Returning to Shared Experiences

My most exhilarating experience so far this year was the dedication event for the new curtain in the Dryden Theatre, in tribute to and in memory of our dear friend Jack Garner, on April 1. I was joined by Jack’s beloved wife, Bonnie, and my colleagues Peter Bagrov and Jared Case in welcoming people back to our cinema, which had been closed for fifteen months. In this time of financial challenges, this wonderful new curtain — even more sumptuous than its predecessor — was made possible by generous donations from many of Jack’s friends.

The dedication ceremony was followed by a screening of Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), which was Jack’s favorite film. The next two evenings, we screened Citizen Kane and Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) to sold-out, mask-wearing audiences in the reduced-capacity theater. Despite its limited size, we have been overjoyed to welcome our audience back, and those who have attended screenings have been visibly thrilled to return to an authentic cinematic experience.

In February, because of the popularity of our annual Dutch Connection display, visitor attendance at the George Eastman Museum (carefully managed to follow health guidelines) was 75% of the record level reached in February 2020. This represented an encouraging rebound, as we had been hosting between 17% and 37% of our prior year’s visitors each month since our reopening in July 2020.

As more and more of us are vaccinated each day, the Eastman Museum continues to uphold our public health safeguards. I received my second vaccine dose on April 9. For me, it is time, while continuing to follow health protocols, to return to safely experiencing events in public spaces.

Here are some great reasons to come to the Eastman Museum in May and June:

• Five nights a week, the Dryden Theatre is presenting carefully curated series of motion pictures to an audience currently limited to 50 people per screening. Every film on the schedule is special, and there is not a bad seat in the house.
• Our stunning retrospective of seven decades of photographs by Carl Chiarenza, a revered leader of Rochester’s artistic community, is open through June 20.
• Our exhibition of fantastical moving image works by artist Stacey Steers is on view in our Project Gallery and the Multipurpose Hall through June 6. Adults and kids alike have loved it.
• The insightful and moving exhibition To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults will open in our Project Gallery on June 19.
• Our new Thomas Tischer Visitor Center and renovated Bruce B. Bates Colonnade have transformed the experience of entering and visiting the museum.
• At our beautiful new cafe, Open Face at Eastman Museum, come taste why dozens of people visit the museum each week just to eat there.

In the last week of April, my husband and I are finally resuming one of our favorite pastimes — museum road trips. We are driving to the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and then back to the George Eastman Museum.

Attired in masks, we are reclaiming the joys we find in museums — even these that we have visited many times before — which never fail to offer us new revelations.

Bruce Barnes, PhD

Ron and Donna Fielding Director

May/June 2021 Bulletin