Rochester, N.Y., January 29, 2024—The George Eastman Museum begins the celebration of its 75th anniversary with a visual journey back to the 1960s. The museum’s newest exhibition, Crashing into the 60s: Film Posters from the Collection, opens Friday, February 2 in its Main Galleries and Potter Peristyle. This exhibition features film posters from the extensive George Eastman Museum collection. In addition, a film series connecting to and expanding upon many of the posters displayed in the exhibition will run in the Dryden Theatre through the exhibition’s run in September.
Visitors will become immersed in the near boundaryless innovation of drama, comedy, horror, and overall power of the 1960s through film poster art created by artists from across the globe. An audio exhibition tour will accompany select posters and themes in the exhibition, available on our free Bloomberg Connects app. Visitors will also get to experience a curated music experience with two playlists titled Crashing into the 60s and 60s film music, available on Spotify.
Films from the 1960s depicted the turbulence of the time. Poster artists from across the globe assigned to capture the essence of these films brought their own wildly differing creative interpretations of the subject matter to the masses.
An era of political, cultural, and sexual revolutions, the 1960s was a decade of great changes and great tragedies determined by such world-impacting events as The Space Race, the Cold War, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, the JFK assassination, but also by the cultural influences of The Beatles, James Bond, and even fashions, including the popularity of jeans and bikinis. This was also one of the greatest decades in film history.
New topics, many of them considered taboo just a couple years earlier, called for new styles. The highly individual approach to posters, often combined with mixing genres and daring aesthetics, became more common, narrowing the gap between the motion picture industry and fine art. Having pioneered poster art in the 1950s, design giant Saul Bass was now flourishing in the 1960s among other artists entering the spotlight. A marketing tool, film posters promoted blockbusters as well as numerous B-movies, often influenced by pulp magazines and comic books.
The posters selected from the museum’s rich collection represent popular Hollywood titles including The Apartment (1960), In The Heat of the Night (1967), My Fair Lady (1964), and major artistic achievements from overseas including Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1967), Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman (1966), and Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967), among others.
SPECIAL PROGRAMS
Exhibition Preview: Crashing into the 60s: Film Posters from the Collection
Thursday, February 1, 6 p.m.
Main Galleries
Be among the first to explore our newest exhibition in the main galleries, Crashing into the 60s: Film Posters from the Collection. Experience opening remarks about one of the greatest decades in film history, and enjoy light refreshments in the Potter Peristyle. Also, be sure to check out Billy Wilder’s film, One, Two, Three (1961) at the Dryden Theatre at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 for the reception and $30 for the reception and film for non-members, $10/$15 for students with a valid ID, and free for George Eastman Museum members. Visit eastman.org for more information and to register for the event.
Crashing into the 60s film series
18 Films on Screen
Dryden Theatre
This film series connects to and expands upon the posters in the exhibition, providing a glimpse into the cinema during this decade of change. All screenings begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets and more information are available at eastman.org/crashing-60s-film-posters-collection.
Admission to Crashing into the 60s: Film Posters from the Collection is free with regular museum admission. For details, 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, 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. 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.
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Promotional Images for Crashing into the 60s are available to download: https://eastmanmuseum.box.com/v/crashingintothe60s. Media members are more than welcome to attend the exhibition preview on February 1. Contact Communications Manager Nathaniel Smith in advance of the event.