The 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies

Atypical Patrimony. Collecting Byzantine Art in American University Museums

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Abstract

American university museums became important institutions for the study and popularisation of Byzantine art in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Largely confined to major East Coast universities, university museums, led by Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks, acquired significant amount of Byzantine art between the two World Wars and sponsored excavations. For the most part this interest was motivated not from personal connections with Greek culture or the lands of the Byzantine Empire, but because of the aesthetic significance and scholarly interest of this art. The French and English Mandates in Syria and Palestine aided these acquisitions, a colonial heritage of Byzantine studies that has remained little studied.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Nov. 7, 2021 | Accepted: March 16, 2022 | Published Aug. 22, 2022 | Language: en

Keywords Byzantine art • French mandate • Royall Tyler • English mandate • English Mandate • French Mandate • Robert and Mildred Bliss • American University Museums • American university museums

Copyright © 2022 Robert Nelson. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-590-2/004


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