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CJ: Good morning.
JNSL: I am very delighted to speak with you today about your memories of Dumbarton Oaks and your first impressions and your relationships through the years to Dumbarton Oaks and the people whom you've met there.
CJ: Thank you.
JNSL: Anything you would like to share.
CJ: I am going to give you a brief account of my connection with Dumbarton Oaks, which actually came to me as something of a surprise. Obviously, I'd known about Dumbarton Oaks for a very long time. My own thesis director at Harvard, Herbert Bloch, had I believe been in the first class of Fellows elected, though I believe in fact he had postponed his membership for a year. You'll need to verify that. In short, of course, I knew of Dumbarton Oaks from way back. I was a graduate student from Harvard; then I taught at Toronto for a long time, came to Harvard in 1992. And I say surprised, pleasantly surprised, because it was quite soon after I'd arrived that Angeliki Laiou gave me the very honorable invitation to join as one of the Senior Fellows in Byzantine Studies, on which, if I remember right, I served for a total of six years, something like 93-99, possibly 94 to 2000. I chaired the board for about one year, maybe longer. In the end, and I am sorry to be vague about details, Ned Keenan came in as Director I think about my last year. Surprised because although I have interests in Late Antiquity and in fact a book that I had, with Glen Bowersock, helped to complete in the mid-90s was actually published by Dumbarton Oaks, though actually that was after I had become, or gone on the board. I didn't consider myself at that time particularly a Late Antique person. I think Angeliki wanted a balance of people who were thorough-going Byzantinists to somebody like myself whose interests are certainly in later Greek, Roman history of the so-called imperial period. All my – or a large part – of my publications has been in authors of shall we say, the first, second, and third centuries. So, I think Angeliki wanted to bring in a slightly earlier person possibly to add to the mix. It was a very happy time, however, the years that I served. What did we do? Obviously we met, again I am searching my memory, but I think it was a twice a year, we would have a meeting in the fall, and I think another meeting in January, and then there would the symposium in April/May. As I remember, in my last year or so Angeliki didn't call the Fall meeting, but only the January one, the January one being special for the election of next year's Fellows.
JNSL: How would characterize the leadership under Prof. Laiou and the tone that she brought to Dumbarton Oaks?
CJ: It was very good. She was very good in interviews, very fair. She was, as you probably know, a slightly formidable person to meet, I didn't find her formidable to meet. But I think she had this tremendous style, she always dressed beautifully. She often smoked, if I remember rightly, using a cigarette holder, if I am not mistaken, which had become very unusual by the 1990s. I remember that the room in which we interviewed sometimes had the smell of cigarette smoke and she would sometimes open the window, even though it could be very cold in Washington in January, but I was always grateful for it. I had the impression that she ran things extremely well. I never sensed any problems with the staff, except on just one occasion. It doesn't really have to do with Angeliki actually, it was as I recall, and it may have been immense, it came up because there was a proposal in some way to amalgamate or rearrange the library holdings. I don't now remember the details, but if I'm not mistaken the librarian concerned with Byzantine purchases or books, I think her name was Irene Vaslef, spoke to me for some half and hour asking in some way if I could prevent the envisaged change from taking place. I didn't see any reason why the change should be prevented. It seemed to me it was one that tended towards organization. It seemed to me that it was probably some kind of turf struggle, and therefore I did nothing about it. But I don't think that is actually a sign of any fault in Angeliki's administration. It's simply somebody worried about her own turf and tried to defend it. I always thought that, as far as I could tell, the people working there, also the people working more directly for her in the director's house – you may remember that the director's house is where I believe now is part of the new library, though I haven't seen Dumbarton Oaks since the changes were made – they all seemed very nice, very efficient. I must say the lunches we used to have after a long morning's deliberations were part of the, for me, part of the most enjoyable time. The food was good, the wine was excellent. To be candid, I sometimes felt at the lunches that even the Fellows were slightly afraid of Angeliki, at any rate I would often go and sit myself right next to Angeliki, having the sense that no one wanted to take the immediately adjacent chair. That's possibly a false inference on my part. Because she was a formidable person in the fullest sense of "formidable." Let me say about Angeliki that, of course, she was my colleague in the History Department as well. She was very good in meetings of the History Department. I co-taught a course with her for a couple of years, History 10, and I thought she was so good at lecturing, although it was a team- taught course, I attended all her lectures out of admiration for her teaching and trying to pick up a few tips about teaching from the way she taught. She was very firm, this is outside the business of D.O., in the meetings of the History Department. I remember one time we were discussing a question and I rashly said, "Oh, the answer to this question seems to me a No Brainer." And Angeliki said, "Do you think we don't have brains, Christopher?" (laughing) But seriously, she was a lovely person, and I had the impression that the place was extremely well-run. I used to love my visits because when I was there I would always ask permission to be let into the garden. I loved the gardens in D.O. I also greatly loved and admired the Philip Johnson little Pre-Columbian sort of pavilion, which I think is very good, with a lovely collection. Of course I also greatly admired the Byzantine Collection. But in some ways I think that inevitably that very elegant round Philip Johnson Building is perhaps the loveliest part architecturally of Dumbarton Oaks. Whenever I was there I would always take the opportunity to visit it.
JNSL: Very nice. Did you ever hear any stories about Mrs. Bliss herself from other people or what she was like?
CJ: No, no I didn't. I've just been reading about her as a matter of fact in a new book of letters of the British professor, though born in Latvia, Isaiah Berlin, who remembered Washington from the forties when Mrs. Bliss was one of the great society hostesses. But no, I had no direct contact with her. I'm not sure I even knew anybody who knew her, although if I did, I never talked with them about her.
JNSL: Would you mind commenting, in your view, about the relationship between Harvard and Dumbarton Oaks as you saw it, and what your thoughts were between the two?
CJ: Yes. I – you probably already talked about Professor Ševčenko's migration, translation to the Classics department, which I think was very good for Classics, giving it, you know, an absolute star in the field of medieval Greek, in Byzantine Greek. I think that was a loss to Dumbarton Oaks, but whatever Ihor's motives for the move are entirely up to him. I understand that he wanted to teach and knew that he wouldn't be able to do that at D.O., and therefore asked to be transferred. You've probably talked about that with other people. The aspect – well let me put it this way – I never felt that the relation between Dumbarton Oaks and the Hellenic Center were as close as they really should be. The two institutions sit facing one another, as you probably know, across a gully, which can be traversed on foot, though I wouldn't advise anyone to do that either at night or in rainy weather, but you can do it. Otherwise you have to drive a long way round to get from one to the other. I felt that there should be more collaboration, and I think that Gregory Nagy, the current Director of the Hellenic Center, who has a very strong interest in medieval and modern Greek, has made some attempts to improve – or at any rate, not to improve because they were not bad, they were simply not there – to tighten the relations between the two institutions. I remember this particularly because Greg from six years ago set up an epigraphy committee to consider Greek inscriptions, of which I was an early member. And Alice-Mary was invited over and came to the first meeting. I thought that was a very good initiative because it seemed to me that this was a way in which the two institutions could report together. To my knowledge, however, this initiative is rather spotted out. Whether there are now connections between D.O. and the Center of other kinds, I don't know. As for Harvard, you probably have talked to the present Director, I think with the ever-growing financial difficulties at Harvard which are not likely to go away. I have the impression that the central administration would like, as it were, how should I put this delicately, to claw back, I think that is the technical expression, more of the funds of Dumbarton Oaks, and I think that that makes life a little difficult for Jan.
JNSL: Right, certainly. Do you have any memories from the symposia or special distinct events that stand out?
CJ: No, no, I – none in particular. I remember quite early on the great scholar Hans Belting – great scholar, I believe, of Byzantine art and images – giving a talk I think at a symposium saying, "I wrote the book on this subject." I don't have any other clear memory of other ones, I do remember presiding with great pleasure when Olivia Constable, Giles' daughter, gave a paper. I thought that that was a very pleasing, as it were, handing on to the next generation of interests that went back to her father. As you probably know, Olivia, more familiarly known as Remie, is really more an Islamic historian more than a Byzantine one. Otherwise, no, I don't have any memories that particularly stand out. I do remember meeting certain people with particular pleasure. I much enjoyed talking to Cécile Morrisson. I remember having a very nice conversation with Philip Grierson back in the Fellows Building. He must have by then been very old, but he was very alert. I liked him very much indeed. I remember with affection the meetings of the Fellows. Those were always friendly, and I was very fond, for example, of Ioli. Ioli and I travelled, of course, together from Cambridge down to Washington, and I remember well once, as Ioli does, flying back with her from Washington to Boston. As we'd gone out from National Airport, I think it's now called Reagan, there had been lightning flashing on every side, and nevertheless we got on the plane, the plane took off, lightning was still flashing everywhere. The plane was shaking like anything. I was panicked, grasping the seat. Ioli slept right through it. That is one of my most vivid memories of Dumbarton Oaks that didn't actually take place at Dumbarton Oaks. But Ioli is an old friend and I treasure meetings with her present, with John Duffy of course because he also chaired in my time. I had great respect for George Dennis, Father Dennis, I don't know whether or not he is still alive. He was an expert on Byzantine texts concerning fortification, artillery, of which there was a lot, because of course the Byzantines were very interested in the techniques of war. You can well imagine. I believe that that was Father Dennis's specialty. He was a very sweet person from Georgetown. Intellectually, perhaps, the most impressive person I remember on those meetings, apart of course from Angeliki herself, was Father Taft, a Jesuit I think, who lived in Rome, again I don't know whether he is still alive.
JNSL: He is going strong.
CJ: Yes, I assumed so because he gave the impression of great vigor. And he is probably quite a bit younger than I am for that matter. He was very impressive, I thought. I just had the impression that I was in the presence of a great scholar. He, I believe, was an expert on liturgy. Those are the memories that come immediately to the surface. I should mention that after I had left the board, Ned Keenan very kindly invited me to lecture. How are we doing?
JNSL: We have four minutes and I can switch it over to the next side.
CJ: Well, I should just say is Ned's inviting me down to give a lecture some time I think around 2000, it might have been later. By that time the institution bought Elizabeth Taylor's house close the Fellows Building.
JNSL: Ah!! (laughter)
CJ: I had been impressed by Ned as a wonderful host, but I have forgotten off hand what the subject of my lecture was.
JNSL: I was just about to ask you (laughing).
CJ: But I remember having a thoroughly good time, a good audience, and naturally I was very honored by and grateful for the invitation.
JNSL: Wonderful, thank you.
CJ: You're welcome.]]>
AS: Anne Steptoe
EG: And Elizabeth Gettinger
JNSL: We have the honor today of interviewing Professor Kenneth Holum. Good morning – good afternoon.
KH: Good afternoon. And it's my pleasure.
JNSL: Thank you
AS: We understand, if we have our facts right, that you were first a Fellow in 1976. Is that correct?
KH: As a historian I'm supposed to remember dates exactly, that does sound correct.
AS: Was that your first interaction with Dumbarton Oaks?
KH: No. In fact, there's a sense in which my most intense period of interaction with Dumbarton Oaks preceded that fellowship. Of course, I've been involved with Dumbarton Oaks ever since then, too, but I actually came to the University of Maryland in the fall of 1970, having passed my comps at the University of Chicago. This was a different era, you might say. But I had not written my dissertation. I had just begun work on my dissertation and nevertheless got a good job at a major university and was told that I had two years to finish my dissertation. So, I wrote my dissertation in the history attic at Dumbarton Oaks and really spent a lot of time here, four or five days a week for the first couple of years. I first came in the fall of 1970.
