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IK: Thank you, also, for having me here.
JC: Our pleasure.
IK: Actually, we decided to call this sort of semester where a faculty member from Harvard comes down here as the Harvard Professor in Residence, or something like that, to remind us a little bit of the old times when there were faculty members here, residing at Harvard, so that's a little bit—sort of a memory blast, I guess.
JC: Great.
IK: So, I came here, yes, as you said, as a Junior Fellow, in the year '74–'75. It was a year when we were quite a number of Fellows, and we all sat together, which was very, very nice, in the old building, or the Main Building, as we call it, in the reading room upstairs, a beautiful room with a lot of sunlight, books all around, beautiful woods surrounding us, you know, a place where you could sort of feel like you were becoming a scholar from being a graduate student somewhere at a university. So there was a very nice atmosphere. And we all got to know each other, we could look at each other across the room, having questions we could exchange with each other, so it was very pleasant, I thought, to study in a room with other people – not tight, you know, next to each other, but far apart. We had our own desks, lights, beautiful tables. Anyway, it was a very nice – nice time. I always remember how I was figuring out things, you know, getting all excited, and then having someone sitting behind me, and going back and telling them what I found, what I read, you know, so there were nice moments of discovery most of the time.
JC: What people do you remember from your Junior Fellowship here?
IK: Well actually I remember you. We had Kathleen Shelton; Lowell Clucas – those unfortunately are people we lost in subsequent years – Kenneth Snipe? Snipes?; Paul Magdalino; a very tall fellow from Michigan, which I have a hard time remembering his name, who was doing visiting Islamic connections; Stephen Hill from New Castle; Tom Brown, also from England. So we were quite a mixed group of Fellows, quite a number, actually, from overseas – Ruth Kolarik from Harvard. And you know, interestingly enough, when I was told about this Fellowship that existed for Junior Fellows in the Byzantine field, by my advisor, who was David Wright in Berkeley – at that time I had as a co-advisor Paul Alexander in the history department in Berkley – and so he [David Wright] said to me, "Go and ask Paul to write the letter of recommendation for you," and so I went to Paul Alexander – you know, he knew me and so on – and I said, "I would like to get a letter from you, if possible, because I would like to apply to Dumbarton Oaks," and he said to me, "Oh, you know, I'll write the letter for you, but don't hope you're ever going to get a Fellowship there, because this is the place where graduate students from Harvard go down, and they're the ones who get the Fellowships." And, to my surprise, first of all I got the Fellowship, but also to my surprise: it was that that particular year there were very few people from Harvard. Most of the people were from England, from other places, which was very nice. So this perception of Dumbarton Oaks being just a sort of deposit for the graduate students from Harvard no longer was true, at least not then. So I was very happy to be part of this new group, at least, that was there? And there were very many different American universities, plus the Europeans that had come. So that was very nice.
JC: You were working on Byzantine steatites at that time, right? For your dissertation?
IK: I had wanted to work on ivories, but I was told that perhaps that was not a wise move at the time, because that would sort of mean shaking up some things, if I wanted to have a different way of looking at them, so the closest to ivories was the steatite material, which was carving, again, icons, small, for private use, and they had not been studied, not this whole group of sort of a medium, individually. Some of them are in Russia and so Alice Bank had published a few of them. So, it took a long time to get the material together, to find out where it is, or – wrote a lot of museums and so on, and got photographs from them. So that was the first year that I had started my dissertation doing the research in Berkeley. But then I came here with almost not knowing yet what this dissertation was going to be about, or how I am going to develop the whole topic. And all of that was done here, which gave me a fantastic library to work with, right away from the beginning of my dissertation, so the actual research, not just gathering the material but to be able to sort of read, you know, private devotion, popular sayings, all kinds of other things that needed to be sort of worked with, to figure out how these things were going to date or how they're going to – not just the iconography and the style but also, you know, the context, this kind of thing. And so, I think any person who starts a dissertation should come to Dumbarton Oaks early on in their dissertation research, because it makes it much faster and more complete, I would say, in terms of research. You can spend less time, you know, going to libraries, not finding some, getting books from other libraries sent to you, and perhaps you don't ever find everything. Here, the shelves at that time were also above the reading room, which was really nice, you know. We could go immediately find something and then, once you looked at the shelves, they were so close, thematically organized, you could find other things right next to it. So, it was almost like, you had one book in your hand; with that you could go to the right, to the left, and figure out other things you might not have run across in a bibliography, you know, that were on the shelves. So that was a very nice, sort of a fast way of uncovering things.
JC: Were there Senior Scholars here, and, if so, were they helpful to you?
IK: Oh yes, it was – Hugo Buchthal was here visiting that year. I think he was here for the whole year, if I'm not mistaken. And Otto Demus used to come at that time to work on the St. Mark material. So every spring semester Demus would come and occupy one of the big offices up on the top floor. And they were very good with us, you know. We could go always with questions, and I remember Hugo Buchthal was always – he knew everybody's dissertation. He was very involved with all of that. And he had us very often for dinner, in this low, tiny cottage in the Fellows Building, the East Cottage, which was not as big as the West Cottage. And I remember the stove being in the corridor or something, and poor Mrs. Buchthal would cook right there, you know, and we had very nice discussions at these dinners. They were fun. Very exciting for all of us to be part of that sort of group, to go and talk to him.
JC: Carlo Bertelli was here at some point…
IK: Yeah, he was! He came for a month or so, perhaps even longer, I'm not sure, but he came for the symposium, which, I have to admit, I don't remember exactly which symposium it was then, but it used to be also that the main contributors to the symposium would visit at least a week or ten days or so before, so people got to know each other, that are participating in the symposium that was organized by the symposiarc, so he might have been the symposiarc, I'm not sure, but he was around, and he – it was a completely different sort of atmosphere, in the whole way Italian, I guess, and very sort of fun. He had brought also his companion with him, which was – remember? – a nice woman that he would bring around. He was fun. Yeah, so we had a lot of activity. At the same time, people say nowadays that there is a lot of activities, but we had also ours, perhaps not as structured, but a lot of events. And we had very nice sort of gatherings in this particular room here, for coffee after lunch. Coffee was served in this room and not at the tables, when you eat and you get your mug and sit in the same place, so people mixed after lunch, you know, and exchanged some ideas. We also had sherry Tuesdays. Every Tuesday we had sherry before lunch. So it meant that the Tuesday afternoons were probably not the most productive ones for the Junior Fellows.
MM: And that was in here?
IK: It was also in this room, yes. Gathering here and then everyone would go and sit and eat afterwards, yes. We took walks, usually on Tuesdays, down to M Street and up again, you know, just to wear off the sherry – a little bit.
JC: Margaret has remarked that that period in the '70s was sort of a transitional period between the less structured way of doing things and the, maybe, more Harvard way of doing things, once Giles Constable became Director, and I think the sherry was the last stage of that old guard's style.
IK: That's right, and coffee's also in the room now that is called the – what is it called nowadays? the room at the end of the –
JC and MM: Founders Room.
IK: – the Founders Room. But we used to call it something different.
MM: The Outside Readers' Room.
