故事
In 1940 a wealthy American couple, Robert and Mildred Bliss, gave their Georgetown estate to Harvard, along with the two collections they had spent decades assembling: Byzantine art and the art of the ancient Americas. Those remain the reason to come. The Byzantine rooms hold ivories, coins and enamels. The Pre-Columbian wing, a ring of glass pavilions designed by the architect Philip Johnson in 1963, shows Olmec, Maya and Andean work in the round.
Around the house lie the terraced gardens Mildred Bliss commissioned from the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, laid out over 16 acres and still among the most admired in the country.
Two things that happened in the Music Room shaped the place beyond its collections. In 1938 the Blisses premiered a concerto they had commissioned from Igor Stravinsky for their wedding anniversary; he named it after the estate, and it is still called the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto. Six years later, in 1944, diplomats met in that same room to draft the proposals that became the charter of the United Nations.
