The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, GRI maintains a research library, organizes exhibitions and other events, sponsors a residential scholars program, publishes books, and produces electronic databases (Getty Publications).
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) is committed to preserving its collections while engaging in ethical and sustainable stewardship for our planet. As part of this effort, the GRI Conservation and Preservation team is collaborating with the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) Managing Collection Environments (MCE) team and Getty Facilities on a year-long pilot project focused on expanding the environmental parameters in one of the GRI's collection vaults. The selected vault contains black and white photographic prints, film negatives, optical devices, and manuscripts with significant photographic content. It was deemed ideal for controlled testing because it is fully enclosed, has no exterior walls, and is served by a dedicated air handler unit, allowing for adjustments independent of other zones. The pilot involved expanding the environmental parameters in this space within ranges that are informed by current preservation science and risk-based assessment models as well as implementing nightly setbacks. If successful, expanded parameters and nightly setbacks will be gradually extended to the remaining seven GRI vaults and the annexed storage area, taking into account the range of materials housed in each space and the demonstrated ability of each vault to achieve and sustain the desired environmental conditions.
State capacity is critical for development. Yet, the question of how states learn – that is, how they acquire and incorporate information to improve performance over time – has received little attention. In this paper, we draw from organizational theory and the political economy of knowledge and innovation to study the components of effective learning in states as organizations. We focus on three functionally simple, but well-documented early states in ancient Greece: Sparta, Athens, and Macedon. We argue that Macedon’s superior performance relied on a learning model capable of integrating both experiential and experimental knowledge within existing structures. By directing our attention away from the early modern period, where much work in economic history and historical political economy is concentrated, our account challenges the focus of the existing literature on processes of centralization. Instead, we highlight organizational factors that may promote capacity-enhancing learning even in the context of weak centralization.
FLAME is an online digital humanities project providing economic data for investigations of the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (CE 325-750) in Western Eurasia and North Africa. While accumulating, entering, and displaying the data, the project's leadership has become increasingly aware of the inherent distortions in these data. These deviations operate on various levels, from the disparate events that provide the coin finds that serve as the basis of its data to previously unexamined scholarly biases that underpin such a quantitative approach to historical analysis. By systematically examining these phenomena, we hope to frame a discussion of such inherent biases in other digital humanities undertakings.
