George Eastman Story Lab to open in the mansion on Saturday, May 18
Unidentified photographer. George Eastman and Thomas Edison demonstrating camera at Kodacolor Party, 1928. George Eastman Museum.
Rochester, N.Y., May 6, 2024—The George Eastman Museum has announced the next phase of a multiyear project to create a new exhibition on George Eastman’s life and legacy. The George Eastman Story Lab, which will open on Saturday, May 18 in the mansion’s second-floor Sitting Room, will offer visitors the opportunity to provide feedback on the direction of the future exhibition.
The first of three-Story Lab rotations, which will be on view through October, details aspects of George Eastman’s philanthropy—specifically in support of education—his values, community enrichment, impact, and some of the ways that he remains relevant in our lives today.
“The Story Lab project represents a significant step in the museum’s continuing strategy to improve visitor experiences and welcome new audiences,” Eastman Exhibition Curator Matt Lynch explains. “The museum is gathering community input to help shape the exhibition’s themes and presentation. We hope to have a dialogue that will allow us to test exhibition ideas early and often.”
The Eastman Museum was established in 1947 to honor the legacy of George Eastman and his gifts to the world. Yet today, visitors are interested in not only his achievements but also Eastman as a person whom a balanced historical lens shows to have been both enormously impactful but also imperfect. For this multi-year project, six unrestored rooms of the mansion will be renovated to house a new exhibition. Titled New Perspectives on George Eastman, it will provide visitors details about the times in which Eastman lived, his influence, and what influenced him throughout his life. The candid presentation, sourced from historical records, will allow visitors to understand Eastman in ways that are relevant to their own history.
New Perspectives on George Eastman is being developed by Lynch, George Eastman Collection curator Michelle Finn, and an extensive project team. The exhibition will respond heavily to audience input and explore George Eastman—the inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist—from present-day perspectives and illuminate his ongoing impact both in Rochester and around the world.
For more information about the Story Lab, visit eastman.org.
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, 31,000 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. For more information, visit eastman.org and follow the George Eastman Museum account on Facebook, as well as the @eastmanmuseum accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads.