principessa – how do you pronounce it in Italian? Principessa or whatever.
CW: Principessa.
IU: – And she was invited to Mrs. Bliss's for lunch. Mrs. Bliss never invited me. Oh, I didn't tell you about the Christmas – I've got to – Well, the Christmas party, the Blisses.
JM: I'd like to just put another tape in before you do this. We'll run out of tape. Just pause for a minute, please.
IU: But don't waste your tape; it's just going to be one story.
JM: Well, I only have three minutes. So let me just pause.
IU: The Blisses used to give – I remember one, but I think it was more than one time – a Christmas party at their house. The members of Dumbarton Oaks received pointsettias at Christmas time and flowering plants at Easter; Mr. Kearney, head of the grounds, would deliver them, also presents from Mrs. Bliss. One year, I remember the card that came with it. I don't know whether it was always to the wives or whether I just misread the card that came with it and thought it was addressed to me. And I looked at it and I couldn't make out what it was; it was a little case – I don't even remember what it was made of. So, I wrote a thank-you note – I don't know how I phrased it, because I didn't know what the object was, but I phrased it somehow – thanking Mrs. Bliss. It was meant for my husband. And she was, she really – I heard – gave Kearney a hard time for delivering the wrong thing, delivering it supposedly to me when it should have been to my husband. I don't know what happened. I was so embarrassed to have this whole thing here. But the one I was going to tell you about, the Christmas party that I remember, was at their home in their rumpus room, where there was a Picasso on the wall, and you name it, you know, but it was what they termed the "rumpus room." And it was just for the Dumbarton Oaks Fellows and wives. And 1952 was the first year that my husband was to be accompanied by our daughter and me for his yearly sixth-month directing of the work in Istanbul, and Mrs. Bliss had presents for everybody there at the party. And mine was a very nice fitted toilet case. And I thought that was so nice, really so very, you know, gracious and very thoughtful. Usually it was her social secretary who selected them. I'm sure she gave her a list and said, "Get something," you know, so that was very nice. But like everything that Mrs. Bliss did, there was always something. Children were not invited to this party. Now that was okay with us, because my mother lived with us, and so I had a live-in babysitter, you know, Sarah's grandmother. But the Van Nices did not have a mother living with them, and they kept their children in the car, in the street, all during this party. Now, really, I would not have done that. I'm sorry. But I thought that was so bad. But you know, Mrs. Bliss didn't think of the problems that parents have sometimes. So, that was sad. That was all I was going to say.
ABF: Well, we don't want to keep you any longer, but we'd love to keep going.
IU: No really, I must go.
ABF: Well, thank you very, very much.]]>
VS: It's my great pleasure.
JWC: So, when did you first start working for Dumbarton Oaks? We have in the record that you started in the '93-'94 year, but there's also correspondence to you as the Music Advisor in '89. Is that correct?
VS: Yes, I was actually engaged as the Music Advisor in October, officially – the letter came in October 1989. The season for '89-'90 was already in place. I believe Robert Thomson was responsible for that, but then I took over after that, '90-'91 and so on.
JWC: And when you first came here, what did you understand was the mission of the Friends of Music program in the past?
VS: Well, when I think about that, it's very interesting in the sense that I came to Washington as a radio producer. I worked at National Public Radio for a long time, but I came initially as a Fellow, courtesy of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And because of that – many people, even here in Washington, don't know about Dumbarton Oaks. And because I had dropped in from Mars essentially, which is Berkeley, California, I didn't know that much about it. I'd heard of the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto by Stravinsky, and I didn't know that much about it. Consequently, the reason I even came to Dumbarton Oaks to interview for this position was that a message had been sent to NPR, National Public Radio, to find out if there was someone in their Performance Today classical music program department who would be interested or able to curate a concert series. And the person they approached had no idea how to do that and wasn't interested in doing that. But I had just arrived, and he knew that I had been doing something akin to that in Seattle where I had been living. So, he said, "Go over and talk to them." So, that's what I did, not really being sure what I was getting into. I had no idea of the – how venerable this place was at the time. All I knew was that there was a nice concert series that was offered, and could I do it? And I interviewed with Angeliki Laiou, and I assured her that I could produce a stunning series for her, not really knowing if I could or not at that point. But, because, you know, my whole career has been steeped, well, in many things, but one of them is classical music and music in general, world music, that sort of thing, so I thought I could do a pretty good job.
JWC: You mentioned that the previous year Thomson had lined up all of the performers. Was there a reason for that? Was there a break between individuals who were in charge of the Friends of Music and he was filling in a gap, or –?
