Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Institute - Moving Image Collection
ICFA holds a small collection of black-and-white and color 16mm moving images:
the Red Sea Monastery of Saint Anthony in Egypt, the Hagia Sophia and
Kariye Camii in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in
Washington, D.C. For preservation, ICFA's moving image collection was sent to Colorlab
in Rockville, MD in October 2011; the reformatting project was
completed in March 2012. Currently, all of the original films are safely
stored in ICFA’s cold storage area. Digital copies for these films are
available online through Vimeo at Byzantine Institute Films and Dumbarton Oaks Gardens.
The films of the Red Sea Monastery of
Saint Anthony, Hagia Sophia, and Kariye Camii are part of ICFA's
leading archival collection:
Meanwhile, the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens
film is part of ICFA's general collection. It was re-discovered in early
2011 when ICFA staff learned that three (3) film reels in cold storage
contained footage of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens. For background
information about the films, please refer to these related blog posts:
The
Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and Papers
contains one (1) black-and-white film of the Red Sea Monastery of Saint
Anthony, filmed in 1930, which constitutes unique documentation of the
monastery of Saint Anthony, the everyday life of the monks and local
men, and the surrounding landscape. This film documents the first
official project undertaken by the Byzantine Institute and Thomas
Whittemore, which occurred between 1929 and 1932.
Thomas
Whittemore was the founder and director of the Byzantine Institute, a
non-profit organization that was established in 1930 to conserve,
restore, study, and document the Byzantine monuments, sites,
architecture, and arts in the former Byzantine Empire.
In June 1931, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,
the first President of the Republic of Turkey, permitted Whittemore and
the Byzantine Institute to uncover and restore the mosaics in Hagia
Sophia. In the late 1940s, the Byzantine Institute continued its
restoration and conservation work at Hagia Sophia and also initiated a
similar campaign at Kariye Camii in 1947, which lasted until 1959.
ICFA has twenty-one (21) 16mm color moving images
that document the conservation and restoration work executed by the
Byzantine Institute staff in Hagia Sophia between the years 1936 and
1940. There is also one (2) color film of the work at Kariye Camii,
which was filmed before Whittemore's death in June 1950. Similarly, it
illustrates the cleaning and restoration work carried out by the
Byzantine Institute fieldworkers.
These movies were widely used by Thomas
Whittemore to demonstrate the important work of the Byzantine
Institute and to raise funds to continue the cleaning and conservation
work at Hagia Sophia and Kariye Camii.
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