2022 Dumbarton Oaks Museum Graduate Study Day, Dumbarton Oaks, September 23, 2023

In conjunction with the special exhibition Lasting Impressions: People, Power, Piety the 2022 Dumbarton Oaks Museum Graduate Study Day will consider the relationship between seals and other forms of religious and secular art in Byzantium. This workshop, led by Dumbarton Oaks curators Jonathan Shea and Elizabeth Dospel Williams and John Cotsonis, (His Grace Joachim Bishop of Amissos), Director of the Archbishop Iakovos Library, Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, will explore the use of images in a variety of media to express piety, identity, group belonging, and social status.  

In the morning students will visit and discuss the exhibition in the galleries. We will address curatorial selection, historiographic topics, function, and consider the relationships of seals to other media in the Dumbarton Oaks collection. After lunch, participants will spend the afternoon studying works from the Byzantine and seals collections in storage. 

We encourage applicants from graduate programs in art history, archaeology, history, classics, religious studies, and other fields who might benefit from close engagement with our collections and from training in material culture approaches.

Dumbarton Oaks has partnered with Travel Collaborative and will be working with them to arrange economy travel for successful applicants.