IK :Outside Read – no, no, no, that was an in-between. We had there still the furniture, the big white couches, remember? that you sat in, sank in them, and we had coffee in the afternoon there. So it was part of this lifestyle that Dumbarton Oaks had from the earlier sort of decades. Yes. That was part of that. So things did change, but when Giles became Director I wasn't actually here anymore, you know. So I was here before with Tyler, the last sort of family-connected director. He was a nephew, I think, of Mrs. Bliss.
JC: Godson.
IK: Godson, oh, godson. Not related, huh? Let's see…
JC: The son of her very close friend Royall Tyler.
IK: Royall Tyler, who published quite a number of the objects that are in the collection, yes – some of the ivories that I was interested in. Yes, so he was there, and he was not very much sort of – he wasn't very visible. He had his study, which is the study that we now have our meetings, and there was this oval room, the one that you enter from the corridor, sort of. And this secret door that opens with the books. And then you could go and visit him, in his office. So he had a kind of processional entry, you know, to a big office, which was – yeah. So these were times that cannot exist nowadays, obviously, you know, so I'm not trying to say that we have to have the past here. It's just that these are nice memories to have of the period that had to go, you know.
JC: Do you remember going to Seka Allen's house and dressing up as Byzantine emperors and empresses?
IK: Yes. Seka Allen had a fantastic collection of, I would say probably, Islamic sort of robes and garments, beautiful silks and brocades, you know, and a lot of wonderful things like that. And so she wanted to have them photographed one time, right? And so she had asked us all, all the Fellows, the Junior Fellows, and we came, and everyone wore something, and then there was photography, and we dressed up and pretended to be these royal figures. It was very, very nice. But she was another person at Dumbarton Oaks that added sort of another dimension of what is – I don't know how I would call it – perhaps court-life of the past, or something like that, you know. She was an aristocrat, a Serbian aristocrat. She had certain ways, you know, of talking to you, inviting you and various things. She had another sort of lifestyle, too, that sort of belonged in this past world. And I know I've seen photographs in this room of dressing up as Theodore Metochites and Theodora and Justinian, and parties of the previous faculty that was here: Underwood, I remember, with this big hat. I've seen the pictures, you know. They must be in some archive here. But they were all in this room. But the library in general, and I think Seka being one of the people that had to do with the publications and all of that, had a group of people working there from, I thought at least, various parts of the world to deal with different languages that were needed for the cataloguing, because at that time we did not have – Dumbarton Oaks had its own cataloguing system. It did not have the Library of Congress one, so it needed specialized people to understand exactly where the books had to go. And so there was a German woman, I forget her name now, who was coming and – so, since I had lived also in Germany and so on, I always liked to go and talk to her in German. It was nice. Then there was Seka. There were various people. But also the – Fanny Bonajuto, Italian, working in the publications department, was another sort of European old school figure that was around.
JC: She was a stickler, as I remember, for footnotes in those publications –
IK: Yes, yes!
JC: – if you didn't research your own, she would research for you.
IK: Yes, she would research them and point out to you, you know, what you missed, the page number, you know, or date…oh yes. They really went through all of this very, very carefully. Mm?
MM: You published very early.
IK: Yes, yes. I submitted my Masters thesis at that time to Loerke, and he sent it – I don't what they did at that time for the publications. Anyway, so that was, you know, I really liked what I had done with it, so I thought I'll try it. And they sent it to Julia Warner and Fanny, and here was this beginning graduate student trying to write a dissertation, trying to publish in the Dumbarton Oaks papers. That was not so agreeable to their mind, I think, so they sent me off to prove everything I was saying in this, everything! Every day I had to bring something else to show that this is it. But anyway –
JC: It got published.
IK: It got published, and I was very happy, you know. It was very nice, yes. And you know, I've gotten quite a lot of responses on this article, and a lot of people say, when they teach, that they use that as an example. It's nice, yeah.
JC: So, when you were here, there was a Director of Byzantine Studies, William Loerke, but when –
IK: When Giles came, as far as I remember, Loerke retired, and so Giles had supervision as the Director of Dumbarton Oaks, for the whole of Dumbarton Oaks, but also of the Byzantine part, or segment, which at that time started also not to be the only one that had Fellows. I mean, they had started already to have some garden scholars, pre-Columbian – I thought there was Elizabeth –
JC: Benson.
IK: Benson, yes, with a young woman who was her assistant. These were the two, actually, the first year, that we were here, because, you see, my Fellowship was also renewed for a second year. This option existed then, so when I'm talking it's a longer time I spent here, not just one year. So then the pre-Columbian Fellows started to come. So, it started to grow, and I think, you know, the Director took – Giles, decided to have in his sort of responsibility the Byzantine field, but then the other ones were growing on their own, separately. And when Robert Thomson took over afterwards, he decided that he did want to have someone in that position, and specifically for art history, because at that time, at least, many art historians were part of the Fellows that were at Dumbarton Oaks, more than history or philologists. So, he said he wanted to have someone, and so he asked me if I wanted to do that for a year – then it was only for a year. It would rotate, because you can't get too many years off a university, and you have to be part of it. And then we had Nancy Sevcenko the next year, and the third year – I can't remember now. Perhaps – who would be the other person? Perhaps Alice-Mary, then. Or is that possible?
JC: It may have been Alice-Mary.
IK: Yeah, so it was not an art historian anymore, but then, yeah, so it was Alice-Mary. And perhaps when Thomson retired, because I don't think he stayed too many years as Director of Dumbarton –
JC: Five.
IK: Five? Well, the first he did on his own, then there were these three years with someone, and then perhaps Alice-Mary stayed. I don't know how it happened afterwards. And then I think Angeliki followed after that, right? So many, many changes. The Director's House has become the dining hall or dining space. I don't like to call it the Refectory, I have to admit, because it reminds me of monasteries, and it – we shouldn't be identified with that around here.
MM: Giles Constable made a lot of changes, too, in the space – the use of space. Can you talk about that?
IK: Yes, but I'm not sure I can recall exactly what he did, you know. His office was changed; was it, possibly?
MM: So, the study became a seminar room.
IK: Yes, that's what the office would have been, yes. He moved to what used to be the dining room, where the regular Fellows used to have their desks, because I remember there Danny –
JC: Curcic.
IK: Curcic was in there one time.
MM: Judy Siggins, was she there?
IK: Perhaps not when I was there, but probably at – Tony Cutler were there one time, as a Fellow. I mean, there were four desks, so that's the grown-ups, we thought. Yes.
MM: Mango and Sevenko had both gone…
IK: Yeah, gone. When we arrived they were no longer here – but Oxford for the one and Harvard for Ševčenko. But Ševčenko used to come once in a while down here, you know, for short periods. And then Alexander Kazhdan came. Yeah.
JC: Kitzinger was here for a while, and wasn't he still considered a Professor at Dumbarton Oaks?
IK: Well, the same way that also Ihor Ševčenko was considered a Professor.
JC: But once he went to Harvard Ševčenko eventually became a Dumbarton Oaks Professor there, if I remember correctly.
IK: So, there was a distinction between Kitzinger, you mean, and Ihor Ševčenko?
