First woman to direct a major American art museum (Baltimore Museum of Art); Cassatt scholar. Breeskin was the daughter of Alfred Robert Louis Dohme (1867-1952) and Emmie Blumner (Dohme). Her father was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical company Sharpe & Dohme (later Merck, Sharpe & Dohme). The younger Dohme attended the Bryn Mawr preparatory school in Baltimore, initially planning on being an artist. After stints at Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe Colleges, she eventually graduated from Boston's School of Fine Arts, Crafts, and Decorative Design in 1918.