JNSL: Who did you meet at that time here?
KH: Oh, I met everyone who was here, which included, through the years, a lot of the people that, who are now major figures in the profession. They were all Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks. One of the first people I met was John Nesbitt, who was also working on his dissertation in the history attic and we sat together and worked, sort of side by side. This – the term history attic may not mean much to you now, but at that time the library was, of course, entirely in the Main House and the Fellows – I was not a Fellow, I was a reader, a mere outside reader, nevertheless – had the run of the place, including the swimming pool, and certainly was welcome to have a desk in the reading room which is now the, what is it, it's on the second floor in the Main House, and the history attic was in the western part of the Main House where, in the old system, all the history books were shelved. There were probably one fifth as many as there are now because the collection was much smaller, so they fit there quite conveniently, it was a wonderful place to work. The texts were all within easy reach and the major monographs were all right there, so it was a breeze, and I sat there in 1970-71, '71-'72, writing my dissertation.
AS: As a reader were you allowed to go to lunch?
KH: Well, readers are still allowed to go to lunch, you have to sign up, and you have to pay for it. I guess we had to pay for it then, too. Sure, yeah we went to lunch, we had lunch here in this room, and it was very pleasant. A few years later, of course, when Anthony Bryer was one of the leading social influences at Dumbarton Oaks when he was in residence, and I guess it was during my first fellowship year, the neighbors were Paul Mellon, not Paul Mellon, no, no, no, no...
AS: Or his son maybe?
KH: Well his daughter lived in the house, but Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner lived across the street, so he took us from here across the street and knocked on the door and invited them to come and join us for a drink. They were busy, but quite polite. Yeah, this was the social heart of Dumbarton Oaks and readers were perfectly welcome, I think. We were called – we're no longer called now, I'm a former Fellow, I'd been a Fellow three times, but my status is reader and I think it's not outside reader any more. They used to call it outside reader.
JNSL: What was your impression of the place the first time you came here?
KH: Positive. It was – it was unbelievable. The place was – it was a smaller organization then. There were very distinguished scholars here, Father Dvornik among them, and Ihor Ševčenko and Cyril Mango occupied offices on the second floor in the main building. I got to know all of them and talked to all of them. I remember Father Dvornik asking me how my research was going and giving me a cheery "Happy hunting" once or twice a day, and the interchange with the other scholars, John Nesbitt was a Fellow, a Junior Fellow writing his dissertation, Ioli Kalavrezou was a Fellow a few years later. Virtually everyone who was at – Mike McCormick was on the staff. It was a very wonderful setting in which to write my dissertation and then continue working, and it was all mine because I was stationed at the University of Maryland. I didn't come and go like most people do, I would get to come over here whenever the spirit moved me and always felt very welcome.
AS: I was wondering if you might just follow up on your discussion of some of the older scholars, we were talking before we started rolling tape and you had some very interesting things to say about Father Dvornik. I wonder if you might just repeat those for the benefit of the recorder.
KH: Well, he was, Francis Dvornik, others knew him better than I did, certainly Alice-Mary knew Father Dvornik much better than I did, for example, and George Majeska, who – they were here a bit earlier and knew him longer than I did, I guess. He was – he seemed to me to be – he was a wonderful scholar and rather – he worked in a different age and operated in a different conceptual universe than many of us do now, but he was a marvelous, industrious scholar who wrote a great deal and had a wonderful command of texts, and was always happy to provide advice and to react to questions that could only have been of marginal interest to him, but were essential to what I was doing. And then I had the unusual experience that Father Dvornik died in – he was Czech, and he died, I believe, in his home country in the summer of 1975, and I was a fellow in the following '76-'77, if I have the chronology correct, and he had lived in the West Cottage, and I was given the West Cottage as my digs for the following year, which was quite luxurious because it had four, it was four rooms, well furnished, one of them had been used as a chapel where Father Dvornik said mass, if I remember correctly, but I didn't know that before I moved in and they told me, and then there was a sitting room and a bedroom – a kitchen, a sitting room, a bedroom, and then this room that had been the chapel, which became another sitting room. It was really nice, and very convenient – even more convenient than La Quercia. Most of the Fellows lived at that time at 2702 Wisconsin Avenue, but the ones who didn't lived in the Fellows Building.
AS: Before we talk about your first fellowship, I just wonder if you were here, you probably missed Mrs. Bliss just by a year. I think she died in the spring of '69.
KH: Yeah. She died a year or two before I arrived.
AS: I wonder, was her presence still very much around Dumbarton Oaks?
KH: Oh, very much so, because the members of the staff, the house men – we don't call them house men any more, do we?
AS: I think they're house staff.
KH: The guards, the people who were at the desk, they were all men at that time, of course, and they were generally – many of them were retired, supervised by Alex De Boeck, a wonderful fellow on staff for a long time. They all spoke of her with, you know – she was awesome, and there were others on the staff who had – or Sue Boyd, who was first the junior curator, then the curator of the collection, the Byzantine Collection, was sort of the protégé of Mrs. Bliss, I guess, they had all been very close to her, so we heard a lot about Mrs. Bliss. The – apparently, Mrs. Bliss presided over tea, I suspect Alice-Mary could tell you much more about that than most people. I never experienced it and by the time I was here that had been attenuated considerably. I don't think there actually was tea, there was sherry after talks in the Founders Room.
JNSL: Was Thacher here when you were here? Who was, in 1970, who was the Director of Studies?
KH: Tyler, Mr. Tyler, who was a charming man, and not a scholar, although he was certainly learned and alert, he was a diplomat and had also, I think, been, I don't remember, had been associated with the Blisses, so he was kind of distinct from the three scholarly operations. He sat in his office in Olympian splendor. He was in, you know, next to the Founders Room, what is it now? It's the – they used to call it the study.
AS: It still is the director's office, right?
JNSL: It's not the director's office, it's the study. It's used as a smaller meeting –
KH: It would be kind of a conference room, the director's conference room. For a long time, the Fellows' talks were held there and it had – the collection of museum catalogs was in that room. That had been Mr. Tyler's office, next to the Founders Room and the Orangery.
AS: So, you didn't have too much in the way of interaction with him either when you were a reader or later during your fellowship?
KH: I talked to him a number of times. Was he still – I don't remember when Giles took over.
EG: '77 I think.
KH: '77? So, I guess I talked with Mr. Tyler – must have been. I guess I was here when he retired, and he was – I remember him as being very affable, easy to talk with, and I had a number of conversations with him. I don't think he frequented the pool, as I remember, so it wouldn't have been that setting, but I think actually the readers, outside readers, had to be invited to the pool, but I think I had a standing invitation. We went swimming a lot, in fact, this was a major impediment to scholarship in the Byzantine field, the swimming pool. Do people still swim in the swimming pool?
AS: Oh yes.
KH: Very pleasant, the best part about it is being able to use it when all the people who come into the garden are excluded.
AS: As we understand, it was also a very social scene, garden parties and that sort of thing.
KH: Yes, we had a few of those. A notable one that involved Mike McCormick and, well, quite a few other people, but I'm not going to talk more about that.
AS: Big night dancing in the Orangery? Don't feel like you have to hold back, I think he's talked to us –
KH: Worse. Margaret who is the new Director of Studies, was also a social leader. She was a Fellow during my second fellowship.
JNSL: The early '80s.
KH: Yeah, '82, I think, and she was very good at getting the Fellows together for social occasions that were not – nothing ever got out of hand, not any of those. It was – it contributed a lot to the community feeling. The ones I remember when Margaret was sort of the captain of the feast, or whatever you say, those were in the, what do you call it, by the bamboo forest.
AS: The Ellipse?
JNSL: Oh, where the reflecting pool is?
KH: No, in the corner, the –
JNSL: The Chinese-French, it's a sort of shinwa area?
KH: Yeah.
JNSL: Yes.
KH: Yeah, but there's another term that –
JNSL: Right, I've forgotten, it's escaping my –
KH: It's a theater, it's also a theater, they called it the – it had some theatrical term, but we had parties around there and it was very nice. Now there are the terraces where people could sit. So, you wanted me to talk about the social life of Dumbarton Oaks as I remember it, is that the idea?
AS: Yes – things that we won't find in archival material.
KH: Well, I have had so many memorable social experiences at Dumbarton Oaks. Have people talked about – I mean, Giles is still alive; his wife Evie, unfortunately, we lost, his first wife. He was an absolutely marvelous human being, he is a marvelous human being. I've actually been in touch with him occasionally. He's retired now. He's a very large man with –
JNSL: We've heard of his Halloween costumes.
KH: Oh, I didn't, I don't remember that, if I knew about it. What I remember is what good sports Giles and Evie were, that they gave you the impression of aristocracy and a very refined sense of social relationships and what constitutes a good time. On the other hand, one of my dear friends at that time invited them and me to dinner at her apartment. She was not living – she was a Fellow, but not living at Dumbarton Oaks, she was off-campus, so to speak, and she had no furniture. She had rented the apartment but it didn't have any furniture in it, which didn't bother her at all. And she told me when I arrived – it didn't bother me either – but she told me when I arrived that Giles and Evie were coming, and I just couldn't imagine that they would, that they, you know, the normal director's dinners here were rather elegant affairs, and there was no furniture. They popped in and took their places in the middle of the floor in this big room and there was a Chianti bottle with candles dripping down and food was produced and we ate on the floor and everyone had a terrific time. They were perfectly comfortable. So, they had a way of making people feel welcome that I really admired, and he would – he really – the institution became much more a Harvard institution in some ways. It took a while for – I'm not a Harvard person, I'm an interested bystander, but the – it had been a Bliss institution and it had represented their, I guess, a lot of their values and interests and the people were largely employed by them, and then continued when it became a Harvard institution. But it took some time for Harvard to understand how this endowment and this institution could best be used, not contrary to what the Blisses had in mind, but sort of keeping up with the times. And Giles was really important in that transition. He was – he's a consummate academic, he really understands the way the academic world operates and how a research institution can contribute to it. He had, for example – one of the things I did with – I mean, I take a small amount of credit for it – Giles wanted Dumbarton Oaks to be more than a think tank for Byzantinists and garden architecture and pre-Columbian art, pre-Columbian studies, and he wanted it to have a more open presence in the academic world, not so much in Georgetown, that's a different story, but in the academic world. So, he initiated the program of appointing Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks, who, in cooperation with other institutions – and then this was supposed to insert younger scholars into academic careers also. So, being located outside of town, the University of Maryland thought it might be in a good position to form such a relationship, and I came to Giles and said "Why don't we pursue this?" and Giles thought it was a wonderful idea and the result was we hired John Duffy who's now Chair of the Classics Department at Harvard, whose first job was at the University of Maryland where he was a great success for quite some time because of this initiative that Giles introduced. And I think this is continued in one form or another, and I think now it's being emphasized again. Giles was terrific.
AS: It must have made him somewhat controversial, though, as a director, as it was a period of change, of great change, for Dumbarton Oaks.
KH: Well, you want controversy?