JC: Well, once the professorships ceased here there were named Dumbarton Oaks Professors at Harvard. But earlier there had been Dumbarton Oaks Professors here.
IK: Yes, like Der Nersessian, who was here. And I don't know about Father Dvornik, who I don't think was a Professor, who was here too.
JC: Certainly Mango and Ševčenko.
IK: Mango and Ševčenko. But they were all not around except as visiting, sort of coming at times here, and not Mango, though. It was only Kitzinger and Ihor, who were up at Harvard. So…
JC: So it was the last gasp of that era.
IK: Yes, and when Alexander came, he had a different title. He was like an Associate or something like this, a Dumbarton Research Associate, I think, of Dumbarton Oaks, yes. This was a nice time when new projects were begun: the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, which was a big project under his supervision. We're all very happy to have contributed to that, and saw it being published.
MM: Hagiography?
IK: Hagiography. Typika. So these are big projects, and most useful for all Byzantinists, but even for Western Medievalists, I think, they can look now to Typika and see what it's all about.
JC: Can you think of anything about fieldwork or archaeology?
IK: Oh yes, I do remember the years when I was a Junior Fellow here, Robert Van Nice here with his staff. He would come to the lunches, and we all loved to hear about all of his years at Hagia Sophia. He had so much to tell us, very exciting. So I liked to always go and sit at the table if I could find, you know, a place, because he spent twenty-seven years, if I'm not mistaken, there.
MM: And Dumbarton Oaks had an apartment there.
IK: For him.
MM: Before him?
IK: No, for him, right? Yeah. But twenty-seven years, and he had his daughter also. During the summers his daughter would go and help him out, and so one of the projects he gave to his daughter was to record all the graffiti in Hagia Sophia, so she went over the whole building for a whole summer doing, you know, – what you call it? with the –
JC: Rubbing.
IK: Rubbing, yeah. Rubbings. And we have an archive of all of these graffiti. And one year when – now I have a blank – Oh! Dimitri Obolensky was here. He wanted to look through it, and we found one thing that had a bit of an art-historical interest, and so we published one of these little graffiti. But they also did a lot with latex, the big ones, you know, bigger letters and deeper indentations, so all of that is there. So, it was his daughter, though, who did it, which was nice. Yes, and so that group of architects and designers and I don't know exactly who all these people were, but they were working all in the basement of the Main House, big tables, I remember, with drawings and maps and things. It was nice to go and look what they were doing. And that big folio was published afterwards. Unfortunately, not quite complete – the text is not quite there. But he recorded just about everything that you can record, even how the floor has been slightly dented in certain areas in Hagia Sophia, what nails exist, big whole nails, smaller ones, you know, where they are – everything has been taken and recorded. Do you know the unfortunate thing is, two years ago, perhaps – this has nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks, but – it's sad in that I went there, tried to find the graffito that I had published, and it's gone, because everything was nicely stripped and cleaned, down to the base of the column or whatever, so it's no longer there. It's no longer there. So, the archive that we have is quite important. Yes. With a lot of other things that are here, like the Weitzman Archive that came, and the films, the negatives, that are now all being digitized slowly, perhaps not exactly that right now, but to digitize all of this visual material is another big project that Dumbarton Oaks now has time to take. So, it's becoming sort of a more up-to-date institution, you know, with all of the modern facilities, and so…
MM: How many other excavators came through at that time?
IK: You know, actually I don't remember other people. I never met any of the other ones, that we had on Cypress, you know, yeah…
MM: Megaw and Richard Anderson?
IK: But they were not physically here. They were actually where they were. So, I don't think I've met them. Demus is the one, if you call it an archive, you know, a field project. And Irina Andreescu, his assistant was here, you know, actively sort of making sure that things get done. That was during the years when we were Junior Fellows, right? Yeah. And who else was around? Scholars that came through – well, Kitzinger was coming, as I said, and Ihor was coming down. Weitzmann was here to give some lectures. For example, he gave a big lecture when the icon of St. Peter was acquired. Remember that big, big lecture he gave in the music room introducing that icon? It was a very nice event. But he didn't come here very often, himself.
JC: He was down when the first Met exhibition –
IK: Oh yes, the '77 one, yes. That's right.
JC: He was down periodically to talk to the catalogue writers. Otherwise, I don't remember him either.
IK: Yeah that's right, so, I'm trying to think of other scholars that were coming in as, you know – I remember the Dean of Harvard came down once for lunch. We were all quite, you know, proper, when informed that the Dean was coming. Even the President came one time. Bok came for lunch right here in the Fellows Building. And then we had various exchanges with the Hellenic Center where they would come – every week there was somebody else coming, visiting, and we would go and eat there, so that was a nice exchange also. And from the National Gallery, I remember sometimes people visiting, art historians, or some – that was nice. It was before CASVA existed as a research center. I feel this was a thing developed afterwards. Perhaps that's why they were coming, to find how research institutes like this and fellowships work.
JC: In the late '80s you became a Senior Fellow.
IK: Yes, late late '80's. Fall of '89. It's really the end. It's the academic year '89-'90 when I was hired at Harvard. So, this goes along with that particular post – that position. So I was chosen because I became a Dumbarton Oaks Professor at Harvard. And Angeliki Laiou was still here the director at the time. Ihor, though, was, now that I think of it, not on the board of Senior Fellows. Not at the time. So, I've been, you know, with quite a lot of individuals, famous people from famous universities, here, from Europe, and the very nice meetings, especially the ones where you select the Fellows.
JC: Has there been any change in that procedure or any difference – ?
IK : Yes, I think perhaps it was Giles who – I'm not sure, because that happened before – I have to just think for a second. When the interviews were introduced – the interviews were introduced I think during Giles's directorship. So, I don't know of a different system, but I know when I was a Junior Fellow there were no interviews, so there's a difference there. The interviews, in my opinion, have changed slightly. What I was talking about earlier: the level of the PhD candidate or student who comes here – and I know that also Alice-Mary at one point discussed it with me because she said to me, "They come here and they spend most of their time writing applications for jobs or other fellowships," which takes a lot of time because you have to write a project of work, you have to – so a lot of their time is not really spent doing research in the library, but sort of writing applications. Perhaps it's no longer quite the same, I don't know. It varies probably from year to year. But there have been years where half of their time they go to job talks, preparing, you know. So, if it is their final year. And that happens because during the interview, if you ask people, the best answers are given by people who are very far along in their dissertation. They know the subject, they can make it more interesting. They have answers to the questions. So, obviously they do much better than someone who is starting and doesn't exactly know how to proceed or answer. That's why it has shifted to the further-along graduate students, where I felt – and that's a very personal opinion at least – I felt I gained a lot by being here the first years of the real research, not finding out what I was going to work with. That I could do before because I had to travel, I had to write letters, do all of that gathering stuff. So people should come for their second year, or whenever that year is that they start to do serious research. That's my feeling.
MM: Would you change it in a way that Fellows are selected by years or have that taken into account?
