Phillips, Duncan (1886–1966)

Art collector Duncan Phillips founded one of the first museums in the United States devoted to modern European and American art. Incorporated in 1918 and opened to the public in 1921, the Phillips Collection predated the Museum of Modern Art (established 1929) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (established 1931). It was housed in Phillips’ childhood home, an 1897 Georgian Revival house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington D.C. After graduating from Yale University in 1907, Phillips pursued his passion for art; for the rest of his life, Phillips collected and wrote about art. The sudden death of his father in 1917 and older brother in 1918 prompted him to found a museum in their memory, originally called the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery. Phillips served as the museum’s director until his death in 1966, when his wife, the artist Marjorie Acker, took his place. When she died in 1972, their son, Laughlin Phillips, assumed directorship. Rather than pursuing comprehensiveness, Phillips developed in-depth collections of the works of his favourite artists, including Honoré Daumier, Pierre Bonnard, George Braque, Karl Knaths, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Oskar Kokoschka, and Paul Klee.

The Center Page

The Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs is an invaluable resource to political and social scientists. Since its opening in September 2003, the center has housed more than 100 scholars. The center, located in the APSA headquarters near Dupont Circle, provides a great base of operations for scholars researching in the DC metro area. The center offers visiting scholars furnished work space, telephone, fax, computers, Internet access, conference space, a reference library, and access to George Washington University's Gelman Library. Visiting scholar stays range from a few days to 12 months. Space is limited to APSA members and is available for faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students from the United States and abroad. Scholars are expected to cover their own expenses and a modest facilities fee for the use of the center. Prospective visiting scholars may apply at any time. Positions are awarded on a space-available basis.

Beyond a Boundary: Washington’s Historic Districts and Their Racial Contents

Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s there was a wave of citizen-initiated preservation activity in Washington, DC, much of it directed towards identifying and expanding neighbourhood historic districts. These efforts were driven by several different events and influences that coalesced in the period: a new sense of local control that came with the establishment of municipal self-government in the District of Columbia after 1975; the expectation that a comprehensive historic preservation law would be enacted in the district; the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of the legality of preservation controls in 1978; and the renewed salience of the idea of place that affected everything from community art and neighbourhood activism to urban design and architectural theory. This paper addresses this moment of intense activity by investigating the ways in which preservation advocates in one neighbourhood, Dupont Circle, sought to expand their historic district. The proposal to add several square miles of new territory to the designated historic area was led by a predominantly white preservation organization, the Dupont Circle Conservancy. The proposal aroused significant opposition from a group calling itself the 14th and U Street Coalition, which styled itself as the representative of African-American interests and historical identity in neighbouring Shaw. They protested that the Dupont Circle preservationists were attempting to annex their neighbourhood and with it, their history. At first glance this conflict appears to be a predictable case of inner city gentrification fought along the lines of racial identity. But when examined more carefully, the series of claims and counter-claims embedded in the conflict exposed a more nuanced set of issues related to skin tone, class, and historical entitlement. The conflict highlighted the absence of any agreement about what constituted the historicity of such a historic area and cast doubt over who might be qualified speak on behalf of the history contained in such an area.