Questions about Packard Humanities Institute
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is the Packard Humanities Institute and what does it fund?
The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) is a non-profit foundation established in 1987 and located in Los Altos, California. It funds projects in archaeology, music, film preservation, historic conservation, and Greek epigraphy, as well as building digital databases of Latin literature, Bible texts, Arabic and Coptic writings, Ancient Greek papyri, and Persian literature in translation. It also supports external scholarly projects such as the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources and the complete works of C.P.E. Bach.
What is the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and where is it located?
The Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation is the Library of Congress facility located inside Mount Pony in Culpeper, Virginia. It was built inside a former Federal Reserve Board high-security storage facility purchased in 1997 and completed construction in mid-2007. It holds nearly 7 million items and is the world's largest collection of motion pictures, television programs, radio broadcasts, and sound recordings.
Is the Packard Humanities Institute related to Hewlett-Packard or the David and Lucile Packard Foundation?
The Packard Humanities Institute is independent of both the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and any Hewlett-Packard Company foundations. Its president, David Woodley Packard, has served as a director but never an officer of Hewlett Packard.
What historic theaters has the Packard Humanities Institute restored?
PHI restored the Fox Theatre in San Jose, California, originally opened in 1927 and closed in 1973, reopening it in 2004 as the California Theater, now home to Opera San José. PHI also worked on the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, designed by architects Weeks and Day and originally opened in 1925, which was purchased and restored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 1987 and is currently operated by the Stanford Theatre Foundation.
What is held at the Packard Humanities Institute facility in Santa Clarita?
The PHI facility in Santa Clarita, California, opened in 2014, holds film vaults including one of the most modern vaults for nitrate film storage. It contains 400,000 archive films from Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Republic Pictures, and is transferring the Hearst Metrotone News newsreel collection (1915-1975) on a Scanity motion picture film scanner. It partners with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
What is the Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Academy Film Archive?
Since 2010, the Packard Humanities Institute Collection has been held at the Academy Film Archive. It is the largest known assemblage of theatrical trailers on film, consisting of over 60,000 items including coming attractions, advertisements, theatrical snipes, film excerpts, television spots, and public service announcements.