Primary focus will be photography from its invention through 1920
Rochester, N.Y., August 9, 2023 — The George Eastman Museum has appointed Daniel Peacock as an assistant curator in its Department of Photography. In his new role, Peacock will research the museum’s collection, collaborate on collection development, curate exhibitions at the museum, and author or contribute to scholarly publications. Peacock began in the position in July 2023.
“The Eastman Museum holds one of the leading collections of nineteenth-century photography, as well as the photographic estates of Edward Steichen and Alvin Langdon Coburn,” said Bruce Barnes, PhD, Ron and Donna Fielding Director, George Eastman Museum. “With his special expertise and interest in photography from before its invention through Pictorialism, Daniel Peacock will make a critical contribution to advancing the understanding, appreciation, and development of our collection.”
“I am thrilled to join the George Eastman Museum and to work with its incomparable collection,” said Daniel Peacock. “This role offers special opportunities to connect our local and international communities with the collection and to foster discovery, learning, and research. I look forward to collaborating with the team at the Eastman Museum to show how photography’s early histories can be engaging and relevant to us today.”
“I’m excited to see what Daniel will do with our astounding collection as he becomes familiar with it and helps to refine it,” said Jamie M. Allen, the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Curator in the museum’s Department of Photography. "A collection this expansive deserves to have someone focused on photography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, as these eras served as the foundations for what we know to be photography today.”
Peacock was a curatorial research assistant at the Princeton University Art Museum, where he curated the two-part survey Photography and Belonging. As part of the institution’s Migrations Initiative, Photography and Belonging explored how the human experiences of belonging and alienation have long been both subject and effect of the medium. While at the Princeton University Art Museum, Peacock also assisted Dr. Katherine A. Bussard and Professor Anne McCauley on the publication and programming for Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925. Previously, he gained broad museum experience in non-curatorial roles at several museums and arts organizations, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Drawing Center, the Brooklyn Museum, and Creative Time.
In addition to museum experience, Peacock brings a passion for teaching and research to this new role. He has taught extensively as an Assistant-in-Instruction at Princeton University and as a volunteer instructor in the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons Initiative (NJ-STEP), through which incarcerated students earn degrees in liberal arts. His own research interests include the intersections of photography with art, literature, science, and visual culture.
Peacock is a PhD. candidate in Princeton University’s Department of Art & Archaeology, where he is currently completing his dissertation, Living Pictures: Pictorial Photography and the Illustration of Fiction. He received his BA in Art History and Gender & Sexuality Studies from Bard College in 2011 and an MA in Art & Archaeology from Princeton University in 2017.
About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program, and its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation at institutions around the world. For more information, visit eastman.org.