IK: From these twenty-something years that I've been on the Board, there have been fewer art-historical fellowships given and that – you know I'm an art historian. Perhaps I didn't fight enough with them, I'm not sure. I think it has to do with the composition of the board and it's interesting in that we all read, or used to read, all of the applications. So musicology, philology, everybody read. But we art historians are used to reading history and other things because we needed to be able to do our interpretations. But people from these other fields, and that perhaps is a slight criticism here to the fields, perhaps not so much of philology – the historians started to look at art, but most of them are not looking at art-historical papers. They don't read it. They don't really read them. They're not knowledgeable too much about the art. People that are not in art history, I'm talking about. They would always in the discussion say, "I'm not an art historian. I can't judge." So with that, the evaluations I think a lot of times didn't go very well. Because if the art historian wouldn't fight – and I'm not a fighter, really – perhaps its my fault that I didn't push so much. I don't know. I've changed lately. I speak more out loud what I think. It might help to give the art-historical fellowships back into the lot instead of dropping out. I mean, that's what I felt, very often. Not saying negative things about other people. It's a general feeling, not particular people. I'm not talking about that.
JC: In your time at Dumbarton Oaks, that is between now and when you were a Junior Fellow in the '70s, the museum has changed a good amount.
IK: Yes, that is right. We had the new enclosure under Robert Thomson. The museum first of all changed in terms of size, physical space too – the Byzantine one – so that was very nice to get. I regret the courtyard – it was so beautiful – had to be closed in. But at least for the museum, it gave it opportunities to display things much better. I really enjoy the new ways of displaying things, the colors that were added. So, it was a little pale – I don't know how to put it – before, with the heavy wooden cases. Now it's much lighter. The objects show better. That helps.
JC: As an art historian, I know you used the collection occasionally for teaching purposes.
IK: Yeah, I do come down here. It is very nice to bring students from Harvard down here.
JC: And you think it serves that purpose well? It's representative enough?
IK: Yes, it does. I've had the chance to ask for certain things and they've taken them out of the cases specifically for us when we come down to take a look at them. We usually work with the objects right at a table where we can gather around and have them pass around. It's a great chance for students. I take all the medievalists, not just the Byzantinists, but the medievalist students come here too, and Jeffery Hamburger, my colleague, accompanies us. Together we figure out what we want to do. Just about the last four years or so I've done it, which has been really a very nice experience for them. They remember it afterwards. Most young people don't touch anymore works of art. They don't know if you hold something in your hand how heavy it is. That even is important to realize the little piece of ivory is actually heavy, not just a light thing. That is a great experience. With Jan's directorship here, it's been very generous to bring students down. They put us wherever they have space, even in the hotel.
JC: It works well with this new January Term, I suppose.
IK: Oh, no. I don't think – and I don't know what they're going to do, but I'm not for it at all. This is a time where we had reading time for the students and another week of a break, and so on, which now people are being asked to do things. I'm not going to bring students during the mid-sections of January. I'm not going to do that. I'll do it during the semester. Because I've always felt this was the good time we had to do some work between one semester and the next. This new system doesn't quite do it.
MM: How about the library? You were here at a time when there was a realization that they were running out of space.
IK: Yes, it was under Robert Thomson, and when I was here, it was that one particular year that the plans were made to have the underground library building, which took some complicated digging and working because Dumbarton Oaks didn't close. They were working underneath the building that everyone was on top. So it was quite a bit of a distraction: noise, vibrations, and all of that. They put these stacks, these compact stacks down in the basement and a cage for the rare books, I remember, and that gave it a lot of space, I believe. I don't know when it was decided that that was not good enough anymore.
MM: Were there thoughts of moving the library and everything up to Cambridge?
IK: Yes, but that was during Giles Constable's time, if I remember correctly, and if it's true or not I don't know, but we at that time were quite upset about all of this, and we heard things like they are measuring shelf spaces in the Widener, you know, how much of that library it would fit, but these are sort of rumors that perhaps were not quite true.
MM: Where were you then?
IK: I was here – well, I was here, though I don't know as what. I used to come for the symposia and various things like that, so there were times where we – and I remember, for example, some big meeting that Constable had in the Music Room. Were you there for that?
JC: I was.
IK: He called everybody, everybody. It was all the staff, from the gardeners to the Junior Fellows, and he talked about Harvard and the new policies and democratization and equality. It became a kind of – I don't know what to call it – a new air about Dumbarton Oaks. This old hierarchical, possibly, lifestyle in the Main House, with the nice couches and the tea-serving sort of things were going to be –
JC: It was the time when the staff were allowed to come to this building then called the Fellows Building to have lunch.
IK: Yes, but that was introduced after that big speech about equality for everyone at Dumbarton Oaks and democracy and, you know, openness. Perhaps that word was not popular then. There were other words, but this is more modern: "openness."
MM: Giles spoke of a tradeoff, and this is in his annual report just after the time you were here as a Junior Fellow – a tradeoff between openness and intimacy, and that the second might have to be sacrificed for the first.
IK: Intimacy was lost? Yes – well, we never had intimacy. Friendship? I don't know what to call it. Perhaps intimacy is too tight a word. A feeling of being welcome, being part of a group of people that had much to exchange and speak – I mean, I'm talking about the staff, the librarians; everybody was becoming a big family. I don't like that word, but anyway, that's the idea. You felt you had something in common – common interest, common ideas, and we all participated in that. That, I think, is not there so much anymore. That's a bit sad. It has to do, I think, possibly with everyone being in their cubicles, separate. We hardly talk to each other, or very few times, unless we get a Byzantinist like Margaret who in the mornings on Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever it is, gets people to discuss topics together, either from a talk that was given or something else that is there. That doesn't come so automatically as it used to. And it's not the numbers. I don't think it has to do with the numbers of Fellows. There were quite a lot of us, you know. And still that feeling was there.
MM: Architecture in the new library?
IK: Architecture. I think the physical space divided people, separated people more.
JC: Earlier you mentioned the Reading Room –
IK: Yes. I love the Reading Room.
JC: – which was open and communal.
IK: Yes. You can exchange glances with another person without having to talk. You can show your enthusiasm about something or depression or whatever it was, and they felt with you. There was a kind of understanding. I remember Clucas, you know – he didn't like the Washington water, for example. You remember this? And he had this case of water bottles that he had bought, and he had it under his table in the reading room. Little secrets like that, no one should know. Very, very sort of family ideas – sort of together. And I remember Tyler invited me for Thanksgiving because I didn't have – Thanksgiving is not a traditional feast for me and I didn't have family around here, so Tyler invited Lowell Clucas and me to the Cosmos Club for Thanksgiving, which was very nice of him. He was, I think, a nephew of his – Lowell – I think he was a relative. If not a relative, Lowell's father was an ambassador, or some diplomatic connection, possibly.
JC: Let me ask you a couple of global questions. Do you think Dumbarton Oaks has contributed to furthering interest in Byzantine studies and bettered the landscape in your profession?
