Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is catalyzing climate action in the visual arts
Rochester, N.Y., July 31, 2024—The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $98,220 from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Climate Initiative—the largest private national grantmaking program to support climate change action at cultural institutions and the first nationwide program of its kind for the visual arts. The grant supports the installation of a new LED lighting system in the museum’s Main Galleries and adjacent exhibition spaces.
“The George Eastman Museum is proud to join the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in our collective efforts to protect the environment while exhibiting and preserving artworks,” said Bruce Barnes, Ron and Donna Fielding Director, George Eastman Museum. “The grant award we have received from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative aligns with our continuing efforts to decrease energy consumption, improve sustainability, and reduce our carbon footprint.”
The George Eastman Museum will install new LED fixtures in its main galleries and adjacent exhibition spaces. The project will remediate inefficient incandescent lighting in the main galleries—the museum’s largest exhibition space—and in the Potter Peristyle and adjacent corridor. Installation of integrated LED fixtures will enable the museum to increase energy efficiency and decrease energy costs. The two-year project will commence August 1, 2024.
The project, coinciding with the Eastman Museum’s upcoming 75th anniversary, will continue to build on a series of major infrastructure improvements since 2012 throughout various areas of the Eastman Museum complex, which have had a positive impact toward institutional sustainability. This project expands upon, and complements, earlier efforts to increase energy efficiency and sustainability in our exhibition galleries. Prior successful LED lighting installations were completed in the Project Gallery (2016) and the Collection Gallery (2023).
While the primary goal of the project is to increase energy efficiency and sustainability, it also fosters benefits for museum visitors and opens opportunities to promote public engagement with climate issues. A project-related exhibition in fall 2025 will provide visitors a behind-the-scenes view of our institutional sustainability efforts. The project will visually transform photography exhibitions, increase accessibility for visitors with impaired vision, and will contribute to object preservation.
“The Foundation is delighted with the advancements in environmental sustainability spearheaded by our partners through the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative,” remarked Lise Motherwell, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “With its newest round of grantees, FCI has supported over two hundred visual arts organizations to date and is leading the way in tangible climate action.”
About the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation
Established and endowed by Helen Frankenthaler during her lifetime, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation advances the artist’s legacy and inspires a new generation of practitioners through a range of philanthropic, educational, and research initiatives. Since becoming active in 2013, the Foundation has continued to strategically expand its program, which includes organizing and supporting significant exhibitions of the artist’s work, fostering new research and publications, advancing educational programs in partnership with arts organizations around the world, and launching groundbreaking initiatives that foster systemic change in the field. As a primary resource on the artist, and a steward of her collection and archive, the Foundation holds an extensive selection of Frankenthaler’s work in a variety of mediums, her collection of works by other artists, and original papers and materials pertaining to her life and work.
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.