VS: Yes, I believe that was – again, I wasn't terribly sure about any of this, but I've been learning the job for a very long time now, so I'm slowly, slowly – my appreciation for the whole place and everything, the wonderful history of it, has been growing steadily. I believe that Joan Southcote-Aston was the person who was in charge of the music before Mr. Thomson took over, but then she had an accident and was unable to continue in that position. And so I think he just filled in temporarily. That's my understanding of it. I never had the pleasure of meeting Joan Southcote-Aston, although I've heard so many stories about her, and I don't believe I've actually met Robert Thomson either. I may have just, you know, very briefly met him, but not ever in the context of talking about the music program. So, I've just been sort of taking it from scratch, essentially.
JWC: So, before you had come, there were a number of big-name performers who had come to the Music Room to give a performance. You had mentioned Leontyne Price, for example, before the recording started. What do you know about them through correspondence that you've been able to look over from the past, or what people have told you in conversation about those previous performers?
VS: Well, the most information I've received has come from a book that John Thacher put together – he wrote, he didn't put it together. He wrote the book about performers at Dumbarton Oaks. I happen to have it here too. It's kind of my Bible if I want to look into the history of Dumbarton Oaks music. What he says in the foreword to that book is that he had a friendship, or he ultimately developed a friendship, with Alexander "Sasha" Schneider and Ralph Kirkpatrick, who were notable musicians at the time. Schneider was a conductor and a violinist; Kirkpatrick, a harpsichordist. And he actually worked with them to develop the Friends of Music – I think I'm going in the wrong direction. What was your question exactly? Oh, the people who've performed here before, yes. And so, in his book, he does talk about just amazing performances by amazing musicians. It's sort of like a Who's Who of great performers of the first half of the twentieth century, Leontyne Price being one of them, and also Eileen Farrell, Jennie Tourel, Gérard Souzay – I don't know if he's as well known – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was one of them, Joan Sutherland. There are so many amazing singers, and then instrumentalists such as Rudolph Serkin and Leon Fleisher and Murray Perahia who are still, you know, very well known today; the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, who's the pioneer in bringing back harpsichord performance in the world, actually; and Gustav Leonhardt, who is sort of the grandfather of the new early music movement, historically informed performances. He played here also, and who else? And of course Ralph Kirkpatrick himself did, but he was sort of part of the Landowska old school, I think. We also had Christopher Hogwood, who was another one of the early music keyboard performers there. Leonard Rose, a very beautiful well-known cellist at the time, who was a wonderful teacher. He taught Lynn Harrell, who actually came here to perform several times on my watch. So, yes, those were – Pinchas Zukerman was another violinist, Charles Wadsworth, who for years ran the Spoleto USA Festival and was a very well-known pianist. I could just go on and on, and I would refer anyone who's interested to this book. I don't know if it's generally available, but it certainly would be available to look at at Dumbarton Oaks.
JWC: Now, I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that a lot of those names that you mentioned, when they came to perform with Dumbarton Oaks, they weren't the world-class celebrities at the time. They had yet to be discovered. Now what do you think makes that the case? What attracted these up-and-comers to Dumbarton Oaks? Did Joan Southcote-Aston just have a talent for seeing things in people that others didn't at the time? or was there something about Dumbarton Oaks that attracted these types of people?
VS: Well, first of all, I don't – I believe it was not Joan Southcote-Aston who was primarily responsible for these initial contacts. She arrived in the fifties, and I think it was Mr. Thacher who really had the contacts, because he was friends with Kirkpatrick and Schneider, and they were the ones who – they would, you know, get into a huddle and say, "What should we do for the next season?" and they were very enthusiastic about it. And of course they had wonderful connections. They knew a lot of people and invited the musicians, and so I think that's how it got started, and it is true that so many of these people were well-known as excellent, excellent musicians but had not quite made their mark yet. They were rising musicians at the time.
JWC: And have you, I guess in your earlier years here – did you ever have a chance to meet any of these people? Did they ever come back?
VS: Well, the musicians themselves?
JWC: Any of these players in the early music phase.
VS: Well, I have not met any of the people associated with Dumbarton Oaks. I've heard Ralph Kirkpatrick play. I heard him in Paris actually. He was virtually blind at the time, he'd lost most of his eyesight actually, and I went back to speak to him afterwards, but at that point of course I had no idea that I was going to be at Dumbarton Oaks, ever. Many of the musicians I have encountered, but not always at Dumbarton Oaks, you know. I've invited Paula Robeson, who was one of the musicians who came, before she became Robeson – I forget what her maiden name was – and I've met a lot of the musicians in the other contexts, like when I worked for NPR, for Performance Today. Many of them would come and do performances in our studio. In fact, that's one of the reasons I feel like I know – I'm quite will informed about who's performing today and the quality of the performances and so on, because of that involvement. And that was my day job. I mean, this was just something extra, actually. So, I've met them but not necessarily here.