IK: Well, Dumbarton Oaks is probably nowadays more known to the outside world than when I was here as a Junior Fellow, for example, I think. When you mention that you are at this research institute in Washington, any person who has to do with the Middle Ages or art history knows about the museum, also the pre-Columbian museum, that has also added to the knowledge, you know, of Dumbarton Oaks becoming known outside. And then the publications that are coming out of Dumbarton Oaks clearly, clearly have done what one expects of this kind of thing. The Dumbarton Oaks Papers are everywhere to be found, but obviously, in libraries where this kind of research is done. It's not in every place as a periodical. Why should they, you know? Now with these new translations that perhaps – the texts that are being now produced, not only the one that Jan has started, the new library, but I mean the Dumbarton Oaks ones. These kind of publications are the ones that are going to help, I think more, the knowledge of what Byzantium is about. Because the Germans early on, when they were doing their publications, they were never translated. Theirs were just these careful editions with careful notes and all of that, but there were not any translations with the publications, so they still remained inaccessible to art historians, for example, whose Greek…. So, art history is a field that has changed in its way of looking at art, not just only stylistic or iconographic discussions and doing contextual studies where you need these texts. Art historians are really looking for these kinds of publications and I think we see that happening. I would say anything like that would help further. But also, you know, the exhibitions that have taken place since the '77 one in the Met with the early Christian material, then the '97 one, and then Paris, London, all of these together have done a great job. The visual material really does promote the culture. The texts are fine once you know a little bit about that culture, so you read more and you can understand. But the visual is the first sort of approach to get to know something. The museum hopefully – that's there, but it would be nice to see more of these exhibitions that they did, for example, that are more topic specific. There was processional crosses, I remember one; something with textiles was another small one, but still. And now somewhere people get interested – or the crosses that we had more recently.
JC: Do you think there is something that Dumbarton Oaks could do differently or could expand the field of Byzantine studies?
IK: That's a big question to answer. A good one, but I don't really know how much more one can do. Dumbarton Oaks has done this fantastic thing that I'm profiting from, to give these three positions at Harvard, to make sure the Byzantine field is taught. With three people in place so that you have literature, history, and art so someone can understand the whole culture. Also, with these support of positions in the neighborhood with the various universities – giving them the chance to have someone who can teach that. And we have tried it over the years in various combinations even further away, and people have to – but it probably was not the best for the people who had to move out in Minnesota – I remember that was one of them – and then come here for another year or so, so it was a little difficult for their own life, their own everyday life for themselves. For the field, perhaps, it was very good, but I don't know what happened with all of these positions. Not always necessarily successful.
JC: They rarely led to tenure.
IK: Yeah, even Columbia didn't do it. What Robert Thomson did, now that I think of it, is he sent people out to lecture – what the Onassis Foundation does nowadays. The Onassis Foundation sends people out, but Dumbarton Oaks did the same thing. You could send an art historian or philologist or somebody to talk to some university, but it had to be to different groups of people, not just university people, so that they made known more of the field, that it exists, or the culture, to a broader audience. I went to Kansas City – for four days? I can't remember how many days – but they had to find a sponsor over there, a sponsor meaning not money-wise, but someone who would organize it. There was a person there who was interested in Byzantium, and he picked me up. I gave seven different talks which were very interesting. One was at the university, Okay. So, that's the more normal one. Another one was at a luncheon of businessmen. Now, this was at a hotel. A big hall where they were having lunch, and there was this big table and I talked about Byzantium. I don't remember my lecture at this point, but it was a lecture for people who had never heard what Byzantium is about. I had slides also, obviously, behind me. Then I gave another talk, which I really liked, to parents who teach their children at home, so not elementary school, but homeschooling. And they brought their children there too. So, I talked to them about architecture, about building, about culture, about religion, about a lot of things. These kids were sitting all in front, different ages, little ones, big ones. They were drawing with the slides. At the end, they gave me gifts of the things they had got excited about. To me, this was one of the best ways of communicating. These parents wouldn't let me go at the end. They would ask questions. They would want more. What books, what things? So, if you have a lecture that can capture their interest that was very good. Then I talked on the radio for half an hour or an hour – I can't remember – the interview was at the studio. Then to a Russian church group and the lecture was in a beautiful Russian church and one of my carousels tipped and I lost all the slides on the floor and I had to tell them I have to put them back – anyway, they all waited nicely. They all wanted to find out. These were all groups of people that were interested in hearing about Byzantium. I don't know what other people did, but my experience was very exciting to me, because you had people listening to you because – it's like when you have graduate students that come, or students in general that are slightly older, and they want to know. You had that feeling of not just sitting there because you have to lecture, but that they wanted to know more. And that sense from trying to get Byzantium across to Kansas City – I don't know if they have anything Byzantine in their museum or not. I don't even know that. It was very exciting. I don't know what happened, right? But at least the word "Byzantium" went out, the Byzantine culture, some slides. They might remember things like that. This was something I felt was a good start at least.
JC: Do you know how many years that continued, by any chance?
IK: Perhaps all the time that Thomson – perhaps three years. People were sending – not to Harvard to lecture, not to places like that. They were sent to places where you knew possibly very few people had any idea of what this is. I had totally forgotten it. But this interview made me think of it. Very nice. Oh, I get all excited when I speak about it. Because I remember these parents, you know, discovering a new area that they wanted to get interested in. So, I don't know what other things Dumbarton Oaks can do as an institution. It's very difficult, very difficult to promote a settled place, when you have a library here, you have everything here. Just make sure that people come here and have the opportunity to spend some time here, to do whatever it is they want to look up or get to know other people. And it has opened up to many more – many more students come here before their exams or the final stages of a dissertation or something that they need to do. So, Dumbarton Oaks has opened up their doors for all types of people, whereas, before, you know, when I was told you couldn't even get there because you're not a Harvard student. So it's a completely different place.
JC: The web has helped in that. A lot of our –
IK: Yes, and these exhibits that they put on now, with the coins going up on the web that just went up – the Byzantine coins; the seals, the project of the seals.
JC: And that's just the beginning probably. So that will grow – not that it will be popular, necessarily, but at least more available.
JC: Margaret, do you have any additional questions?
MM: I don't think so. It's a treat.
IK: Well, good. It was fun, actually. Thank you. No, I enjoyed it too. I didn't know exactly what was coming when I – Thanks very much.
JC: Thank you very much!]]>
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.]]>
RAF: My pleasure.
AdC: So just to begin, how did you first come to know about Dumbarton Oaks and what were your initial impressions of the institution?
RAF: I think my first coming to know of Dumbarton Oaks had to the do with the publication series and the books and obviously while I was being trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist they were a very valuable resource. And then of course, the grants program was being circulated and went around to the various universities, and that's how I came to know of Dumbarton Oaks and what it was doing – its fellowships program in particular. And to tell you the truth it seemed like something that should exist but I didn't believe would exist. It's a just wonderful institution, just a wonderful institution.
AdC: Now were there any publications in particular that you thought were really excellent?
RAF: You know I would say that about – mostly I was focusing on the series on Pre-Columbian Studies, but I think every one of the publications was just of the finest quality. Not just in terms of the binding, the paper, the quality of the publication, but the subjects that were picked and the information that was out was tremendously valuable. I mean those that were published about Central Mexico or those that were coming out about the Maya. Just excellent publications, you know?