AS: Well –
KH: I don't know from, so much, from the point of view of – there have been controversial figures in the institution in one position or another. I don't think – I think Giles – my recollection is that he was pretty – he was a good administrator and the staff was pretty happy with Giles, that's my impression, and I don't have any really inside dope on that. There was always the Harvard vs. us syndrome set in in the time of Giles. There was always, I guess, one of the symptoms of it was that the Bliss money supported professorial positions, it was a little more complicated than that, but there were two professors at Dumbarton Oaks, that Giles – Ihor Ševčenko and Cyril Mango, two really senior people, who were here as full time research scholars and Giles didn't think that was appropriate. That was part of his wanting to bring the riches of Dumbarton Oaks into more effective contact with the broader academic world. He didn't think that scholars would flourish ultimately if they were isolated in a think tank permanently, so he put an end to that. Ihor, they moved. Ihor went to Cambridge and Cyril Mango became what, at Oxford, what was his – I can't remember his academic title, but you can supply that. Anyway, and so these professorships were lost to Dumbarton Oaks and went to Harvard and some in the Byzantine community, the broader community, thought this was Harvard taking the riches of Dumbarton Oaks away from Dumbarton Oaks where they would be accessible to the whole community and reinforcing Harvard's own resources, which were already greater than anyone else's. There was a lot of anxiety in the mid-'70s, when Giles took over, that the library was going to be moved to Harvard and it may be true. I don't' recall now. Others no doubt – George Majeska will remember better than I do, it may be true that one of Giles' commissions when he became director was to examine how Dumbarton Oaks should be incorporated into Harvard, including taking the library to Cambridge, which would have been odd because Widener already had more books than Dumbarton Oaks. Anyway, they decided not to do that. But this was part of, this became part of a considerable level of anxiety on the part of Byzantinists who were not Harvard people and, in fact, most Byzantinists weren't and aren't Harvard people, they come from other institutions, too. But it, you know, that turned out not to be the case and the model that Giles established, which concentrated – there is a professional director of studies of professorial rank normally with an appointment in Harvard or somewhere else who is the director of studies in each of the fields here, but there aren't in addition professors who are permanently here doing research and not teaching, which is a somewhat different model, I mean the emphasis is on the research program.
AS: During these same years, Bill Loerke was Director of Studies. While we're talking about the administration, I was just wondering what your interactions with him were.
KH: I had very – I had good – I guess I get along with too many people. He wasn't difficult to get along with at all. He was a capable administrator. He was a very bright scholar who knew a lot, also a wonderful resource, like, for younger scholars as I was at that time. It's obviously important to be around senior people who are willing to share their time. They remember things that you haven't run into yet and you can learn so much from them. Bill was terrific that way. Certainly, if I went through the things in my first book that I owed to each of the scholars at Dumbarton Oaks, every one of them would be represented. I learned things from all of them, and from the Fellows, and I think I got most of them into the acknowledgments, but I don't remember about Bill. He had – he was not terribly productive as far as the quantity of books and articles. He was more, when he was here, he was more an administrator and a facilitator than an active scholar, I guess. But I have only positive recollections of him and his wife and his son, who was one of the guards for some time.
JNSL: How would you characterize the interaction among the Fellows of the three fields? Did you initiate dialogue or scholarly exchange?
KH: Interesting. I have the impression that it's better now than it was. There was no – there wasn't any hostility, is that sufficient? We by and large got along. Do you know who Linda Schele is? She's one of the major scholars that this place has produced.
AS: We understand that she was good social glue.
KH: She was very – there was a volleyball – they were talking this morning about David Axelrod's basketball buddies – we had a volleyball group. Ihor was a permanent member. This lasted all through the '70s until Ihor left. Ihor was a member of the group, Anthony Bryer, John Nesbitt, and I, and Linda Schele was a major figure.
JNSL: Where did you play?
KH: In Montrose Park. There was a – we pushed the picnickers out of the way, sometimes they weren't very happy. We tied this net up between two trees. It was – Ihor was vicious.
AS: We've heard tall too. I imagine he was very good.
KH: Yeah, he was tall, and physically capable. So was Linda; she was very good too. I don't remember Margaret playing volleyball, maybe we had gotten away from volleyball by the time she arrived. There was this wonderful Fellow, I don't know if anyone has mentioned him, John Wiita, who should not be forgotten. He was – John Wiita was a Finn from North Dakota, I guess, in fact he and I worked out the genealogy and decided we were related because my relatives were from North Dakota, but that's a – I have relatives from North Dakota. Anyway, he was a student of Tom Jones at the University of Minnesota, and came here to write his dissertation on the Strategicon of Maurice. It's a major military treatise of the late sixth century, and he did a brilliant job of it and it became part of – he never went anyplace, he never got a job, and he was such a strange character, I guess that it was too difficult for him to find a job. But his work became sort of integrated in George Dennis' work on the Strategicon, so it's not lost. But John Wiita was also in the center of everything, really impressive intellectual, and great basketball player, great volleyball player, and we also played volleyball in the swimming pool, although that caused some of the –
JNSL: You set up a net there?
KH: No, we had a technique. We didn't need a net. It was pretty wild and I think some of the people didn't like it. It intimidated their free use of the pool. John Wiita eventually went back to – he had lived in Connecticut and he went back and got some kind of job and died, died fairly young. I don't remember exactly when it was, probably in the '80s.
EG: Did you attend any symposia or lectures or anything like that in the early days?
KH: Oh yes.
EG: Were there any that were particularly memorable to you or important?
KH: Have you talked to Gary Vikan?
JNSL: Yes, last summer.
KH: And he didn't mention the famous Byzantine Studies Conference at Dumbarton Oaks.
AS: I think this might have come up, but go on.
KH: That he and I organized? It was the, I mean, every, every year one or two people got saddled with the job of organizing the BSC and one year they decided that Gary and I should do it, so we did it. And we decided that we would do a BSC that would never be forgotten and I think we succeeded. It was the first one, I guess there'd been others at Dumbarton Oaks, or maybe not, but this was early on, they began, when, in 1976?
JNSL: That sounds about right.
KH: The first one was in Cleveland at the – Alice-Mary hosted it. So, this was probably '78, '79, '80, somewhere in there, and it was in the Music Room, by far the most splendid setting for such a conference, in the Music Room and other places. We had a really wonderful program, I mean, everyone came because it was in Washington at Dumbarton Oaks, and it was a place everyone wanted to attend. I don't remember all the details. We had a great reception in the Music Room with bartenders that I had recruited at the University of Maryland that made a big hit, and I didn't know that they were capable bartenders. So we – that was a high point in the early years of the BSC, I guess. The – I think I didn't miss a Dumbarton Oaks symposium until – I mean, what's happened with me is I got, my early career was almost entirely at Dumbarton Oaks and there's a sense in which it still is because this library is one of the top three or four in the world for what I do, so it's very convenient for me to be here. But I got involved in this excavation project in Israel and so I'm almost very much involved in that community, the archaeological community and particularly the archaeologists in Jerusalem and so forth. So, I've been less profoundly enmeshed in the activities of Dumbarton Oaks since the mid-'80s, although still pretty enmeshed. I've spoken here and attended lectures here. I was at the Roman Holiday or the Roman, whatever it was called. That was really wonderful. Another secret of my career is that I'm not a Byzantinist, I'm a fraud. My field is late antiquity which is part of the sort of commission that Dumbarton Oaks has, but I come at late antiquity from antiquity, I'm a Roman historian essentially. Doesn't make any difference, it's still the best library for me, but I'm also involved in that other, a couple other academic circles. There are a lot of other people in the same boat, like Tom Parker and Mike Maas and Mike McCormick – well he's more western medievalist than a Byzantinist. So, the circles of Dumbarton Oaks go far beyond the central set of issues and Byzantine studies, strictly speaking.
AS: I wonder, as we're talking about the various figures in the field, we talked a little about the, sort of the '70s crew, but when you came back in '82-'83 there were – Kazhdan was here and some different set of scholars and other Fellows who I'm certain, you know, influenced your work and worked with you, if you might talk about them a little bit.
KH: I'll – yeah – Alexander and, later, lots of other people, I guess. Who was the director, the third one, when I was Fellow for the third time?
AS: Angeliki?
KH: Ah, Angeliki was, yes, but I worked so hard on my project that I hardly saw anybody. Alexander was less – although he wrote an article – he and Tony Cutler wrote an article that was very influential on my work for a long time. He was less – I got to be less and less of a Byzantinist, well, never was a Byzantinist. But he was a real Byzantinist and what he was mostly interested in was issues later than my work, although I wrote articles for the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. And I was amazed when I wrote my articles – I don't know if he did this with everyone – but I came in and we sat down in his office and talked about them and he knew all this stuff, you know, he was – it was amazing. He knew the details of all of the things I thought were my specialty, what is he doing knowing all this? He was such a learned man, it was amazing. I've just been – some of the things I'm working on right now involve Mike McCormick's book on the birth of the European economy because his first chapter is on the death of the Roman economy and I look at things very differently from the way he looks at them, so I had to cite him. But he writes about Alexander's influence on that book and how he, how Mike got the idea when he was here for this approach to the emergence of the European economy looking at communications and trade, and he presented his first findings in a seminar at Dumbarton Oaks and Kazhdan shot him down. I mean this was – and this was the beginning of this serious thinking about it, and he dedicated the book to Kazhdan's memory. He didn't have that kind of influence on me because I work in much earlier periods, but he did, we did intersect. Personally, he and his wife were such charming people. By then I was married to my wife Marsha and we found both of them very charming. I had less to do with Angeliki, although on my final fellowship we – I got to know her quite well. We were at her house, in the director's house for dinner a few times. I was always intimidated by dinner at the director's house from the time of the first one with Giles, I don't remember who the others were, but it was sort of assumed that if you went to dinner in the director's house, whether it was Giles or Angeliki or whomever, you could speak French. It was perfectly normal for the conversation to switch back and forth from English to French. I can't speak French, I can read French perfectly well. When I hear French it sounds like – Marsha speaks French quite well, so it was no problem for her. I think I could do perfectly well in German, but nobody seemed to think – that never came into the equation. It was either English or French. So. But it was still fun to have dinner in the director's house, and Angeliki had, I remember, a particularly nice dinner that she had once – I probably wasn't a Fellow, but if someone is visiting who is in the field of some scholar in the vicinity they often invited us over. We were – Jan invited us to dinner last year, but we couldn't, there was an underwater archaeologist from Istanbul, or who had been working in Istanbul anyway, and unfortunately I had just had surgery for my knees, so I couldn't come. I was going to come but then we decided it would a little too embarrassing, hobbling around, so I haven't had dinner since he arrived.
AS: Did the social atmosphere change much among the three separate times when you were a Fellow here or like the daily life, routines, things like that?
KH: Well, I changed, you know? I was probably less disciplined the first time I was a Fellow in the '70s. During my first fellowship I was working on my book, Theodosian Empresses, and in a way that was the most critical of the three, because I met people who led into the next stage of my career. I don't remember – it was the second one, when Margaret was here, in the early '80s, that I remember as being particularly intense, socially. Don't tell her that. There seemed to be more parties that year than ever. Again, I was frustrated to some extent because there were so many social occasions that I couldn't get any work done. It was a little different for me because I live here, you know, and the third was one was the same. I drove from home, I didn't live in the Fellows Building or Dumbarton Oaks accommodations, we just stayed at home, so I was in my normal social setting. The other Fellows were sort of thrown on their own resources, you know. They interacted with each other and they had more time for partying than I did, because I had all the other partying to do, also. I don't know, we don't party, don't get the impression that we partied all the time, but that year it seemed that every week there was some occasion that needed to be celebrated and it was great fun and Marsha was included in it and enjoyed it enormously. But we had to drive all the way in from Silver Spring to participate in something like this.