JWC: And one of the other major facets of the Dumbarton Oaks music program is its history of having pieces commissioned for Dumbarton Oaks. So, the first was Stravinsky, right?
VS: Yeah, the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.
JWC: And then after that was Copland, and then Joan Tower, correct?
VS: Yes, Joan Tower, yeah.
JWC: Now, if I'm not mistaken, you played an important role in the most recent piece that was commissioned for Dumbarton Oaks, is that correct?
VS: Well, I wouldn't say it quite like that. I would say that, in terms of the commission, I really had nothing at all to do with the actual commission. That was Ned Keenan, and I believe James Carder did some research to identify someone to write the music, but I did help organize the concert. I put all the pieces – I found the performers, I worked on what program we should have, you know, the Copland and the Stravinsky, of course. I organized all of that.
JWC: Can you tell us a little bit more about that particular endeavor?
VS: Sure. Well, I found – one of my old friends is Christopher Kendall, who has an ensemble called the – it used to be called the 20th Century Consort, now it's the 21st Century Consort – but it's a small chamber orchestra, and I thought immediately of that group as a group that contains excellent musicians and who could, you know, do something on rather short notice. And also the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto is quite well known. So, I engaged that group. Unfortunately, Christopher was not available to conduct himself, so I asked Ken Slowik, from the Library of Congress? Gosh, wait. No, he is at the Smithsonian in the musical instruments collection. He's head of all the music at the Smithsonian essentially. He's also a performer, wonderful cellist, harpsichordist; does all sorts of different types of performances. And so he came over to conduct. The string players for the Nonet for Strings by Copland were – I think that came through the 21st Century Consort as well. And then Joan Tower – she had a string quartet in mind for this particular performance. It's called the Dumbarton Quintet. It's a string quartet and piano. She herself played the piano – she wanted to play the piano in this world-premier performance, and the string quartet – I think it was the Enso, but that's something I am going to have to look up
JWC: When Joan Tower was writing this piece, did you ever have contact with her?
VS: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I did. But she actually had written it quite a ways back and tweaked it a bit, and played it in sort of a different version before it was performed here. Enso, yeah. It's the Enso String Quartet. You know what that is right? Enso?
JWC: I'm not familiar, no.
VS: It's used a lot in Zen, because in calligraphy it's like an empty circle with the brush stroke: it's enso, for empty mind and so on, emptiness. Anyway, they performed it with her. I'm not sure if I answered your question sufficiently.
JWC: No, yeah. I'm actually kind of curious, though, about the process of commissioning a work, and you mentioned that James Carder –
VS: James Carder and Ned – I think James did, because I've spoken with James a little about it after the fact. He said that – he just got online. There are all kinds of things online that talk about commissioning works and so on. But I might add at this point that Jan and I are looking into commissioning a work – and I can't say more about it right now – from a young composer. Whether or not that will pan out, we don't know, but we're looking forward to 2015, 2016, which will be the years – 2015 is the year that the gift was made to Dumbarton Oaks – to Harvard, Dumbarton Oaks was conveyed to Harvard University – and then in the year 2016, if we miss the '15 target, that is the year that the Friends of Music will turn seventy. The anniversary of the commission would be the 75th – I mean of the gift – would be the 75th anniversary. So, we're looking to that year. I don't know what will come of it, but we're hoping that we might be able to do that.
JWC: And one of the other, I guess, credits to your name is that the series has been very well reviewed in the time that you've been here. You mentioned earlier a piece about your time at NPR and how that sort of exposed you to a lot of these current-day performers, but what else can you say about why people enjoy the Dumbarton Oaks music series so much, and why they keep coming back?