AdC: Now something I hear about those early publications was that they actually had the transcriptions of the entire meetings at the end of them. Was that something that you had in school as well and in reading those early publications?
RAF: Well, I was – it was more the focus works on themes like warfare, human sacrifice, and things like that and then the ones that got put out but later too about Maya deities and things like that, that were more the focused monographs rather than the reports of meetings, per se.
AdC: And what was the grant program that you mentioned?
RAF: The fellowships, basically.
AdC: Oh, the fellowships. And how did you come to hear about those fellowships and then become a Fellow?
RAF: It really was because we'd been working at Copán for quite a few years with both Bill Fash and Bob Sharer and both of them actually happened to be at that time on the board of Dumbarton Oaks and they actually encouraged me because it was a stage where we'd been dong a lot of excavation, so I had a lot of raw data and information in my hands but I hadn't sat down to write anything. So, you know, where are you going to go to have the space and the time and the luxury of the bibliographic resources that you have here? It was definitely – there is no place in Honduras like that. I mean, I would have to go to Mexico or Boston or Philadelphia or Tulane, my alma mater, to have access to comparative data and information about similar things like the ones I'd been finding. So the idea of coming to Dumbarton Oaks was precisely that, was to be able to have some time, some space to evaluate, analyze and do comparative studies of the stuff I'd been excavating at Copán – specifically, the Rosalila temple, which I had discovered in 1989. So, it was, you know, time to get some of that stuff published and the best way to do it, you have to have a place, a time to do it, and the resources and all those were here.
AdC: So what would an average day look like as a Fellow here?
RAF: Oh you know, it was such a delight. It was – it's like being a kid in a toy store, I think. Because you'd come in – and I'm kind of – compared to my other Fellows that were here at that time, I'm kind of an early riser, so I'd be one of the first ones in. But the mornings were tremendously productive. And really it was just having a ton of books out, looking at them, comparing them, and taking notes. And then another important facet, I brought a lot of information with me from field drawings and stuff from Copán, was making Xeroxes of stuff, and compiling files of comparative data. Specifically I was looking at the epigraphy and the iconography of Rosalila. And finding the images and then starting to compare those images with stuff coming from ceramics or coming from other buildings or coming from hieroglyphic texts and going on to say well, this image is a tie to that and that and the other and then compiling – I still have them, those are my folders that I use continually ever since then to evaluate the iconography of Rosalila.
AdC: And that was a major project you were working on?
RAF: That's exactly a major project I was working on and I was able to – by the time I was done the article that came out of that is really, I think, to this day the best publication about Rosalila that there is. It was a wonderful opportunity.
AdC: And what was the social life like back then? Did you get to know any other Fellows?
RAF: Oh my goodness, I was incredibly privileged. There are the group of Maya scholars that were here, or Mesomerican scholars that were here at the same time I was – was just unbelievable. It was Dorie Reents-Budet who was here, it was Simon Martin and the other – it was Simon, Dorie and I'll think of his name in a second. And Jeffrey Quilter was just starting at that time. And so the tertulias, I don't know how you say tertulias in English, the chats, the sessions, the meetings that we had –
AdC: In English it is tertulias.
RAF: Tertulias? Yeah. I mean there was a Mexican restaurant around the corner. Not only would they start here, but they would end over there with a pitcher of margaritas. And if not there, there was a Starbucks not too far. And of course, we were all coffee freaks so we would – and I still have, you know, discussions and drawings on napkins from Dumbarton Oaks – I mean, from Starbucks – that we had of our discussions because Simon, of course, was an expert on epigraphy and he could – he brought that side. Dorie was an art historian and so – and I was a dirt archaeologist. We were all from – looking at the same stuff from different aspects and I would say that the – Adam Herring was the other scholar. And Adam just was coming out of Yale working with – was one of Mary Miller's students. So, each one of us had a different way of looking at the same thing. And I mean we threw Rosalila out on the floor, on the cutting board, chopped it up, talked about it, what does it mean? What is all this about? And really, I'm a dirt archaeologist, I'm used to talking about potshards and stratigraphy and stuff like that. I knew nothing about iconography, and here I had this incredible resource of human beings around me as well as the library – that I could just go read article after article, book after book of stuff, so it was a tremendous formation point. And so the human interaction was as valuable. Mostly for me the morning was my own time, hitting the books, making copies, organizing files of information. And then lunch, of course, the talking, the chatting would take place and oftentimes after that we would go to have coffee at Starbucks then come back and hit the books some more. So it was just a priceless experience. Really and truly. It was a life changing experience for me and my career, without a doubt.
AdC: Was there much interaction between Pre-Columbian Fellows and those in Byzantine and in Landscape Studies when you were here or was it pretty separate?
RAF: You know, there was interaction and I remember especially too there was an Israeli archaeologist that was here in the Byzantine program and we had very good and productive conversations and exchanges with him and much less with Landscape. But there were exchanges. And the conferences every Friday – I think it was we met – and somebody was giving a talk on whatever stuff they were – I imagine they still do that here and, you know, some of those were terribly boring, if I may be completely frank. But some of them were just really delightful even if they came from other fields. You know it's an opportunity to see – I've seen the world from other people's point of view. And it's always an enriching experience, at least from my perspective. And the other thing that was also fantastic were the concerts. Those were to die for, I mean really. So in every one of them – the food was also just incredible. It was a delightful combination of all events. I wouldn't say that the exchanges with Landscape Architecture and with the Byzantine Studies was terribly dynamic, but it was pleasant and it was enriching in its own form and fashion.
AdC: And you were, I believe this is correct, you were the first Fellow actually to come from a Latin American country. And it seems more recently that Dumbarton Oaks has been trying to reach out to scholars of Latin America and Central America. Was that a really formative experience being the first?
RAF: Well, I didn't know I was the first until you mentioned it – I had no idea. I had assumed that there had been quite a few other scholars from either the Andes or Mesoamerica some place. So, that would be a surprise to me. But again, in terms of my own personal experience it was priceless because again, I was raised, born in Honduras, I lived there. I went back there as soon I got out of graduate school to work but our resources there are very, very poor. If I have to do research on a subject that has to do with my work in archaeology, if I don't have the book in my personal library I will not find it anywhere else in Honduras. So, I mean, it's what it's in arms reach in my own home or my office that I have these resources. So coming to a place like this where just about everything or any article you can dream of is there, it's a treasure. Like I said, it's like a kid in a candy shop because all the stuff was there at arm's reach, you could just walk over there, grab it and sit down and study it. You know, it's fabulous.
AdC: So you're currently here for the Copán workshop, and I was wondering if you could just explain a little bit about the purpose of the workshop and what Dumbarton Oaks' role is in that?
