Written by Deena Gorland, ICFA Intern (Fall 2014) Edited by Rona Razon and Shalimar White Due to previous experiences working at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic, I was relatively well-prepared for the challenges inherent in processing substantial quantities of oversize materials in the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) of Dumbarton Oaks. Certainly, … Continue reading
Written by Fani Gargova, Byzantine Research Associate, and Rona Razon, Archivist
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Written by Jessica Cebra, ICFA Departmental Assistant The story of conservator Carroll Wales, and concomitantly, of his conservation sidekick Constantine Tsaousis, continues as more is revealed in the context of the Byzantine Institute’s smaller side projects, by way of a visually rich collection of color slides donated by Wales in the 1990s. In ICFA, our … Continue reading
ICFA is proud to announce that The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and Papers, ca. late 1920s-2000s finding aid has been awarded the 2014 Frederic M. Miller Finding Aid Award by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC). On April 26, 2014, during the Spring 2014 MARAC conference in Rochester, NY, ICFA’s Archivist Rona Razon received the 2014 … Continue reading
Written by Jessica Cebra, ICFA Departmental Assistant ICFA’s collections are known for its documentation of architecture, mosaics, frescoes and other aspects of material culture from Byzantium, but the actual fieldworkers and skilled craftsmen who worked to restore and conserve these centuries-old buildings and artworks deserve recognition. Here we’d like to highlight the work of Carroll … Continue reading
The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) presents a new online exhibit entitled “A Truthful Record: The Byzantine Institute Films”: http://www.doaks.org/icfa/truthful-record. This exhibit aims to reveal the context of the films created by the Byzantine Institute between the 1930s and 1940s by combining them with archival records from the collection The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton … Continue reading
Written by Beth Bayley, Archivist Assistant Ah, the telegram! Before email and texting and chat, it was the only way to deliver news quickly. Flag semaphore, smoke signals, and carrier pigeons all had their flaws as communication systems, so when the electrical telegraph was invented, the world got a lot smaller, a lot quicker. Telegrams, … Continue reading
The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) presents Before Byzantium: The Early Activities of Thomas Whittemore (1871-1931): http://www.doaks.org/library-archives/icfa/before-byzantium. This online exhibition focuses on Thomas Whittemore’s activities prior to founding of the Byzantine Institute in 1930. Bringing together three of ICFA’s archival collections—The Thomas Whittemore Papers, Early Archaeological Projects Associated with Thomas Whittemore, and The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks … Continue reading
Thomas Whittemore was an impressive person. The previous blog posts “The Leading Protagonist: Thomas Whittemore” and “Setting the Stage: Background on the Byzantine Institute” describe his grand project with the Byzantine Institute to restore, preserve, and document Byzantine monuments and how skilled he was in collecting funds for both humanitarian work and the restoration of Hagia … Continue reading
Written by Beth Bayley, Archivist Assistant People today just love to sing the praises of technology. We especially love to think back to the past, and speculate about how much more our predecessors could have accomplished if they had our technology (Lewis and Clark with GPS! Or Da Vinci with a laptop!). Here in ICFA, … Continue reading
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