VS: Well, I really can't say why people enjoy it. All I can say is what my aspiration is when I put together a season. I actually have engaged several musicians throughout the years who have risen to prominence now, but who had not achieved that at the time, like Anonymous 4 is a very, you know, well-known group of four women who sing medieval music, and they came. There's quite a well-known violinist, Gil Shaham, now who performed with us before he even made his debut at Carnegie Hall. He told me that he was sort of using the concerts here at Dumbarton Oaks as rehearsal for his debut at Carnegie Hall. And there are quite a few others, I could go through my notes and take a look, but I don't remember off the top of my head. But, over the years, a thing that was so interesting to me was that, when I read Thacher's book, in the foreword to that book, there was sort of a mission statement in the sense that they wanted – because back in the days when Friends of Music was about to coalesce into something, there were very few chamber music series in Washington; in fact, very few classical music series in Washington. One of them was at the Library of Congress, one of them was at the Phillips, there's the National Symphony – am I forgetting something? Maybe at the National Gallery of Art as well, the NGA. So, they decided to look at what those groups were doing, or those organizations were doing, and try to do something a little bit different. So, at the beginning they said, "Well, we want to avoid all of the nineteenth-century music, you know, all of the Romantic music" – not avoid it entirely but play it down and spend more time in the eighteenth-century and the twentieth-century, and that of course would also involve some occasional commissions from young composers. So, over the years, of course, that changed quite a bit. Again, since I didn't know that when I first took over the series, I just was trying to create something that would be balanced and interesting and represent a lot of different eras and also go for the highest quality of performances I could find and so on. So, I didn't really stick to that, because I didn't even know about it, and now over the years I think audiences' tastes have evolved from what they were initially. My understanding of the Friends of Music is that, early on, it was a very sort of closed organization, and people were invited to join, and they actually joined, and it tended to be people mostly in the neighborhood and close friends of the Blisses. So – oh dear, I don't want to do that. So, now it's, you know, just generally open to anyone who knows about it. We don't ever advertise, and so it's just by word-of-mouth that people find out about the series, but they're very happy to come. Over the years, I think, since the audience is changing, their tastes are changing, what's going on in the world is changing, and also the way people listen to music and consume music is changing. And so I've taken some risks, I guess you could say, made some bold steps in terms of introducing groups that are a little more cutting-edge, perhaps, such as Brooklyn Rider, which is a string quartet that does very new and interesting work. They also perform with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. There's world music influence in what they do. Also, Time for Three, which is this wonderful young trio – not so young anymore – but they were young when they graduated from Curtis, just trained in classical music to an inch of their lives, yet in their downtime would go and play bluegrass and jazz, and they do wonderful little – they would tweak classical compositions and so on, and the audience loved it! I mean these are really musically conservative people, and they loved it, most of them did. There are probably a few grumpy people in the batch, but for the most part they liked it a lot, same with Brooklyn Rider. And then, I mentioned world music: one season not so long ago, a couple of seasons ago, I engaged – I lined up the season, and then I realized that the undercurrent of that particular season was world music, and what that was about. The reason I say that is because I engaged an early music group from Canada called Ensemble Caprice, and they had a program called "Vivaldi and the Gypsies," which is a politically incorrect term, but that's what they called it. It should have been Roma or Romani people, I suppose. But they had a Baroque manuscript with melodies from the Romani people – the Roma people – oh gosh, I don't know which it is. Which is it, do you know?
JW: I think Roma.
VS: Roma. And what's "Romani"? Is that an adjective perhaps? Anyway, it doesn't matter. So, from the Roma – and then they arranged the melodies, and then they arranged the harmonies and instruments – how they perform it. And what they did was that the played a Vivaldi concerto, and then they would play a Roma concerto, Romani concerto, "gypsy" concerto – not a concerto, just the gypsy piece, it wasn't a concerto. I'm really glad you don't have to edit this, because it would be a nightmare. Anyway, so we had world influence in that concert. We also had – I engaged a Mexican string quartet, the quartet of Latinoamericano, who came to play. The first half of the concert was all music from the New World, essentially, for string quartet, and then the second half they were joined by a player of the bandoneón, which is a tango instrument, and this is a person who played in Ástor Piazzolla's tango band in Argentina. His music is very popular now. It's very well known in classical concerts. I mean, he's just been embraced by the classical world as well as the world music community. So, we had that, and then the other sort of strange concert for that season was in December. It was called Music of Three Faiths, by the Boston Camerata. They were the performers. The Boston Camerata has performed many times at Dumbarton Oaks, and this time they performed – it was essentially medieval music from the Jewish tradition, the Christian tradition, and the Muslim tradition. And we had an Arabic ensemble. They called it the – I can't remember what it was called, but anyway, it was a trio of Arabic musicians from different Arabic-speaking countries actually. So, that was a little bit interesting too. We added a new dimension, I think, to our music series with that. And coming up this next season we're going to have a Persian santur.
JWC: Now, I was curious to know – you talked about the audience a lot – who is your audience nowadays? Do you have a lot of the same types of people who may have been involved in an earlier era of the music series, or do you have professionals, families? Who likes to come?