RAF: The Copán Acropolis Archaeological Project was one of that genre of very large, big time, heavy duty archaeological projects. It involved some of the most powerful research institutions in the United States that work with the Maya. And it went on for a good twenty years practically or something close to that because there were lots of offshoots. The fact is that what started with the Copán Acropolis Project has to do with the work I'm continuing even to this day, so even if the project itself stopped because the financial resources came to an end, the work in it that we started back then continued and so did my colleagues, each one getting their own sources of financing. But again each one of us is physically in a separate, different location, a different place, and we have in common the Acropolis of Copán. And we worked in basically four different areas which were – Will Andrews and Tulane were on the south side of the Acropolis, in the area known as El Cementerio. On the upper part of the Acropolis, I was working. In the East Court Bob Sharer was working, and in the Hieroglyphic Stairway Bill Fash was working. So each one of us had kind of a separate area all relating to the Acropolis. And each one went about digging holes and finding stuff and at this meeting – this is the third or fourth one that we have, it's basically all of us trying to bring all those threads and loose threads together and having a complete overview of the Acropolis at Copán from its inception, from its first building and constructions all the way to the last ones that we see. And we have all shared, you know – we had a very loose structure for working, which was delightful because each one of us had a lot of independence in how we're working and how we went about our research. We are now at that stage where we need to get a global, overall view of the Acropolis and its evolution through time and that's exactly what we are doing right now. The common thread to all of us is Rudy Larios who is here with us. Rudy is in charge of all the restoration, conservation work. He's the only one that can actually work with all four of us and can tie the threads from one end to the other. So the big synthesis of the architectural history of the Acropolis is basically being operated by Rudy. And each one of use contributes with our individual sections of this massive earthwork that was the Acropolis. So we are exchanging information, reviewing the sequences being presented by Rudy – well you know, this is good, this doesn't work, got this one, take that one away, how does stuff, how do my building phases relate to Bill Fash's and to Bob Sharer's building phases and the stuff that took place on the south end of the Acropolis. So that's the technical side of the stuff, it's comparing data and sharing data to get us all on the same page and view the history of the Acropolis as a team. And then the other side of it is the publication series of our work. It's moving ahead and standardizing the volumes, the books and who is putting what in which chapter and where it's going to be published, so we're coordinating the whole publication process and again, sharing and trying to do the format of what we're writing up, how we're going to write it up, nomenclature, illustrations and all these things so that basically even though the publications will come out of three different institutions we will try to have a common ground for all of them and the way the publications are made. So these are the two principal areas we'll be working in all week and it's a ton of stuff we have to see, we have to look at. We share stuff like radiocarbon dates. We'll be sharing with David Stuart the side of the epigraphy and the monuments and tying those monuments to the global vision of the Acropolis and its stratigraphy. It's an exciting process and it's already – even just what we've done today, it's worth the whole trip.
AdC: And how did Dumbarton Oaks come to be the center for this project?
RAF: Well, what can I say? It's the perfect place for it. When I was here as a Fellow – it's got the ingredients, it's got the physical location, it's got the resources in terms of library stuff and information and it's just a common ground for all of us in Pre-Columbian Studies. So I really can't think – well, the School of American Research was another possibility in Santa Fe, but in terms of think tanks and places where you can just take the time and have a beautiful setting to think, talk and discuss and come to important conclusions, there aren't that many alternatives. And there is always that element of quality at Dumbarton Oaks. I mean, it's a class – I don't know what you call it, but it is a very special center and it's just top notch.
AdC: Speaking about Copán, a couple of years ago they held an off-site symposium in Antigua Guatemala and afterwards you were able to introduce some of the scholars present to Copán and take them all to the site. How would you describe what that experience was like, having Fellows from Dumbarton Oaks at the site of Copán?
RAF: Well, the truth is that Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks tend to be very carefully selected and I know that. So, you know you're dealing with very educated, intelligent people even if they're – it's an archaeologist working in Peru and the substance matter that he's working on will be different from what we have, he still has a whole world of important experiences. So, what the arrival of this group from Dumbarton Oaks to Copán was really a wonderful opportunity to share our work and all of us were in the field at that time still, which was – it was hotcakes just coming off the griddle, we were just right there in the middle of it and sharing with colleagues and with intelligent, educated people. It was a wonderful experience, it was very productive to us and you know when I hear Joanne talking about it and how enriching it was to them and to her as a group, because it was hands-on, we went places where very few people can go. A lot of the off-limit stuff in the research areas and the tunnels of the Acropolis, even at our own research center. It was a fantastic opportunity to share but also to learn from the commentaries of the scholars that were visiting.
AdC: Did you receive any interesting feedback from the scholars that you want to use?
RAF: Yes, we did. I mean in terms of methods, techniques, and stuff that would help us in our fieldwork and ideas too, it was just good ideas. We looked at this from this angle and stuff like that. It was very enriching too.
AdC: Were you able to attend any those off-site symposia at Antigua, outside the city or Lima?
RAF: No, I haven't been to any of those.
AdC: But you've attended other Dumbarton Oaks symposia?
RAF: Yeah, but here. At Dumbarton Oaks.
AdC: In... yeah, at Dumbarton Oaks?
RAF: Yes.
AdC: Were there any of those symposia that you thought were particularly successful or unsuccessful? Or what was the experience like at these symposia?
RAF: I feel this way about many symposia. Many times there is too much information and too little time and it's hard to digest and inform it – I mean absorb it – as you are there. But they've always picked, I think, themes that are very important to our field and it's usually the selection of the scholars that are involved who are, again, of the highest quality. So, they tend to be very thoughtful publications and the – I think I probably enjoy reading the publications of them more than I do being present at the presentations themselves. But I'm also kind of fidgety, I don't like sitting in one place too long.
AdC: So there wasn't any symposia in particular that you thought was very stimulating
RAF: No, no.
AdC: Over the years that you have been involved in Dumbarton Oaks you've had the opportunity to interact with two different directors for Pre-Columbian Studies, Jeffrey Quilter and Joanne Pillsbury. I was wondering if you could comment on how each one impacted the program and how their styles differed. How you could characterize each one of their impacts?
RAF: Well, since I was here when Jeff was here I obviously had – it was for a whole academic year. I was really much more exposed to Jeff and his style of work and what can I say? It was so easygoing and thought provocative because he was working mostly on Lower Central America and again brought – which was an area that I was very interested in my early years too. It led to very enriching discussions. But Joanne comes from a different field really. But I wouldn't say, I could be wrong, since I haven't been here while Joanne's been director and spent a lot of time. But I think they're both growing in the same direction. I think overall they have a sense of the importance of Dumbarton Oaks because it's not just a place for archaeologists and you get such a mixture – even the fact that you have the Byzantinists here, the landscape architects, it's a place where people from different fields come and share stuff, not just your own little clique, your own little group of people who are looking at the same stuff the same way. I mean, my experience – I mean, Jeff is an archaeologist so he and I tend to talk more kind of shop there that we're used to but all the other Fellows that were here – Simon at that stage was not even yet – he was coming out of design, and Dorie was coming out of just art history, had been doing it. So was Adam. So, it has been very enriching to have different perspectives on the same subject and I am sure that is something that continues under Joanne. Looking at the people that are here today working, it just seems very similar. And so I think if you're going to come to Dumbarton Oaks you have to be willing to talk a language that isn't just your own shop and what you're used to doing everyday. You have to be open to exposure to other fields and other ways of looking even at the same data and I think that can only be productive and good.
AdC: Do you think while you were here Dumbarton Oaks was able to strike that balance between both archaeology and art history but also Mesoamerica and the Andes –
RAF: Yes.