AS: In those years the Kazhdans were great hosts, right? Is that – we've heard that before.
KH: They were great hosts. I was in their – they lived in, what did we call it?
AS: Now it's the security building.
KH: I know. Well, I guess they just called it the – No, that's not right. It's where – I think Ševčenko lived there. There was a special term for it, but I can't remember. I was in their house – they were wonderful hosts, of course. How could they not be? They were such warm, friendly people. But that was after the '70s. I was involved in other circles in the area so I wasn't as profoundly involved. In the '70s, this was where I spent all my time, I was really a denizen of Dumbarton Oaks. It was wonderful.
AS: In the course of your three fellowships, what kind of interactions have you had with the D.O. collection? We talked a little bit about your interactions with the library, but have you spent a lot of time with the collection?
KH: Well, if you mean – I spent quite a bit of time working on coins when I wrote my first book. Not the coins that are on display, although the – I was interested in the marriage belts which made their way into my first book a little bit. But I was more interested in certain issues of gold coins from the early fifth century, which I wrote an article and I added to my books. I worked in objects, and that, to me – this may not be what you have in mind – but that was an opening to me into a sort of, a world I hadn't been in in graduate school, which was art history, because I was trained as a text historian, ordinary text historian, and then it turns out I spent the best years of my career working as an archaeologist, which is far from what I was trained in. But when I worked in the collections, began and worked on these coins and tried to address historical problems using these objects, I learned how to deal with a different – with the sources in a different way and was then attracted. Gary Vikan and I wrote a seminal article called "The Trier Ivory 'Adventus' Ceremonial and the Relics of St. Stephen" that neither of us will ever admit could be improved upon, and that was, again – I was working with Gary on that and that object is in Trier, not here, but it was the same kind of thing, working with the object taught me how to deal with evidence in a different way. There was a direct line from that to studies in urbanism using physical as well as textual evidence and even environmental evidence, even seeds and bones and things of that sort. Mike McCormick has gone through the same transition. So, the proximity of the collection is important even for historians, everyone will say that, in that, in the '70s and now much less, there was a sense that there were two kinds of Byzantinists, historians and art historians. There were some odd ducks who did liturgy and other things, but basically historians and art historians, and we were sort of at war with each other: they, the art historians, are getting too much attention. There was no sense that we're all in the same game, and that's very much different now, I think. Historians deal with objects and images and material culture, just as much as the specialists in those fields do and vice versa. Rina Avner, who's here now – I mean she was here this past year, she's going to be here again – is very adept at using literary texts, and she taught me a thing or two about the church we excavated at Caesarea from literary texts that I knew perfectly well but hadn't looked at in the way she did. So, that kind of crossing old barriers is nothing unusual any more. Don't you think?
JNSL: Yes, yes.
AS: And when you were starting to do that here, I mean, there were individuals in place to sort of guide you, I guess, would Grierson have been here?
KH: Grierson was here most of the time, yeah, and Michael Hendy was here, also, yeah, and they both, in particularly Philip, did help me out with my coins. This was a small problem for him, and he was – again, I worked on that – my first book was on, was called Theodosian Empresses and it was about Roman empresses in the late fourth and early fifth century, so it's, the coin issues from those, from that period, and that's not what Philip was mostly interested in. Michael Hendy was interested in, mostly in that period and later as well, but he was interested in money, not coin iconography – I mean interested in money in the sense of – not in the sense of making money – in the sense of studying money.
JNSL: As someone who was working in the earlier period, did you ever use the library over at the Center for Hellenic Studies?
KH: That's too early. I have two students who are real members of that community. When Professor Knox was the Director of the Hellenic Studies – again that was in the '70s and early '80s – we were over there for lunch. The Fellows still go over there for lunch, I think, but we went to lunch a lot and Bernard came swimming here, and he was just an amazing man. He was very popular with the people here, wonderful to talk to, and he had fought in the Spanish Civil War and he entertained intellectuals of all strips in splendor over there. And I've known the people over there since then, but I've never done research – I've gone over there to find things – but I've never really don't research there. Although I do teach classical Greek history, also, and I have two students who did their Ph.D.s in classical Greek.
AS: Well, should we fast forward a bit to your final fellowship, which I guess was in '97? Correct? I wonder if you'd just –
KH: Final?
AS: Well, no, your –
JNSL: – most recent.
KH: Do you know something I don't? Most recent. The problem now is –
JNSL: Once a Fellow, always a Fellow.
KH: I can't afford to be a Fellow. They don't pay enough. That was a really good year, but I worked really hard, and I finished two major projects that year, but not the one I was supposed to finish. I'll finally finish the one I was supposed to finish hopefully in about two years.
JNSL: Was that Angeliki's last year then, '97?
KH: It was close, yeah. I don't remember exactly. If it happened before 600, I can remember the date.
JNSL: After that history just repeats itself anyway.
KH: That's right. I heard one famous scholar at a Byzantine Studies Conference declare that anything that happened after 600 is just gossip, this was a Byzantine Studies Conference so it was a little out of place. Let's see, who were the other Fellows in – I was again – what I remember most about that year is going over the text of the Greek and Latin inscriptions of Caesarea Maritima twenty-five times and changing the numbering because the inscriptions had to be added or dropped, and computers weren't as clever then as they are now. I worked really hard that year, and Jodi Magness, of course, was another Fellow that year and we were across the hall from one another. And my work with her was probably the most intense experience I had that year, because she and I are really in the same field. She's a – there was a time when she tried to pass herself off as a historian, but she's much more a self-declared archaeologist who does historical issues, and I'm the other way around. But it was a really nice occasion for the two of us to do a lot of talking. And she – one of the chapters of her book is straight out of our conversations. Don't tell anyone that. That's the book on the early Islamic conquests, the results of the early Islamic conquests in the Levant, and it's not the only one, but it sort of overturned a lot of traditional views of what had happened when the Muslims had conquered the Middle East. That's what happens to me as the – I've worked with these Israelis and Jordanians who think that Byzantium ended in 638 or 640 or whatever, so they have early Byzantium as from Constantine to Theodosius, middle Byzantium makes no sense at all, late Byzantine is from Justinian to the Muslim conquest, and it's a different world. I tried to persuade them that they should correct their terminology but they refused to do it, and Jodi belongs in that world, she's never gotten out of it. Are you interviewing her?
AS: We're not scheduled to, but –
KH: She's in North Carolina, so it's a little bit – You could interview Clive Foss.
AS: Yeah, we've trying to get in touch with him. Along the lines of your description of '97-'98 was sort of a more business-oriented year, I wonder if you could talk about your relationship to the D.O. library and the librarians, in that fellowship and in previous ones, because I think we've gotten the sense that there's an important relationship between librarians and scholars.
KH: When did Irene retire? She was still librarian in '97-98?
JNSL: Was it around 2002 or 2003?
KH: That sounds about right. From the time Irene came I had wonderful relations with Irene and the whole lot, Mark Zapatka. I mean, they were – that was their job. They were, we have librarians at the University of Maryland who understand us also, but the library here – it's not, I don't want to detract from the librarianship that people at other great libraries do, because they – there are very capable librarians that I've worked with in various places, including the National Library in Jerusalem where I just spent some time. But I've never worked with librarians who were so, in the case of Irene, so attuned to what was appropriate for the kind of research people do at this institution, and of course, have the resources to provide it, which have now become so problematic even for Dumbarton Oaks that it's a different world. That was still at the beginning of the digital age, we're much more into it now. The 1996-97, is that when it was?
KH: '97-'98. Doesn't sound like the beginning of the digital age, but you wonder if last year wasn't the beginning of the digital age. Mark was just always willing to – they are now too – I'm never – there are enough librarians, the institution has enough money to support enough librarians and there are few enough scholars using the place that you get an incredible amount of attention, and the books are there, there's nothing you need other than more time. I can't imagine anyone complaining about the way the library works at Dumbarton Oaks. It's just – Irene was universally admired, I think, for her work. I've had less – since she left, I haven't had such an intense relationship. I haven't been a Fellow, but I get the same treatment, if I actually have any questions or have any problems – I usually don't because I know where all the books are. I don't know what more to say. I know about library problems, because I've – I just came off a term as Chair of the University Senate and one of our big problems at Maryland is that the library budgets are going down and we're not the bad guys, the bad guys are the scientists who have, you know, their subscriptions cost $10,000 a year and who can afford it?
AS: Shall we start wrapping up?
EG: Yeah. Could you talk about any significant changes you've seen over the years since you first started working here in the '70s until the present, kind of what are the biggest changes you've seen in Dumbarton Oaks, either academically or socially or anything like that?
KH: Well there have been really big changes, but the, what's happened at Dumbarton Oaks is that, well there are a lot of things. One thing that's happened is that scholarly publication has increased geometrically. I don't know, I don't have any figures but the library had, what, 48,000 books when I came, and it's probably got 500,000 or 600,000 books now, not to mention digital resources of all kinds, so it's really a very different kind of operation in many ways. A research library has to be organized in different ways. At first it was a very, very critical space problem. They just didn't have anywhere to put the books. That was one of the issues that contributed to this anxiety about the whole place being moved to Cambridge, and they put these compact stacks, they put the books – they remodeled the library – put the books in the Music Room for a while, and there were periods when you couldn't get at them, but they kept it open for the most part, and then they put the movable stacks in the basement in the Main House, and then they grew out of that, and they're going to grow out of this and this, although there are people who think that books are on their way out so we don't have to worry about it. So, that's a very big change, not in the sort of physical sense of the institution has changed. I think what I said earlier is important, that when I first arrived here it was only a year or so after Mrs. Bliss had died. It was, I guess, it was a good long time, twenty-five years after the property had been conveyed to Harvard, but the Blisses – as long as the Blisses were alive the institution continued in the sort of the mold that they were still here and influencing the way it went, and so in that period, the ten years after Mrs. Bliss died, the university began to deal with how this endowment and the institution should be used for the, you know, for the benefit of the academic world or whatever, and that was an evolutionary process that Giles Constable set into motion, but it's changed a lot of things about Dumbarton Oaks. The shape of the – you know, there's no longer a resident faculty in the traditional sense. It turned out that, you know, what's happened is good, I mean, it's better now than it was then. I think the expanded research possibilities that the digital age provides and the way this place has developed as an institution are much to the benefit of everybody, it's a very positive history, looking back on it, at least it seems to me.
JNSL: What is your favorite project that you were able to participate in, in terms of Dumbarton Oaks?
KH: Projects? Well, my favorite project was, is my own excavation project, which Dumbarton Oaks has not been involved in. I got lots of money from somebody who had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks. In fact, I got a phone call one day in my office at the university from a guy who said, "Hello, can I give you a lot of money?" And I said, "OK!" and he gave me $500,000, so the funding of that was, had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks. Dumbarton Oaks has supported my research on it. So, that's my favorite project, but lots of projects, the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, I was involved in that – I though that was a wonderful project. I mean, all of the – I certainly followed with interest and have profited from Tom Parker's projects. I think he – he didn't get money, he may have gotten some money from Dumbarton Oaks, but that was mostly NEH. The final report of the Limes Arabicus Project has been published by Dumbarton Oaks. As an interested outsider, I've been most, in some ways, most impressed by the Hagia Sophia project that Robert Van Nice and his colleagues conducted. Do you know of that? – the books?