VS: We have a core audience that I think has been coming to these concerts – forever! A few seasons ago, maybe ten seasons ago, actually, I remember a man and his wife were telling me, as they were welcomed to the first concert of the season – he said, "I believe this is the fiftieth" – the fiftieth! – "year that we have been coming." I was really surprised to hear that, because that's a long time. But they looked like it was possible. So, what I'm saying is, I think there are quite a few people like that. We had – unfortunately, many of them have passed away – but early on, after I first arrived, I remember that J. Carter Brown, who was the Director of the National Gallery of Art, would come faithfully with his family, and he would tell me that he was – his aunt brought him to Dumbarton Oaks when he was a child, and that she would gesture to the stairway that comes down into the Music Room and say, "And then Mrs. Bliss would come down the stairway!" That was rather nice, to have that connection, that he was there and that he had heard about Mrs. Bliss. I don't know if he actually met her or not, but he would hear stories about her from his aunt. The widow of Abe Fortas, who was on the Supreme Court, used to attend faithfully. Her name was – oh gosh, Carolyn, I think? A-G-G-E-R was her last name, and she would come every season. She would subscribe every season to our concerts and was very happy to be there, I think. And actually I believe that that is the Fortas that has given the name to the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center. So, we were very fortunate to have her as well. Again – I'm just trying to think of any other people who – actually, I think that's probably the only connection I had to the people who came who might have been connected to the Blisses in any way.
JWC: Do you find that the type of audience you have influences how you put together a season?
VS: Right, that was your question, wasn't it. I think, actually, that we do probably have an audience that is hanging on as long as they can to this particular concert series, because they're familiar with it and so on. The newer additions to the audience – well, I would say the youngest are probably in their mid-forties.
JWC: Oh, wow.
VS: I mean, there may be the occasional slightly younger person, a couple who comes, but I think it does tend to be an older audience. The youngest people in the audience, of course, are very often the Fellows who are here at Dumbarton Oaks, which is lovely. It's wonderful to see them. But, no, I actually have to say that I do believe that there are some younger people coming, and that's – maybe it's because we're doing some more interesting music. I mean, there are different audience categories, you know. There are people who are very enthusiastic; every time they leave a concert they say, "Oh that was wonderful, thank you so much, it was so interesting" – whatever, nice things. And then there are other people who I think might be a little grumpy about anything that's new and challenging to them. But they came back, so, you know, I think it's worth the risk.
JWC: And what for you makes an ideal concert? I know there's a lot of variety in the types of pieces that you're putting together and between seasons there are different themes, but is there some common thread that ties all the concerts together?
VS: Within a season? or just in general?
JWC: Well, both. Within a season, it seems to be more topical; there's a musical common thread, and I'm thinking overall is there, you know, a spark or something that you're looking for that, regardless of the genre or period that a piece is from or that a performer focuses on – that they all have in common?
VS: Well, I think – what I try to do or look to do, really – what it is I look for is excellence in performance – excellence, but not just musicians who have a lot of facility – not just musicians with chops, as we would say, but musicians who are deeply musical. I'd say that's really important. I mean, sometimes I'm luckier than other times, but I will not engage anyone whom I have not heard either in person or, nowadays, on YouTube. That way, I can see how they present themselves and I can actually hear them directly in performance to see that they can deliver the goods. That's probably not a very good way of putting it. But I want to just make sure they're the real deal – really have accomplished artists who come here. That's really the most important thing. The programming, of course, is the most fun in terms of when I've identified wonderful musicians. We can talk about what they want that might be a little different or more interesting, or whatever. I think its excellence – excellence of musicianship and performance.
JWC: When you're finding these performers, how do you first encounter most of them? Do they have agents that are reaching out to you, or are you seeing in the community and reaching out to them? Or a little bit of both?
VS: I'd say it's both. I've actually been in the business here, at Dumbarton Oaks, but before that many, many years. I know lots and lots of musicians and I know lots and lots of managers and agents, so we'll sort of have a nice collegial relationship. I might write to them and ask them if they have this or that and ask them what so-and-so is doing this year. Or they might approach me and say, "we have this really interesting group that's gotten together," "this is a particularly interesting program," and so on, and I consider it. So, it's very fluid in that way. I just feel very comfortable moving on my own or taking things that are offered by the managers. If I trust them. You have to trust them in taste and so on.
JWC: What's the number of performers you have in a series versus the number that you start to investigate at the beginning of the season? What's the ratio of people –
VS: I've never kept track of that. I don't know. I do – some seasons I have a very clear idea in my mind of what I want to do. Boom – just like that. Other seasons, I think, "Oh my gosh, it's another season. I have to line up fourteen concerts." And then I start thinking, I have to organize in my mind what I think might be a good season. And other times I'm so full of ideas and there are so many people I'd like to have come to Dumbarton Oaks that I can only have – there are only seven concerts, each one done twice. That's where I got the fourteen. So, I have to be selective. It's an odd process. I don't actually think about something like that, now that you ask. No statistics.