AdC: – with the Byzantine scholars as well?
RAF: Yes, definitely. I mean definitely, it was the wonderful part of the experience of being here. And even with the Israeli archaeologist there was a lot of stuff we sat down to talk about, field methods and dating techniques, a whole bunch of other things that we could sit down and talk.
AdC: Did that experience change how you practiced archaeology after Dumbarton Oaks.
RAF: Yes and I have to say that the archaeology of Copán and the Acropolis project had a different approach from traditional archaeology to begin with because we were working with art historians from the inception, from the very beginning and we were working with epigraphers from the very beginning of the Copán Acropolis Project in 1989. And that was not the normal way of doing – I mean, I worked previously on other projects in Copán that were like hardcore archaeology, you know. You only talk to archaeologists basically. And that was not the case when – our project had a very substantial, I would say, essential preoccupation about conservation, and the care of the archaeological site and the archaeological resources, which again is not typical of that. And then the sharing with art historians, with epigraphers was really a very different approach to archaeology than what was traditional in the '70s and early '80s too. So, I'd say that that was important in my coming to Dumbarton Oaks and feeling more at ease and dealing with other scholars from these other fields, especially the art history and the epigraphy.
AdC: Because you'd already been exposed to it.
RAF: Yes, it was part of our game plan. It was part of our understanding that you can really learn a lot if you listen to people from these other fields. There were a lot my colleagues at that stage that felt that all the stuff that was in the epigraphy was just lies or stuff made up from the guys that won the wars. And perhaps that a lot of it was just fantasy and our projects certainly proved that most of it is not fantasy: it's history and it's documented well and accurately by the Maya.
AdC: And the project you were working on was about kingship and cosmology while you were here at Dumbarton Oaks?
RAF: That was a subject, basically it was focusing on the iconography of Rosalila and its architecture and it was very interesting because with Rosalila, as in many other aspects of our project, I was trying to find hardcore data, archaeological data that would help to verify or deny the stuff that's on the epigraphic record but also a lot of stuff that's coming from the iconography, the scenes of human sacrifice, of personal sacrifice and the functions of the buildings, these temples. If we're seeing in the artwork all these rituals taking place then do we find archaeological data for it? And in the case of Rosalila it was very, very clear. I found, for example, the incense burners inside the most sacred part of the building with the charcoal still inside them. We found the stingray spines that were being used in the personal sacrifices, the knives that were used in human sacrifice. And so we were finding our hardcore archaeological data that would allow the interpretations being made in art history to appear more real or substantial and it had good archaeological data to say this is what was going on at that time. So, it was good.
AdC: While you were at Dumbarton Oaks did you get a chance to interact with the Senior Fellows at all? You mentioned that Robert Sharer was on the board at the time. Did you get introduced to any of the others?
RAF: Not really, no. Not that much. It was more really the Fellows that were here and the stuff we did and with Jeff. We just did a lot of sharing a lot of discussion that just went into late night many times but not with the Senior Fellows so much.
AdC: But Robert Sharer was influential during your time here?
RAF: Oh, yeah. And as was with Bill Fash, you know. And we'd been working together for many years already so really the exchanges with them had already been pretty extensive.
AdC: So, how would you describe the role of Dumbarton Oaks in the development of Pre-Columbian Studies over the past few years? What direction would you like to see Dumbarton Oaks take in the future?
RAF: I think Dumbarton Oaks has found a fantastic formula and a great niche. I think the contributions that it makes, nobody else is making in the field. Most of us are so busy out hustling trying to find funds to do archaeological research or so busy in the academic institutions we're teaching, having to deal with students permanently and teaching itself – the class work stuff – there's very little time to think and to read and to write and that's what you get at Dumbarton Oaks. In not just with the best resources you could think of in terms of information but also in a setting that is just delightful and I think stimulating too. Even just little coincidences – the gardens, I mean you go out in those gardens and sit or just walk around and they are inspiring, they're just beautiful and I think that – and that's Landscape Architecture – but that beauty helps to establish that atmosphere that is conducive to good thought and work and in my case it was clearly something that changed my career, changed my life, even my outlook on my profession. The second I left, the first question on my mind was how can I come back? I really don't think I would change anything because in my own personal experience it was already fabulous. It was already outstanding. It really changed my career and my life too.
AdC: Considering how much impact it has had on your life would you hope that Dumbarton Oaks will continue reaching out to Latin America to try to involve the scholars there and try to make their resources more accessible in those areas of the world?
RAF: Definitely. I think coming to Dumbarton Oaks is a privilege to any scholar. Those from the United States tend to have more of those very valuable resources in their research institutions, their universities. In Latin America it tends to be less so. There are of course some very important research centers throughout the region, in Lima or in Mexico even Guatemala City you have some outstanding resources, but the combination of the other elements involved, the discourse with these other people from other fields, the setting in Washington D.C. – because it's not just about the physical installations at Dumbarton Oaks that are so beautiful, but it's also that you're in Georgetown, that the Smithsonian is right down the road, and stuff like that. So, it's a wonderful experience because of that entire environment, and two, the other scholars just coming through. You do have some Fellows that have been here before and while you're here they drop by, you sit down, you chat with them. It becomes a hub of intellectual exchange, not just with the people here but with all those people that come through, visit, etcetera. And everybody who's in Washington that's in our field, this is the place where they would drop by and say hello and that was also very – Norman Hammond, I remember, was one of those individuals who came by while we were here and again, very productive exchanges. We could throw stuff out, talk about it, and think better that way.
AdC: Did you meet any scholars here in particular besides those who were your fellow Fellows that you have gotten to know over the years? Or is it mainly the Fellows you were here with?
RAF: With the Fellows that I was here with we established a lifelong friendship. Those are people that are just very dear to my heart, period. And with all of them, we have gone on to do additional work together, be it in Copán or elsewhere with traveling exhibits, with publications. We established some very important personal relationships with the Fellows that were here while I was here and with other colleagues. I mean, somebody like Norman Hammond, I did not know him before I came and of course since then it has – we've been – more dialogue, more discourse with him. You know, he comes to Copán we have to take time to show and share and talk and have a meal. So overall it was an important crossroad, I think, in terms of having other scholars, come to get to know them but the closest ties were definitely with the Fellows that were here with me.
AdC: Well, I actually think that's all of the questions I had written down for you. So, are there any other stories or memories you'd like to share or any other bits of information you want to share about Dumbarton Oaks before we finish the interview?
RAF: All I really and truly – how can I summarize this? Dumbarton Oaks is like a treasure, it's just incredible to think that institutions like this exist and that they can contribute, in my personal case, so much and to the field so much. And it's all done with the highest standards possible so it's a privilege.
AdC: Well, thank you so much. This was a very interesting conversation and I wish you luck with the rest of the Copán workshop.
RAF: You know even just today it's up to par already. Discussions have been very good.
AdC: Oh, I'm sure.
RAF: Very good.
AdC: Well, I'm glad to hear it.
RAF: Yeah, we have more to go.
AdC: Well, thank you so much.
RAF: Thank you.]]>
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