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In 1940, diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss donated their Washington, D.C. estate, Dumbarton Oaks, to Harvard University. The gift included the house and grounds, its furnishings, and the Blisses’ collection and research library devoted to Byzantine art. During the 1930s, these resources had already attracted scholars, and the Blisses intended to create a permanent centre for advanced humanistic research. As Mildred Bliss later explained, Dumbarton Oaks was envisioned not simply as a repository of books and artworks, but as “a home of the Humanities.” The institution’s founding inscription further emphasized its purpose: to preserve and advance scholarship in the Byzantine and medieval humanities, helping to illuminate the present and guide the future through learned inquiry. At first, research at Dumbarton Oaks focused exclusively on Byzantine and medieval studies, reflecting the Blisses’ shared intellectual interests. However, the institution was always intended to expand. While concerts continued in the Music Room, Mildred Bliss oversaw the development of the formal gardens, and Robert Bliss continued collecting Pre-Columbian art. Around twenty years later, programs in the history of landscape architecture and Pre-Columbian studies were added to the original Byzantine program, thereby encompassing the principal scholarly and artistic interests of the founders. Since the early 1960s, these three research programs, together with the gardens, the historic house, and a continuing series of chamber music concerts, have formed the core activities of Dumbarton Oaks.