JWC: How far in advance do you generally plan out a concert series?
VS: A season? Well, right now I'm working on in the summer of 2013 – of course we have the 2013-14 concert series, but I'm working on 2014-15 right now, and I have quite a number of ideas. I haven't nailed down anything yet, but I'm sort of designing it now. I have these sort of maybe this or that, you know. It's in process right now.
JWC: When you're putting these things together, are you always trying to find something new and different, or are there always a few standbys that the audience really enjoys and makes reappearances through the years?
VS: Well, I look for what – I try to pay attention, first of all, to what's going on in the world of music. I do look for something that might be particularly interesting because it's different in its approach. I think it's really important to pay attention to that sort of thing. We've had a group here a few seasons back called "A Far Cry." It's just a chamber orchestra of young people who met at New England Conservatory. They were so amazing in their approach to the type of music they played and they listened to music and they listened to each other when they played and the variety they offered within one concert itself. To me, just something about them just struck me as being something very different and special, so I engaged them. And they were so fantastic, the night after the last concert, I went home and got their manager on the phone, who lives mercifully on the West Coast, so it wasn't so early and I said, "I want them next year again." So wonderful. That was the first time I did that. Normally I don't do that, even if we have wonderful concerts. But these people were so compelling and so musical – so deeply musical and dedicated, and so wonderful – that I had them come back. But to answer your question about whether I'm always looking for something different or new, I think more than that – I think I am looking for something new. I always like to have one, what I would call to myself, a weird concert that might shake everybody up. I don't always succeed in identifying a weird piece. Sometimes I have an entire season of rather tame concerts and then I'm disappointed in myself when it comes out to be a tame season. I try to balance. If I have the weird concert, I will try to have something that will wash gently over the ears of our audience, who might be more sensitive to that sort of thing and who might be reassured by that type of program. But, I do really think it's important to pay attention and offer more of the sort of new approach to how people are playing music. Classical music. They – the serious intellectuals – are talking about the future of classical music is in jeopardy. And it can be in jeopardy, but what I know is that we have so many young people; something about it sparks interest. Lots of musicians are graduating from conservatories and universities and whatever all the time – that can continue. We just need to identify what that is and find an audience for them. And so they have to be as out there as we do in terms of having to think about a different way to how they deliver the music to people who listen.
JWC: Do you ever find that other people in either the Washington community or father afield come to consult with you when they're trying to put together a concert series of their own?
VS: All the time. Yes, they do. I get phone calls from people who are about to start a series and they ask me basic nuts-and-bolts questions about it. It's not so much artistic stuff. It's more like – well, it sort of is, like, how do you go about lining people up, or how do you deal with getting people interested to come as an audience, or how do you do your contracts? – various things like that.
JWC: Is Dumbarton Oaks unique in the type of concert series it provides, or is it a somewhat common type of series when you look at other cities throughout the country?
VS: Well, I don't know that much about all that which is happening around the country, but I've had people comment that this is one of the last places they can come to just to subscribe to a season knowing that they'll get wonderful classical music. That said, I often try to give it a little classical music, but a little something else to broaden the horizons. We don't have a mandate to do crossover music or a dumbing down music. I'm not saying those two are the same. I don't try to provide concerts to the lowest common denominator. I try to provide concerts to intelligent – because out audience certainly is – and knowledgeable and musically literate. I have to say also that there is not a need to do that. I imagine that there are probably some presenters who have difficulty bringing audiences in, and they have to find things – play the Pachelbel Canon or have Vivaldi's Four Seasons again and again, because that's what people know and want to hear. There's nothing wrong with that music, just not exactly adventuresome either. It's a known quantity. We're very fortunate here to be able to function here without being able to market what we do. The subscribers hear about us – its word of mouth. We're virtually fully subscribed every season. We have to save a few seats for the people here at Dumbarton Oaks and comp tickets for the performers and so on, but for the most part we do have a pretty full audience and people keep coming back without having to attract them with – you know what I'm saying, I think.
JWC: What do performers tell you after they come here about the opportunity they have to perform the pieces that they like or the more adventurous pieces? What about the audience or things of that nature?
