The Dumbarton Oaks Museum is a historic estate that holds a rich collection of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art.

The Blisses, the owners of Dumbarton Oaks, amassed a unique collection of art. The couple gifted the art collection and house to Harvard University in 1940. Since then, the Museum has become an important research institution, funding over 2,000 researchers and their studies.

The museum’s mission is: “Through an active research and exhibitions program, the museum strives to advance knowledge, stimulate interest, and engage with our collections by inspiring visitors aesthetically, visually, and intellectually. Our mission is to connect scholars with art and objects, and scholarship on objects and ideas with the public.”

If you visit the Museum, be sure to also stop by the garden, and the Dumbarton House, where in 1944, representatives of China, Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States, met and formulated the need for what would later become the United Nations.