AS: And Robert Nelson, I think, picked it up or maybe wrote on that project.
KH: It was basically a complete architectural survey of Hagia Sophia in amazingly, excruciatingly complicated detail all beautifully published, and that went on for the first fifteen years I was here and we would go down and watch Robert and his colleagues working on this thing. It was really amazing. I haven't been involved in any of the other Dumbarton Oaks archaeological projects, but I know about them, or with the text projects, although again, since some of them have been very important to my work.
AS: Dumbarton Oaks did fund some of your projects, is that right?
KH: We had, Yoram Tsafrir and I got a grant from Dumbarton Oaks, in fact we may have gotten two of them, to excavate at Rehovot ba-Negev, a wonderful archaeological site in the Negev desert, which is very important, again, for the Byzantine-Islamic transition, as they call it and, you know, Byzantine ended in 640 or whenever. That project was swimming along – Yoram and I had several terrific seasons there, then the Israelis made peace with Egypt and they, part of the peace agreement was that they withdrew their military bases from the Sinai and they established a series of airbases and other military facilities in the part of the Negev where this site was located and they kicked us out because we couldn't – it was not safe for us to work there because they were doing military training there and dropping bombs and rockets and all sorts of brutality – so they kicked us out and we were not able to continue the project. We have, in the meantime – I've kicked in some money from my $500,000 for the continuation, which is cheating a little bit, but that's alright, which is to, which we're still working on pottery and we intend to publish a final report, but in the meantime we both got involved in other big projects, and Yoram is now retired, and he was the director of the excavations at Bet Shean, Scythopolis, and had a huge backlog of material to publish. And I'm in much better shape. We're going to be wrapping our final report series up in about a year, hopefully, and I have another grant to do that, so that's coming along. And then, hopefully, we'll be able to – we've got – a lot of the material had been processed, we'll be able to finish that sort of abortive research project at Rehovot ba-Negev, which is the way we left it. If not, we excavated in 1986, then three short seasons in the next four years, just two week periods when the army wasn't training and they would let us go in, and we got some pretty good data to be published, but it's sort of hanging fire.
AS: On that note –
KH: Hanging fire?
AS: Well, maybe not on that particular note, I wonder if, just in closing, you might talk about the role of Dumbarton Oaks in the field of Byzantine studies, not just in field work but in the – I know that you're somewhat like second cousins, but I think you've had a long perspective here to see the role in the field and whether that role will change in the future.
JNSL: And also on it's position here in Washington, as a person who is an academic who's also located here.
KH: Let me say a few words about that. I think that we have been very successful from the University's perspective in cooperating with Dumbarton Oaks in appointments and research projects and so forth, but all of those, the positive things have declined in the last, sadly, in the last few years. George Majesko retired, we've had people leave the university that haven't been replaced, we don't have a medieval art historian at the University of Maryland, much less a Byzantinist. There's very little likelihood that we'll be able to appoint a Byzantinist in the history department in the near future. We're in the middle of a very serious financial crisis and that's been a heavy blow, and hopefully that will not be permanent. Others in the area have done better, but I think it's really important for this field that, there's been a tendency for the number of Byzantinists in all fields of Byzantium to decline in universities across the country and it's been a retrenchment, and hopefully that won't continue indefinitely. There are good opportunities in this area for universities to cooperate with Dumbarton Oaks, it's just not a very good climate right now. More generally, more positively, it's not the only institution in the world that promotes Byzantine studies. There are institutions in Paris, Munich, Berlin, there's the École Biblique in Jersusalem, there are other great libraries on Byzantium, but certainly in this country, this is the place that has by far the most ability to promote Byzantine studies and to support the work of scholars in institutions in the U.S. who are working in the field. Dumbarton Oaks had never been narrowly American-oriented, I mean, no one would every accuse us of that, and that's appropriate, but, as a matter of fact, Dumbarton Oaks really does a lot for Byzantine studies in the U.S., it's the kind of – there you're talking about new people coming into the field, providing support for the crucial research of young scholars who are just entering the field and then just as important is the support that the institution gives to junior faculty members getting their first books published, getting tenure, they need this kind of institution, and we all need it because it has, it is the concentration of research resources that is unparalleled in this country and has few parallels anywhere else. Don't you think?
JNSL: Yes.
KH: Would anyone disagree with me?
JNSL: We're so grateful for your time today, for sharing your memories and your anecdotes and your thoughts with us.]]>
ABF: We are Anna Bonnell-Freiden and Clem Wood, and we are here with Henry and Eunice Maguire to talk about their involvement at Dumbarton Oaks over the years at their house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 3, 2008. So, we'd like to start by asking you about your impressions of the social and intellectual atmosphere at Dumbarton Oaks when you first arrived, in 1971.
HM: Eunice…
EM: Oh, I shouldn't really be the one to start because you were the one who was the Junior Fellow – but maybe if that means I have less to say, I should go ahead.
HM: Well, you did more socializing.
EM: Well, we were both graduate students at that time, and I think even I – though I had not originally been an advisee of Professor Kitzinger's – was by that time. In fact, it was he who had first welcomed us to on our first visit, when we were still undergraduates; and Henry paid his first visit to America during the winter vacation of my senior year – and that turned out to be a very important visit, our visit to Dumbarton Oaks, and meeting him, and having his interest encourage us both in our directions. We were both interested in Byzantine art, but I was – no, we were also both interested in Western medieval art. And he encouraged both interests. So, I was, I think, still casting about, perhaps, either to narrow my thesis topic or to find a doable one for him, at the time you had your Junior Fellowship. So, it was a wonderful opportunity for me too, and I found all the staff and fellows very friendly and welcoming, and, of course, I was very excited to be given a seat in that fabulous library. The reading room was upstairs where, now, the Director of Studies office is and the outer office. It was all one big room with the long tables across; and I was lucky that I was given a seat near the window, so I had the sense of the garden being there. And I was sitting at the same table opposite Irina Andreescu, and behind me was Nancy Ševčenko, just to give you a sense of the atmosphere and the contemporaries. Also, the photographic resources…the photo collection, which was at that time under the care of Marlia Mundell – before she was married – and the other photo resources were very helpful to me because my work has always been quite visual; and I was looking for material which hadn't been published in the way in which I wished to approach it. So, that was very important, as were the museum collections, though I didn't know at the time that I would end up as a museum person. And there were many informal opportunities for stimulating conversations. The only disappointment was – and this maybe will come under one of your other questions, but – at that time, there was an official ban on inviting spouses to lunch in the Fellows Building. And, of course, a lot of the intellectual, informal intellectual conversation goes on – or used to – at those lunches, maybe even more than now, because I think people tended to go more all at the same time then, for lunch, because it was a smaller group. So, I did feel excluded in that sense and I felt that I was penalized for being a scholar, because scholars…scholarly colleagues were allowed to be invited, but if you happened to be a scholarly colleague and also a spouse, you couldn't; and I wasn't the only one who suffered in this way, among the various couples who were there over the years. The one who wasn't a spouse…I mean, the one who wasn't a Fellow, until that rule changed, couldn't mingle with colleagues in the Fellows Building; that was the only drawback, as far as the social and intellectual atmosphere goes.
HM: Although I would say that lunches were rather formal affairs and often were eaten in silence because the Junior Fellows were afraid to say anything because they would reveal their ignorance, and the senior faculty – and there were a fair number in those days – they often weren't on speaking terms with each other. So, they didn't speak either. So I'm not sure you missed an enormous amount, except for the food, which was quite good.
EM: Well, the other drawback for me, of course – and that was jumping ahead to your question about daily routine – that my time was really circumscribed by the challenge of finding affordable childcare, or childcare that was affordable to two graduate students. So, I remember that one Saturday, Irina Andreescu said, "I think it's outrageous that you can't come to lunch. I'm going to invite you and Gavin"; so, this was our son who turned two at the end of January that year. "And, because they might not approve of that, I'm going to do it on Saturday." So, I think…I don't remember whether lunch was served on Saturday, but I do remember we were the only people in the room. But she made a point of bringing me in to have lunch with her on Saturday to have lunch with her, with this tiny child on my lap.
HM: So, you asked about parties. There was one memorable…one party I remember that year was a Guy Fawkes party, which was organized by Charlotte Roueché, who was actually not officially a Fellow. She was somewhat in the same position as Eunice. She had a fellowship, I think, from Newnham, but she elected to spend it as D.O.; but since she wasn't officially a D.O. Fellow, she couldn't come to the lunches and this kind of thing. Anyway, she organized this Guy Fawkes party in the Fellows Building; and everyone was there, including Paul Lemerle, who was one of the senior visitors at that time. And I remember our son…he had some grandchildren, so he was very taken with our son, and our son was spreading marshmallows on his lapels. They were roasting marshmallows in the fire.
EM: Yes, and Lemerle was dressed very formally in a beautiful dark suit, and there were these sticky little fingers all over his suit [laughter].
CW: Where was this?
EM: In the Fellows Building, facing the fireplace. We actually roasted marshmallows and maybe even hotdogs in the fireplace.
HM: In those days, there were some interesting parties there. There was another party, which I think was on one of our later visits, when Seka Allen…I asked her for a recipe for a punch, and she came up with some sort of strawberry punch which she said was delicious, and it was, but it was actually very potent, and many people went away somewhat tipsy.
EM: What I remember was the Halloween party, when people came in costumes. And some of the Pre-Columbian Fellows wore, kind of, Day of the Dead masks; and it was wonderful to see them dancing in those, even with the mask of the back of the head, so the boots were pointing in the opposite way from what seemed to be the face. And I remember that the Magaws came as Justinian and Theodora and danced very elegantly in those costumes.
ABF: So did a lot of your social life revolve around the Fellows' Building at that time?
HM: Quite a lot of it, yes, because that was one place where you could have large gatherings, because the apartments that D.O. provided were very small. But, of course, we had a social life outside of Dumbarton Oaks as well. So, we knew some people in Washington
EM: But speaking of outside of Dumbarton Oaks, one thing I didn't mention that was amazing and, in those days, tremendously – a very useful privilege – was that they had runners to go to the Library of Congress to get books that were there but not at D.O. – which saved a lot of time. And later on, when the runners were stopped, they managed to get stacks privileges for us, so that we could go to the Library of Congress and find our own books. I think that lasted until the Library of Congress re-shelving system became so backlogged that it was impossible with a stack pass to find the books – which was too bad, but it was very – and I think, also, of course, it must continue with the Hellenic Center, the library. The cooperation between libraries was so facilitating. That was great.
ABF: Did you have a lot of contact with the Center for Hellenic Studies?
HM: No, not a great deal, no.
EM: I didn't, no. I think some people did who were dealing on philosophy topics, or something like that. But the art historians didn't, maybe because there weren't as many art history…
HM: The library is very not strong in art history, not nearly as strong as D.O., so we didn't really have much reason to D.O.
EM: The D.O. Byzantine library used to keep up with a very wide range of fields: lots of archaeological material, lots of ancient Greek and Roman, and lots of Western medieval, so it was very good for general research on Byzantine topics.
ABF: And so you often spent that year working in the library?
