Gallery Obscura - Studio 678 Photo Club
On March 4, the George Eastman Museum will open a new exhibition space. The Gallery Obscura will feature exhibitions created or presented in collaboration with community organizations and school and youth programs, projects focused on Greater Rochester, and exhibitions from the museum’s collections that are thematically related to community events or that support other museum initiatives and programming. “Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, Gallery Obscura was created to enhance and broaden our museum’s connections with the people of Greater Rochester,” said Bruce Barnes, Ron and Donna Fielding Director of the Eastman Museum. “The gallery will enable us to partner with other local institutions to inclusively engage audiences from across our diverse community.”
The inaugural exhibition in the Gallery Obscura is being produced in partnership with Flower City Arts Center, a National Guild for Community Arts Education member. The exhibition, which will run through June 4, will feature photographs and poems by eleven youths who participated in Flower City’s Studio 678 Photo Club in 2021 and 2022. Established in 1970, the Flower City Arts Center offers educational programs and workshops for youth and adults and provides studio artists with facilities to create and exhibit their work.
The center’s Studio 678 Photo Club is a free after-school program for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students in the Rochester City School District. The students learn how to use a professional film camera, take photographs in the studio and in their community, make their own black-and-white prints, write poems or stories to accompany their photographs, and work in a digital lab to create a collaborative book of their photographs and writing. Now in its 25th, consecutive year the 24-week program has served more than 400 students with many students participating for multiple years.
About Gallery Obscura
The museum's new Gallery Obscura space features exhibitions created or presented in collaboration with community institutions and school and youth programs, projects focused on Greater Rochester, and exhibitions from the collections that are thematically related to regional events or that support other museum initiatives and programming.
Exhibition Proposal Submissions
Please submit exhibition proposals for the Gallery Obscura to Gallery