Dumbarton Oaks Gardens Film

To all our followers, thank you for supporting the Robert Van Nice Collection blog and our dear colleague Clare Moran.  We hope that through her work at the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA), you gained an understanding about archival processing and an appreciation on the life and amazing work of one of our protagonists, Robert Van Nice.

As Clare mentioned in the previous post, “don’t click that ‘unsubscribe’ button just yet.” Stay tuned for more updates about our activities and discoveries.  In the meantime, here’s a short post about the “re-discovery” and recent screening of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens film:

ICFA holds unique footage of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens, portions of which may have been recorded as early as the mid-1920s along with scenes from the 1930s and 1940s.   In black and white and color, the film contains garden views, winter scenes, and summer scenes at the pool, as well as a glimpse of Mildred Barnes Bliss and her friends at the Orangery and in the gardens.

Dumbarton Oaks pool

By the pool at Dumbarton Oaks

The Dumbarton Oaks Gardens film was re-discovered in early 2011 when ICFA staff learned that 3 film reels in cold storage contained footage of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.  Films were sent to Colorlab for preservation and digitization in October 2011 and the project was completed in March 2012.  Currently, all of the original films are safely stored in one of the freezers in ICFA’s cold storage area.

For more information about the film and presentation, be sure to check the following:

• DO/Conversations Blog http://tinyurl.com/bsjveax
• Dumbarton Oaks Library and Archives Facebook http://tinyurl.com/bm8yefa and http://tinyurl.com/cd6p9vh

As part of the D.O. Conversation series on July 20, 2012, Archives Specialist Rona Razon described the “re-discovery” of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens film and the process of preserving it.  The second part of the presentation included commentaries from Archivist and House Collection Manager James Carder and Director of Gardens and Grounds Gail Griffin during the screening of the film.

Enjoy the show!