HM: Yes, essentially trying to finish my thesis. That's probably true of most Junior Fellows. You know, they arrive with an unfinished thesis and they struggle to get it done before the ax falls and they are ejected. I think that's a very typical experience. Usually, the first part of the year is more relaxed. I mean, I could tell when I was Director of Studies that there was a change in mood in the lunch room come about March. People would see the end of their fellowships and become much more serious.
ABF: So, in those first years, who were the scholars who had the greatest impact on you?
HM: Well, I mean, of course, my two supervisors – the supervisors of my thesis – had the greatest impact, though neither of them were at Dumbarton Oaks at the time; those would be Kitzinger and Ševčenko. But in later years, I came to know Alexander Kazhdan, and he had a very strong influence on my work; and perhaps also Robert Browning, in different ways. Kazhdan was very interested in social history, and obviously saints and saints' lives, and he also had a strong interest in Byzantine literature as literature, which in those days was somewhat unusual. Whereas, Browning was more of a philologist, but he was interested in Byzantine gardens, so I found a kindred spirit there; and he was also very, very kind in his advice. Even if you made horrible mistakes, he would point them out very kindly and set you straight, so I appreciated working with him.
ABF: And what was your thesis topic?
HM: The thesis topic…it was a slightly strange topic. It was about the ecphrases (which are descriptions of works of art) and specifically about one feature of them, which is that they often talk about the emotions of the figures in the scenes; and, in those days, sort of in the '60s, people didn't think of Byzantine painting as being emotional. It was connected with modernist painting and thought of as being abstract; and so, as a result, these ecphrases were thought of being essentially false, not giving a sort of correct impression of Byzantine painting. So, the thesis was partly, in a way, to exonerate the ecphrases and say that they did have something to say about what the Byzantines thought about painting and, secondly, to show that there was this strong emotional element in Byzantine art; and I focused on depictions of sorrow. And now, of course, this is absolutely perceived wisdom; I mean, people are very aware of this aspect of Byzantine art. But back then, you know when I told people the topic, they thought it was a sort of non-topic, because they didn't think there was such a thing as emotion in Byzantine art. Anyway, that was it.
ABF: But they believed in you.
HM: Well, eventually. Eventually, you know, I published it. Always with these things, you find that other people are working on the same lines. So, what you might imagine is a totally new and original direction that you are taking, you find that people at the same time in different places are doing the same thing. So, another scholar who worked on somewhat the same assumptions was Hans Belting, although in different ways. So, his work has been very influential. So, I think that yes now this is generally agreed that this is an important aspect of Byzantine painting.
ABF: Did you know Belting at D.O.?
HM: Belting – he came, yes.
EM: Yes, we met him there.
HM: Yes, we met him there on several occasions
EM: And there were other people too who were not officially posted or connected with DO over a period of time but who would come as readers or perhaps as speakers and stay for a few days; and one of those people who had a great influence on me, in encouraging me personally and helping me…giving me some courage with developing aspects of my work that were not simply visual, was Peter Brown, who was there for a whole semester reading everyday when he was teaching at Catholic University as a Mellon Professor – that was sometime before he was at Princeton. So, that was very helpful to me, because I was still working on my dissertation at that time, long-distance from my adviser. There were other people whose names you didn't mention, though all the ones you did mention were people who very much broadened my way of thinking and also gave personal encouragement, which is one of the wonderful things, I'm sure you would agree, about Dumbarton Oaks – people like Robert van Nice, who was there putting together the archival photographs and drawings, his amazing drawings of Hagia Sophia. His love for that one building really was inspiring; and I was working on a subject in architectural sculpture for my dissertation. And then I think I mentioned Megaw. Davis was another one of the great figures who was there off-and-on frequently; and John Meyendorff. And then, in the library, you mentioned Seka Allen. She was a bibliographer, as you probably know; but she did take a personal interest in everybody. She was a wonderful social pivot, really, because she knew – she and Irene Vaslef, the Byzantine librarian – knew what interests people had, more than we might discover by casual conversation among ourselves. And she would help – they both would help bring people together – as well as leading you to the right books, they would lead you to the right people to discuss some aspect that maybe you were just beginning to explore, which was another wonderful grace really, to have their attention to everyone. And ones' contemporaries – people slightly younger or slightly older – also had sometimes…quite by chance you would meet somebody in the stacks or you would see a book that somebody opposite you in the reading room was reading, and you would ask about it, and it would reinforce the direction you were just beginning to take or that you had been taking but you thought that no one in the field would approve of or encourage you to go in another way along a path that you were trying to follow. I remember conversations like that, for instance, with people like David Olster, who was working with antique texts when I was beginning to try to explore them in some unfamiliar directions – and Leslie MacCoull, when I was beginning to work with Coptic Egypt.
HM: I should mention that the second time I visited Dumbarton Oaks, when Ihor Ševčenko was still there; and he had been asked by Ernst Kitzinger if he could be the second superviser – reader – of my thesis; and he said, "Well, I'll have to examine this candidate first." So they flew me down from Cambridge to Dumbarton Oaks; and I met Ihor and Nancy for lunch. They gave me lunch in the building that is at the corner, where sort of S Street turns the corner – they had a house there. We had this long lunch, and he served two bottles of wine – I think we must have had the best part of one-and-a-half bottles of wine, between the three of us. So, at the end of this, he produced a couple of Byzantine epigrams and said, "Please translate these." Byzantine epigrams are not, you know, the easiest things to translate; but it just happened that I had already read these before. But I was able, in spite of my slightly inebriated state, to make sense of them.
EM: Maybe it helped.
HM: Maybe it helped, yes. So he said, "Okay, I'll take you on. I'll be your supervisor." So that was my exam [laughter].
CW: That's a great story; and was this when the library was still on the top floor of the Main House? You were working next to everyone?
HM: Yes, yes, yes. It was in those days it was before they even had air conditioning. So, yes, it was very hot up there in the summer. In fact, I think Dumbarton Oaks more or less sort of closed down in the summer. They didn't have summer fellowships. The faculty went off to the hills of Europe, and it was too hot to work.
EM: It was also very conducive to browsing because they had to extend the stacks underneath the eaves, so there were funny, kind of changes in level, which they carpeted over to make a little less hazardous. But, for me, it meant lots of places where I could sit, pull books off the shelf, spread them out, and see which ones I really wanted to take out and which ones I didn't. While I was doing that, I came across a number of very early, sometimes eighteenth- or nineteenth-century editions of books that I might or might not have heard of. And I started taking those down to Irene Vaslef, and that was the beginning of the rare book collection, which hadn't been separated from the other things at that time, as far as the Byzantine library went; and she asked me if I would continue to keep an eye out for things like that for her.
HM: It was very nice to be in the old library, sort of after hours, when it was more or less empty, and you could imagine yourself as a kind of French aristocrat in his chateau with all these books at your disposal, in strange places, in cupboards. It had a lot of character.
EM: I bet. There was that spooky closet behind the elevator, where some of the books were kept. When you went in there, you would hear the creaking of the elevator and somehow have the feeling that if somebody shut the door, you might never get out until someone else needed a book from there [laughter]
CW: So then after that year you went to Harvard right away?
HM: Actually, it was…Yes.
CW: Or was it after the second year?
HM: I had a year as a Fellow. Then I spent the year teaching at the University of Massachusetts and then to Harvard. And so then I had three years in teaching at Harvard and three years at Dumbarton Oaks.
CW: And were you…was that the first group of joint appointees?
HM: More or less, but there were joint appointees not only with Harvard but with other universities at more or less the same time. So, I think Rob Nelson, for example, had a joint appointment, I suppose, with Chicago, a little bit after mine. I'm not sure exactly what the chronology of them was, but there was a sort of a group of these joint appointments about the same time.
ABF: There was Michael McCormick as well.
HM: Yes, he was. I think maybe Ioli Kalavrezou had one as well, if I'm not mistaken.
CW: So, I guess you were at Harvard for the first three years, so that was really before the talk of moving Byzantine Studies there.
HM: Well, at Harvard there was really no talk of it. But as soon as I got to Dumbarton Oaks for the second three years, it was very much in the air. And it was a fairly tense time, actually, at Dumbarton Oaks, because the future was obviously very uncertain – especially that first semester or year, when, as you spoke of in your list of questions, the triumvirate was sort of taking over the duties of Director of Studies. That was a rather strange period.
EM: When was it that they lent highlights of the Dumbarton Oaks collection to the Fogg? I remember that we had a feeling that it was a kind of double-edged sword. Because, on one hand, it was very nice to see Byzantine things in Cambridge; but, on the other hand, we wondered, "Does that mean that they're thinking of moving the whole collection?" Because, if it does, it will mostly go underground, because, well, Harvard University Art Museums is now closed and planning an expansion, but they will always have to have a lot of wonderful things in storage because, unless they have everything out in study storage – in other words, storage rooms with everything visible to the public – there won't be room to display everything that they have; and clearly, a lot of the Byzantine things would go underground. And if that happened, then to some extent we saw that as emblematic as what would happen to Byzantine studies.
HM: Well, I think the main plan was to move the library and the fellowship program and, to be frank, the funds, up to Cambridge; and then to leave – obviously they couldn't move the gardens – and the gardens have their own endowment in any case, so they were going to leave them. And it seems they were seriously planning to do this, but then a number of alumni, powerful alumni, objected, so Harvard backed off. So it was people like Joseph Alsop, who kind of saved the – saved the intellectual aspect of Dumbarton Oaks for Washington
EM: Because he cared about Washington, as well as because he cared about Dumbarton Oaks
ABF: Who favored the move?
HM: I suppose, well – I think some of the professors at Harvard favored it because there would have been more money to spend there more broadly on the humanities, and it would have enriched the library at Harvard – and the books would all have been in one place. Because, it is true, that even today, there are gaps in the Widener Library that correspond to books that are at Dumbarton Oaks; so this is obviously irritating for Harvard professors. So – but I think it was mainly probably attractive to the administration because D.O. had a huge endowment (especially in those days it seemed very big), and it was being spent on what seemed like very esoteric subjects, and there was no teaching going on. So, I remember Bill Loerke, who was Director of Studies, you know, while this was all brewing up, had a visit from the Harvard – some people from Harvard, I don't know exactly who – he told me that they asked him what was going on at Dumbarton Oaks. He showed them all these books that had been published, shelves of them, and this made no impression on them at all – because, you know, what are sort of twenty feet of books compared to hundreds of students who could be supported with the same amount of money? So I think it was mainly the administration's scheme.
ABF: Was there talk among people at Dumbarton Oaks about the legacy of the Blisses, in so far as they had very specifically left the money for the Byzantine and Pre-Columbian programs?
HM: Yes, I mean, obviously that was one of the things people talked about. I think people were more worried about the future of Byzantine Studies; because, at that time, Dumbarton Oaks was – I don't want to go sort of into later questions – but it did at that time play a major role in the field because of its active fieldwork and the number of people who had been on the staff – Byzantinists who had been on staff at Dumbarton Oaks – and these joint appointments. So it was very important in promoting the field in America and abroad too. But, so, I think that was seen as being under threat; that, if they moved the endowment to Cambridge, then the money would have been spent just broadly on the humanities, so on Western medieval and on the Renaissance and history and all sorts of other fields as well. And the particular flavoring of Byzantium would have been lost. But, of course, it didn't turn out that way, so that was partly why, I think, we had this very strange situation of the three, sort of junior assistant professors playing the role of Director of Studies, which was strange, in a sense, because I was in charge of the publications; and so I was writing letters to senior scholars, you know, advising them on how they could improve their manuscripts, which probably didn't go down very well.