VS: Well, they invariably – I've never heard any of the musicians complain. They just love it here. They say, "Oh, this is the most beautiful place." The ones from overseas – from Europe – will say, "It's just like being in Europe." – the Music Room and so on. They actually sometimes – our audience can be somewhat understated. Sometimes they fall asleep and drop their programs on the floor. But our musicians love them. They say, "This is just lovely." And our audience gives them a warm welcome too, I think. They seem to like the audiences. Maybe it's because they don't actually have audiences like them often, and because they don't have to play in a school gymnasium or basketball court, or something. It's a real concert offering experience from their point of view, and a really positive one.
JWC: On the flip side, what does the audience say about the performers? I'm sure many of them have subscriptions to either the Kennedy Center or other performing arts venues –
VS: They do. They have that a lot too. What they do a lot – often they'll ask me, "Do you know the dates of your concerts next season yet, because I don't want to have a conflict between that and the Kennedy – chamber music concerts at the Kennedy Center," or something like that. We really are on their radar screen. We are important to them – important enough that they want to schedule around what our dates are with what's going on elsewhere. Does that answer your question?
JWC: Yeah. But what do they say about the performers themselves?
VS: Oh, the performers themselves. They love it.
JWC: How do they compare – going to the opera is much different than here, of course – but how would they compare the two –
VS: Compare the two?
JWC: Do they enjoy coming here more than they enjoy going to the Kennedy Center?
VS: You'd have to ask them. You would have to interview some of the audience members. Will you do that?
JWC: We might, if you have the names of some of the people who have been around for a very long time.
VS: Maybe we can find some of those.
JWC: Another thing which I was curious about that was mentioned is the Music Room itself, which is aesthetically wonderful. What about from an acoustic perspective or some of the other more technical aspects that you need to keep in mind when bringing these performance groups in?
VS: Well, I think the acoustics are decent acoustics. It's not a really live room, and sometimes when we have the type of music that responds better in a live environment, we will open the drapes over the windows and that gives us more hard surface. I think the tapestries soak up a lot of sound, and you don't want to be moving those around. The audience also will soak it up. The only time I notice it very much is when we do have groups such as Anonymous Four, the group I mentioned before, that's four women's voices singing medieval music. It's very stark and high and wonderful in a cathedral, for example. In the Music Room, it sounds okay. It's also – its dry. It's a drier environment. As you may or may not know, the drier the environment, the more present every little thing will be, like the source of the sound. I mean a violinist, for example – you will hear every little screak happening on the string or bow, and so on. I think musicians prefer to have a more live environment. That said, that's not that this is a dry Music Room. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, but it's not ideal for certain types of music. Now, I'm trying to actually steer clear of some of those cathedral-like ensembles. We had a wonderful December concert this last season with a group called Cantus. It was a capella – nine men singing a capella. Somehow, that was just great. We didn't need anything. And it was the nature of the music they sang as well. They weren't singing medieval music. Actually, they did sing one thing that was medieval. It was a totally mixed program. They sang one thing that was from Sweet Honey in the Rock, they sang music – folk music. They sang Native American hymns, and they sing, well sung I should say – Russian choral music – that sort of thing. Just a variety that you didn't need to have special acoustics. And it was good – so good. I listened over and over to the recording they did in the Music Room. It was so lovely. It took me weeks to stop listening to it. But that was just me. I don't know if anyone else felt the same.
JW: Do you have any recommendations as to how you could equip the Music Room such that it could be more acoustically conducive to medieval choir music, for example?
VS: That's a good question. Well, I'm not sure if just a shell would work. I'm not sure if that would do it, because my understanding of it is the entire surrounding surfaces should be the types of surfaces that create a more light environment and just a shell might help a little to project it out, but I don't know we would need it that often. Part of the beauty of having it in the Music Room is that it's the Music Room and it doesn't have a lot of things that get between the musicians and that. We now have a platform, which the audience was begging for for years and years saying, "We can't see the musicians," because when we position the musicians there are two possible – well there are many possible ways, but we either put them lengthwise and everyone sits so we look at them up against the tapestry at the end of the room, and the other way is a sort of semicircle around the fireplace. Everyone prefers the semicircle because it is more intimate, but when they are in the long configuration, if you come in late and you are sitting in the back – because there are no assigned seating here – it's really hard to see anything at all. I've sat in the back and it's really looking for the – you don't even know who's playing. It was great that we could have a platform. It only goes up about a foot, but it is just enough extra that people can see. But then it creates other problems because whenever we have musicians – ensembles that have pianos, we can't lift the piano.
JWC: You mentioned before a little about the Fellows. What type of addition do you think that they give to the music series? They aren't here for the music; that's a nice added perk of Dumbarton Oaks. What do they tell you about their thoughts on the music series? Do they say things similar to what the regular subscribers would?
