Dumbarton Oykes

About

Dumbarton Oaks began in June 1920, when Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Bliss purchased a house and grounds in Washington, D.C., which they named Dumbarton Oaks. They commissioned landscape designer Beatrix Farrand to design the gardens, making the estate one of Washington's outstanding residences. Introduced to Parisian art dealers by Royall Tyler, the Blisses developed a passion for collecting Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art. Having begun acquiring Byzantine objects in the early 1920s, they lent important pieces to the first major international special exhibition of Byzantine art, held in Paris in 1931. After deciding in 1936 to give Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard University, they acquired 153 more Byzantine objects between 1936 and 1940, before donating the entire estate — grounds, buildings, library, and art collections — to Harvard in 1940. Today, the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection comprises more than twelve hundred objects dating from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, including gold, silver, and bronze vessels used in the celebration of the Eucharist, late Roman and Byzantine jewelry, cloisonné enamels, glass, ivory icons, and illuminated manuscripts.