EM: How else was…I can't remember how else the responsibilities were divided up between John Duffy and…
HM: Irina Andreescu was in charge of fieldwork and John Duffy was in charge of the fellowship program.
EM: That's right.
ABF: And this is while you also had this joint appointment?
EM: Yes.
HM: This was, yes, when I'd moved down to Dumbarton Oaks. So, yes, I still had, officially, a joint appointment with Harvard, although I wasn't actually doing any teaching up there. I spent three years teaching at Harvard, and basically partly visited Dumbarton Oaks and then three years at Dumbarton Oaks.
ABF: And it was in those three years at Dumbarton Oaks when you began to pick up those responsibilities that had previously fallen upon the Director of Byzantine Studies?
HM: The Director of Byzantine Studies, yes. And then, at the end of the year, Giles Constable came as Director, and he assumed the responsibilities of Director of Studies himself. So, then we were sort of free to pursue our own research, so we had essentially two years of research fellowship – which was very nice.
ABF: So can you tell us more about that experience of working so closely with Irina Andreescu and John Duffy?
HM: Well, as far of the three of us were concerned, it went fairly smoothly. I actually, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed working with the publications. So, that worked fine. The uncomfortable part was the sort of political goings-on outside. For example, at the Byzantine Studies conference, we felt, I think, rather on the spot – people asking us questions: "What's going on, what's going to happen?" Which was really out of our hands. And, of course, people at Dumbarton Oaks were either nervous or angry or both, so.
ABF: And what were your responsibilities?
HM: Well, as I said, with the publications, it was mainly that I was in charge of the Dumbarton Oaks Papers. So, that would be, sort of, doing a first editing of manuscripts when they came in, finding readers for the manuscripts, sometimes suggesting ways that they could be clarified or improved, and, likewise, with the books.
EM: And putting pressure on authors who were taking a bit longer than expected.
HM: Yes, and on readers who were taking forever to read the manuscripts.
CW: And so then you were next directly involved with D.O., as a Senior Fellow in the '80s?
HM: Yes, yes, and that when was Angeliki Laiou was Director; and I think there was a feeling that they needed some kind of art history presence. So, what I basically did was to advise on matters of art history and read manuscripts or select books for the library and participate in seminars, and this kind of thing – and to some extent, to do some of my work
EM: That was when you were the Art History Adviser, you mean, which was different from when you were the Senior Fellow.
HM: Oh yes, that was when I was on the board of Senior Fellows, but that's a different…
CW: That was the Senior Research Associate?
HM: Well when I was at Dumbarton Oaks for that year, I was Senior Research Associate but I was also on the board of Senior Fellows, which means that we visited three times a year just for a day or two for meetings; but I wasn't in residence.
CW: Right, but you were for that year.
HM: For that year, yes.
CW: So you had been there at the end of the '70s, when the faculty…the permanent faculty, were disbanded?
HM: Well, I wouldn't say that they were exactly disbanded. They dwindled away. Under Giles Constable, they sort of dwindled. Then there was something of a revival under Laiou because she brought people in to work on various projects – but not with faculty status, but as research associates. So, the end of the faculty status, I suppose, would have been under Giles Constable; because, before his time, the Directors of Studies and many of the other people involved had the status of professors at Harvard University. And this, I think, actually was a fundamental change, especially as far as the Directors of Studies were concerned, because now the position of Director of Studies is a non-tenured position – it's for five years, which may be renewable. So, in effect, what that means is that you are not going to get anyone applying who already has tenure, unless they can make some sort of deal with their university to release them.
EM: And let them come back.
HM: And let them come back, which is what happened in my case, when I was Director of Studies – that I was able to get five years release from the University of Illinois; but it means that, for one thing, that person is unable to stay for more than five years, because no university is going to let you go for ten years, so. And, also, not all universities will do it; I mean, Harvard, for instance, won't let you go away for more than two years without losing your tenure. So effectively it means that now that candidates are restricted to people at the ends of their career – if they have five years left in their career, they spend it at Dumbarton Oaks – or younger scholars who maybe were unable to get tenure somewhere or are in some sort of unusual position where they don't have tenure; but it excludes, sort of people who are kind of in the most active portions of their career, who have tenure somewhere, unless they can make a sort of deal to leave short-term. So, it has very much weakened the position of Director of Studies, and it makes the Director of Studies much less active; because his position vis-à-vis – or her position vis-à-vis – the Director is much less strong than it would be if he or she had had tenure, so; but that was a major change.
EM: Had tenure at D.O., you mean?
HM: Well, at Harvard it would have been, effectively, because they had their tenure at Harvard, they were tenured professors. So, Kitzinger, for example, Loerke, were tenured Harvard professors.
ABF: Can you tell us about the publication of the Cypriot fieldwork that Alice Murray mentioned this to me at some point?
HM: Yes. Well, when I arrived as Director of Studies, I found all these unpublished projects, manly relating to fieldwork in Cyprus; and one of my, sort of, ambitions was to revive the fieldwork aspect of Dumbarton Oaks, and I thought this would be one way to do it. Because, one of the reasons that fieldwork had been abandoned was precisely because there was so much that hadn't been published, and so it was seen as sort of wasteful extravagance to do this fieldwork and not have it appear in print. So, that was my main motivation – and perhaps also because I'd visited many of these places in Cyprus and was interested in them. And it was mainly a matter of kind of fanning the embers of these various projects. I think the authors had become discouraged, and they received no encouragement from Dumbarton Oaks. It was just sort of finding ways to facilitate their taking up the projects again, finishing them; which sometimes meant bringing them physically to Dumbarton Oaks or sometimes it was just providing general encouragement and saying, "We really want to publish them." And, as you know, Alice-Mary has carried this on.
CW: So that was part of your agenda as Director?
HM: It was one part of it, yes. I think what I wanted to do as Director of Studies was to open the place up, because it had the reputation of being rather enclosed and elitist. So, I tried to bring more activity into the Byzantine area, which was also what Angeliki Laiou wanted to do – for the Byzantine Center to have a more active, as opposed to a passive role. So, the fieldwork was part of this; and I was able to institute one or two projects associated with fieldwork; for example, the materials analysis of Byzantine ceramics, where we had some of the ceramics at the Walters and at Dumbarton Oaks tested and then we had a small colloquium devoted to the subject. But I wasn't successful in starting any sort of major new fieldwork projects outside of the United States, and this was one of my regrets, I suppose. If I have one regret about my period as Director of Studies, is that we weren't able to sort of reestablish active fieldwork. All we did was we would give grants, small grants, to people. So, people would come to us and say they wanted to do X, and we would give them 5000 dollars; but we didn't initiate anything ourselves. And I think this is sort of a missed opportunity, considering what D.O. had done in the past. Actually, after I left Dumbarton Oaks, actually, I did do a project on the mosaics in Porec which was funded by the Kress and the University of Illinois; it's the kind of thing that I think should probably have been done by Dumbarton Oaks. But, that aside, there were various other ways that, umm, I tried to be more active. I introduced a museum fellowship. So, we would have someone come for a year and sort of plan a small exhibition. I think that was a valuable way to sort of bring together the Byzantine Studies Center and the collection and also to bring some variety into the collection, so it wasn't just a static display, but there was some change in the exhibitions in it. So, I think that was, on the whole, a success; and we tried to have colloquia and symposia that would interest, sort of, people in western medieval history and art, and even Renaissance and ancient. We tried to sort of integrate Byzantine topics into sort of a wider frame. For example, we had a colloquium on women's space in Byzantium and in the West. So, I suppose, efforts of that kind – also the fieldwork archives, I tried to get them properly looked after. And, I was even involved in sort of excavating Dumbarton Oaks itself. In the boiler room, we discovered these rolled up canvases which were the paintings of the frescos at the Kariye Camii – perhaps you've seen them. But they were exhibited, umm…
EM: At Columbia
HM: At Columbia, yes and then in Istanbul; but we found them sort of rolled up and shoved under the boilers. So we took them out, and then they were eventually restored at great expense and insured for thousands and thousands of dollars before they were sent off to Istanbul. But I think that Angeliki Laiou as Director – she was certainly able to kind of revivify the Byzantine area and make it more interesting and active than it had been before. I think it had slightly fallen into the doldrums before she arrived.
EM: Well, her encouraging you to set up both colloquia in areas that hadn't been explored before, such as the Byzantine gardens and her own intellectual interests extended the dialogues and the range of scholars who came, to some extent; because I don't remember very much before her on Byzantine economics as an aspect of cultural history or Byzantine law in relation also to the culture. And those were things that she continued to not only encourage herself with her own work but to bring scholars to present their work – that really opened up the fields for others who hadn't really thought about these areas, I think.
HM: Another thing we did was introduce the short-term graduate residencies. Now, as you may know, anyone who is working on their dissertation or general exams can apply to spend two weeks at Dumbarton Oaks, free of charge, to use the library. And that's been very popular.
EM: What about the summer fellowships? Did you start those?
HM: No, I think it was Giles who started that. After he'd air-conditioned the building, he started the summer fellowships, yes.
CW: The colloquium on Byzantine garden culture has been cited on several occasions as an example – perhaps the sole example – of interdisciplinary academic activity at D.O.; but it seems to have a positive enclave in there.
HM: Well, that was due to a number of factors coming together. One was Joachim who had a genuine interest in Byzantine culture and gardens. And the other factor, I suppose, is a sort of change in the nature of Byzantine archeology and art history; because, in the old days – in the days of empiricism – there was virtually nothing to say about Byzantine gardens, because none exist and none have been excavated. So, it was a sort of non-topic; but there are a lot of descriptions of real and imaginary gardens. So, once you move into the area of reception – etiology – there's quite a lot to say about Byzantine garden culture; and also you can make connections, then, with other fields of garden culture. So I think that helped make it possible.
EM: It was also under Joachim's directorship as Director of Studies for the Garden Center that Irene Vaslef proposed, successfully, that I do that inter-departmental exhibition, which I think was the first inter-departmental exhibition (though it was a library exhibition) called Roman Constantinople, with rare, illustrated books from the Garden Library and the Byzantine Library. And, then, in the process of working on that, I found and was able to display the Fossati prints of Hagia Sophia, which had been transferred for some reason, maybe because it was such a rare book. They were wonderful, large lithographs in full color of the interior of Hagia Sophia, published in, I can't remember what…was it the '60s or '70s of the nineteenth century? They had been transferred to the Garden Library and totally lost track of – there was no record that they existed anymore. The people researching in the Garden Library had no particular reason to be interested in them, and the Byzantinists didn't know they were there. So, I guess in a way, this was a kind of, in more ways than one, a groundbreaking collaboration, to mine the resources and bring them together. It was certainly very enjoyable, and well-received I think. One of the former Byzantine librarians at Dumbarton Oaks was then a librarian for the National Gallery, and she wanted to have the exhibition or another version of it there; and Irene got a grant for it, but somehow the three of us never had time to make that happen, unfortunately. But it shows you how Dumabrton Oaks collection – both book and other collections – and combined resources can really have an outreach; and Dumbarton Oaks has been able, while the collection was waiting for its new reinstallation, to lend things to exhibitions, as you know, in Georgia and here at The Walters, which I think had a great impact on not only Byzantinists but other people who saw them in those places, people who might not have visited Dumbarton Oaks to see the collections there. So, all that outreach is something that is still happening, I think, but started, sort of in the '80s or '90s – the '90s probably – so it's relatively recent. I can't remember what year that was. It must have been the early '90s.