VS: I don't think I can answer that. No. There are some that come regularly. Most don't come regularly, quite honestly. The ones that do come regularly clearly are music lovers and show up every time. But you'd have to talk to them about that too, I think.
JWC: I guess what I was trying to get from you – when you talk to audience members what types of conversations do you have with them? You're saying they don't tell you what they enjoyed?
VS: They?
JWC: When you talk to an audience member after a performance, what do they tell you?
VS: Well, generally, they just say they really enjoy it. If they didn't enjoy it – well mostly people just come out and say, "That was wonderful." I remember sometimes, as I said, we have the occasional grumpy audience member. And it's really occasional. I remember one person – and there's one person who still faithfully comes to the concerts – but if there's anything that is a little challenging or a little unusual or dissonant, or even not one hundred percent classical, she – it's a woman – might storm out at the end and complain. My colleague Cindy Greene is the one who deals with the subscriptions and tickets now. And that's sort of a new thing. I used to do everything. I don't hear as much maybe as she hears about it, but mostly its very complimentary. And, oh!, the other thing that happens that's quite charming is that sometimes throughout the year I'll receive notes from audience members who will say, "I just heard this fabulous concert up in Maine," or Chicago or whatever, and they'll send me this program saying, "You might want to think about these wonderful musicians." They'll send me suggestions which I find quite charming. And I receive little thank you notes at the end of the season saying, "Thank you. I really appreciate what you're doing," which is so nice. Its one of the few benefits of doing this.
JWC: Are there any particularly salient memories that you have about your time here? – either stories about performers who have come through who have left an impression on you or anything in general that you will always remember about Dumbarton Oaks.
VS: I think the thing that I will always remember, actually, is a very personal thing and is something that just goes on inside of me, which is that when I first came here, as I intimated when we began speaking today, I didn't really understand all that much about Dumbarton Oaks. Slowly, slowly over the years – I've almost been here for a quarter of a century now, twenty-five years next year, I've more and more began to realize what a treasure Dumbarton Oaks is and what a privilege being able to promote these concerts. When I first took it on, I took it on because I love music, I'm a performer as well, as well as someone who is a radio producer in the cultural arts, and so on. Slowly, slowly I began to realize this is such a gift and what fills me – I'm filled with gratitude for having this opportunity to be here and to work with musicians to actually identify young rising musicians and give them an opportunity to play in this very distinguished venue. I've discovered that this is a very prestigious venue [laughs]. People go, "Oh! Dumbarton Oaks. We'd love to play there." So it's about being able to give young people an opportunity to do that. And for years there was a policy of no reviews, no recordings. It was supposed to be an intimate soirée – nothing should come between the people, the audience, and the music. Now Jan has so heartily embraced the initiatives and new ways of doing things. To have that dimension is just – I feel like we're continuing to grow and change in a good way. Gosh, I think one of my most favorite things was that Cantus, which I already mentioned. There was just something about the content – oh, I remember what it was. There was an encore that they sang that happened to be from the Methodist hymnbook. I know nothing about the Methodist hymnbook, but it was set to the tune of Sibelius's Finlandia. The thing that struck me – we've been having such a difficult time these last few years in the world, and the words are something to the effect that "This is my native land and I love it deeply and dearly and the skies are so blue and pine and clover grow here and everything. But in other places, the sky is just as blue and the clover and pine grow. People have aspirations and hopes just as mine and love their country too." And I was thinking, whoa, wouldn't that be a great national anthem? Because I mean, well it's not – I should be careful what I say – it's not just like waving the flag and bombs bursting in air and it's a prayer for peace, really, and understanding of all nations. That's what really caught me in the Cantus concert and I remember that. And I learned about that hymn. I had never heard it before, so that was very special. But that's not what you want to hear. You want to hear something "Dumbarton Oaksian" [laughs]. What can I say? Something I've always wanted to do – it's not a memory – but something I've always wanted to do is to have some sort of an outdoor concert someday in the beautiful outdoor garden. I'm still hoping we'll be able to figure out a time when its not a rainy season or too hot or too this or too that. It's just magnificent and the ability to do something like that would be just tremendous.
JWC: Wonderful. Is there anything that we've neglected to ask you that you feel is particularly important to talk about?
VS: Let me think. Dumbarton Oaks – Friends of Music – well, I guess not. I could talk more about particular amazing performances that we've talked about here, but that's researchable. One could look it up. "Look it up," as they say. I don't know. The thing about it is, as soon as we finish with this I'll probably have all sorts of thoughts I should have said, but at this point I think I'm okay.
JW: Well thank you so much for speaking with us today.
VS: You're quite welcome. It's been a pleasure.]]>
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.]]>