Museum Series #7 Dumbarton Oaks
by Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Event Information
#Museum Series is a program of curatorial talks proposed by the Villa Albertine in collaboration with the museums of the Washington DC area.

About this event

On February 4th, we are honored to be joined by Thomas B. F. Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, for a virtual talk highlighting the extraordinary collection of Dumbarton Oaks.

This conversation will be moderated by Faya Causey, former Head of academic programs at the NGA, and followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Register HERE

Zoom link will be sent before the event.

Fri, February 4, 2022  6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST

Thomas B. F. Cummins

Thomas B. F. Cummins is the author, editor, or coeditor of ten books, the latest of which is Sacred Matters: Animacy and Authority in the Americas, coedited with Steve Koisiba and John Janusek and published by Dumbarton Oaks in 2020. Cummins is a member of the Executive Committee of Dumbarton Oaks, and former member and Chair of the Pre-Columbian Senior Fellows.

Cummins served as the Director of the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies, the Interim Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, the Chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Member of the Comisión Sectorial del Sistema Nacional de Museos, Perú. He is a Faculty Member of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, where he is codirecting, with Professor Alejandro de la Fuente, a three-year international seminar, Afro-Latin American Art: Building the Field, funded by a generous Getty Foundation Connecting Art History Grant.

A member of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at the Museum of Modern Art and editor in chief of the Grove Encyclopedia of Latin American Art (Oxford University Press), Cummins is also a Member of the Executive Committee of Villa I Tatti, Florence. He received La Orden “Al Mérito por Servicios Distinguidos” En el Grado de Gran Cruz from the Republic of Peru, the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize from the Modern Language Association, and the Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association. Professor Cummins is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Home of the Humanities

Dumbarton Oaks is a Harvard University research institute, library, museum, and garden located in Washington, DC. The institution is the legacy of Robert and Mildred Bliss, collectors of art and patrons of learning in the humanities. The museum houses world-class collections of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, two areas of interest to the Blisses. A third revolves around the historic garden, which Mildred Bliss created in close collaboration with renowned landscape designer Beatrix Farrand. Since 1940, when the Blisses gifted the estate and collections to Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks has supported research in Byzantine Studies. Later it embraced Pre-Columbian and Garden and Landscape Studies. The support takes the form of fellowships and other awards, scholarly conferences, publications, and digital initiatives. In recent years, Dumbarton Oaks has also developed educational programs focusing on its collections and garden.