CW: You've already – you've talked a little about Constable and Laiou, but do you have any other impressions of other Directors you've seen.
HM: Well, umm, when I was first arrived as Junior Fellow, Tyler was the Director, and he struck me very much as being a gentleman of the old school – very popular with the staff. Well, I remember, he gave a sort of interview with each of the Junior Fellows when they first arrived and he explained a little bit to me about the legacy of the Blisses. He said, "Well, they were wealthy, but not really very wealthy." It wasn't really very kind, but I think probably Dumbarton Oaks was beginning to feel the limits of its endowment; and there were, I think, some financial problems that were another reason, I should have mentioned, why Harvard may have wanted to move the operations north – you know, have them more closely supervised. But yes, he was a courtly gentleman. And then there was Giles Constable, who was really very controversial. And then Thomson, who – Robert Thomson, who kept a – steadied the ship and was a fiscal conservative Scotsman –
EM: – and a good listener, I think.
HM: And a good listener, yes, but he sort of calmed down under his tenure; and then Laiou, I said was active. And I see her tenure as a kind of second golden age almost for the Byzantine Center at Dumbarton Oaks. And that's really the extent of my personal experience with the directors of Dumbarton Oaks.
ABF: In summing up, if you could give us some general thoughts about how Dumabrton Oaks has changed, and how it's been important to you, and ultimately how you think it's changed the field, or responded to changes in the field.
HM: Okay, well that's a lot of questions [laughter]. So, first of all, how it has changed…I mean, in the old days, speaking of the Byzantine Center…was very much the dominant center at Dumbarton Oaks, and there were virtually no Fellows at all in Landscape Architecture or Pre-Columbian; and, on the other hand, in the '50s, I think there might have been up to eight permanent staff members in the Byzantine Center, many of whom would have been Harvard faculty. And over the years, there's been something approaching parity between the three programs; and the staff of the Byzantine program has really dwindled to the Director of Studies, in effect – and, of course, there are also the people associated with the Museum and the Archives. So, it's become much smaller. As far as the Library's concerned, because of the sort of huge expansion in the number of books being published, the Library's become much more focused. So, again, even when Eunice and I arrived there, as Eunice said, they were collecting book on western medieval art. Now, it's very much focused on Byzantium. So, it's become narrow in its focus. Finally, I would say that it's become much more passive, as opposed to the early days, when it was much more active. So, there are no fieldwork programs, at the moment I think there are very few projects. It's really a library, a place where people find fellowships, and a collection; but it's not a sort of center that actively promotes the field. So, I would see those as the main changes over the course of time. As far as the relationships with Harvard are concerned, I would say they are much closer now then they were. I mean, it was founded as an independent project of a wealthy couple; but, over the years, its ties with Harvard have become closer and closer: there are the three Harvard professors who are in Cambridge, not at Dumbarton Oaks; I believe there are some fellowships that are earmarked for Harvard students; the library catalog is integrated with HOLLIS. So, it's much more tightly bound to Harvard than it used to be. The Directors always come from Harvard. As far as its impact in the field is concerned, obviously it's much smaller. It was, you know, very important, in the early days. Now, you know, except as a place to go and find books or to have a fellowship or to look at some very important pieces, it's no more important than any number of other places where there are books and fellowships and some objects you could look it. So, it doesn't have that special importance it used to have. One way in which it probably still can have a very positive impact in the field in America is through joint appointments; which have been a little bit controversial, because sometimes the joint appointments don't work out. These are the appointments where they appoint a junior person, an Assistant Professor, at some university, and Dumbarton Oaks pays half of the salary for the first five or six years until that person gets tenure. And, in the past, this has been a very good way to persuade universities to take on Byzantinists, where otherwise, they might go for some other field. They haven't always worked out, because the person doesn't always get tenure; but, in those cases when it does work out (which may be about fifty percent of them), it's obviously very important, because a large number of the people who now have tenured positions in Byzantine Studies started out on these joint appointments. So, that's one way D.O. could continue to be every important in the field of Byzantine Studies here in America. Then as far as my own work is concerned, it's really been fundamental, you know, because, at all stages, I've been able to benefit from the library and from meeting people there. It's just a wonderful place for meeting other scholars and sort of getting ideas or exchanging ideas – especially, I would say, I'm afraid, more in the old days than now, when there were more people around, when it was more active, and there were more people to meet. But, you know, it's still a beautiful place, and still, especially for those of us who live in this area, it's a wonderful library to use.
EM: Well, there's still an active program of informal talks, which I'm sure are important for those who can give them and attend them; and that was another thing that was new, I think, in the '90s – which was very good, I think. And, unfortunately, because, as you see, it takes up a fair chunk of your day just to get between Washington and Baltimore, even though they're on the map very close, it hasn't been possible for us to attend those since we've been in Baltimore. So, maybe that sense of intellectual exchange is more present still than we've been able to appreciate since we've been here.
HM: Could be, could be, yes; and they certainly still have the symposia and colloquia, which are –
EM: – very good
HM: Very good, yes. I don't suppose it's possible, really, for the old days to return, because it was dependent on the largesse, in the first place, of the Blisses; and when the Blisses were no longer alive, obviously that font of fonts dried up, and D.O. had to live strictly within its means.
CW: It seems to be doing well for itself.
ABF: Yeah, financially, I think it's very stable, from what I understand.
HM: Well, I imagine with the sort of general decrease in the value of the Harvard endowment, Dumbarton Oaks has a prospect with that.
ABF: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
HM: No, just to thank you for coming and hearing our impressions of the past.
ABF: It was a pleasure.
CW: Yeah, thank you for having us. We're happy to hear them.
EM: We hope before you go, you'll tell us a little about yourselves.
ABF: Sure, we'll turn this off.]]>
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!]]>
Emma is a junior at Harvard University concentrating in Medieval History and Literature and pursuing a secondary field in French Language and Literature. She is particularly interested in medieval materiality, and in conjunction with her department is currently designing a course called Taking Place: Medieval/Material/Culture that has an accompanying blog. Emma writes:
I am honored to have had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C in mid-October for "Sign and Design." I'm fairly certain I was the only undergraduate student there, and I felt a little nervous in the presence of such an array of scholars. But as it turned out, my questions were welcomed. All of the brilliant scholars I met at Dumbarton Oaks were more than happy to talk about medieval scholarship with me, despite my 20-year-old novice-ness. I came away from the conference with 12 pages full of notes, a head full of ideas, some wonderful new friends, and a thesis idea. I was so inspired by the last segment of the conference, "Instrumental Images," in which Ghislain Brunel of the Archives Nationales in Paris and Beatrice Fraenkel of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales gave brilliant papers that both played on the idea of the signature or the logo in medieval texts, that I would like to consider medieval insignia in tandem with the modern logo for my thesis next year. I am thankful for such a mind-opening experience.
Denva is a third-year PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.
While at Dumbarton Oak's "Sign and Design" symposium this weekend, I was reminded of the reverence given to the word in the medieval and early modern period. Christ was the word made flesh and even though we and theologians of the Middle Ages turn to his representation time and time again, it is actually the word that preceded everything.
Yet, how can we as art historians talk about words? Should we not leave this to our friends in the study of history and literature? I am reminded of the talks given by Katrin Kogman-Appel and Irvin Cemil Schick on Jewish and Islamic art in which words are not only used as signifiers to create meaning but also, through their careful rendering, are meant to be seen in the same light as images. They illustrate reverence; they presence the sacred. We also see that texts can be frames or storehouses for images. Cynthia Hahn in her talk on the Gellone Sacramentary showed us that not only do images punctuate the text, they stand as markers for our attention, focusing our gaze and centering us in the moment.
It has been suggested by scientists that we use the right side of our brain to process images and our left to process text. What, then, should we make of this slippery collision of two different forms of signification? Must we tease them apart as our brain does or can we see them as constantly referring to each other in a sort of dance? I believe the scholars at the "Sign and Design" symposium would suggest the latter and I think those who took part in the creation of the objects wouldn't disagree.
Erika is a fourth-year PhD student in the History of Art and Architecture. Her dissertation research is on medieval manuscript illumination, monasticism, and Bibles in medieval Spain.
Prior to October's "Sign and Design" symposium, I had visited Dumbarton Oaks on two occasions. Each of these prior visits had been organized as a full-day session for a group of students looking at some particular part of the collection, in one instance Byzantine ivories and in another a whole variety of objects from the Pre-Columbian Collection. These sessions were focused, intense, and very much object-based. They also benefited from the participation of fellows, who led us through discussions of objects they knew particularly well.
I bring up these previous visits to give a sense of the great variety of my experiences at Dumbarton Oaks. In contrast to these single-day sessions, the "Sign and Design" symposium offered me something of a very different nature. The speakers who presented papers during these two and a half days were selected meticulously and with an eye to fruitful discussions between scholars in different disciplines. Shared themes emerged elegantly in talks that were—at least superficially—very different. The potential for interdisciplinarity is inherent in the nature and mission of Dumbarton Oaks, but this was the first time that I had been able to participate in it so fully.
My participation in this symposium had almost immediate effects on my teaching and my own studies. Within a week, I was already incorporating some of the images and discussions from "Sign and Design" into the course I am teaching currently, "Picturing the Bible, 300–1300." In particular, talks by Herbert Kessler and Katrin Kogman-Appel helped me to widen the scope of what I had been teaching.
My one-on-one interactions with the symposium speakers during lunches and evening receptions were also wonderfully and unexpectedly beneficial. I will relate but one single example out of many: although Irene Winter is a Professor Emerita in my own department, I had never had the chance to speak to her until this symposium. Although I am not working in her specific field, she was amazingly generous with her time, offering me some very thoughtful advice on starting (and ultimately finishing!) a dissertation.
I am filled with gratitude toward Dumbarton Oaks for hosting such a rewarding event and for making my visit possible through the Bliss Award. If "Sign and Design" is any indication of what one can expect of a Dumbarton Oaks symposium, then I look forward to many more years of symposium attendance.
Natasha is a second-year graduate PhD student in Historical Musicology. Natasha is also pursuing a secondary field degree in Medieval Studies. Her research interests include troubadour music and its reception history, as well as modern interpretations of Early Music.
The rich and sensuous spectacle offered by the gardens, the Music Room, and the presentation slides emphasized one of the symposium's conclusions: to question the meaning of signs, designs, words, and symbols to engage all the senses. As a student of historical musicology—and in particular of the music and culture of medieval troubadours—this conclusion is especially meaningful to me. Auditory entities, particularly when inscribed and ornamented on the page of a manuscript, also function as signs that provide meaning unique and immediate to their cultures. While presentations recognized that symbols and signs are crystallized in the surface onto which they were inscribed, discussion returned these signs to their human creators and to their original status as objects deeply imbedded with immediate meaning.
I am deeply appreciative that I had the opportunity to participate in the "Sign and Design" symposium, and will forever remember the unique feeling of interdisciplinary, scholarly, and humanistic community that it fostered.]]>