Opening August 30, this object-based display highlights recent projects undertaken by the museum.
Eadweard J. Muybridge (English, 1830–1904), Bradley & Rulofson, Ancient Glacier Channel. Lake Tenaya. Sierra Nevada Mountains., 1872. Albumen silver print. George Eastman Museum, gift of Harvard University, 1961.
The George Eastman Museum is proud to present the new exhibition Building a Sustainable Future, on display August 30 through November 9, in the
museum’s Potter Peristyle.
Visitors have the opportunity to take a peek behind the scenes and explore the ways in which museum staff work to balance preservation and access with implementing climate-aware and environmentally sustainable solutions.
As a leader in the preservation and conservation of photography and moving image artifacts, the George Eastman Museum needs to maintain suitable conditions for the storage and display of its collection objects. The museum’s staff seeks to better understand the environmental and climate effects of the museum’s work by considering:
How does the institution’s energy consumption and creation of waste impact the local, national, and global environments?
How can the museum mitigate these adverse effects through less permeable building envelopes, more efficient heating and cooling systems, or simple changes to lighting?
How can these actions help drive change in how photography and moving image collections are preserved and accessed, while assuring the long-term preservation of the objects?
Through the exhibition, visitors can also learn about the history of how George Eastman’s mansion changed from a space for collection storage and display to a historic home and landscape, requiring careful attention to improving the building envelope. The exhibition explores how an upgraded HVAC system changed the climate in the technology and photography vaults to prolong the life of collection objects. Visitors find out about the museum’s unique building that stores nitrate film materials, and why it was recently upgraded, and see firsthand how small changes in gallery lighting affect a visitor’s experience, as well as the museum’s energy consumption.
This object-based exhibition highlights recent projects that the museum has undertaken that attend to these concerns.
Public Program
In Focus: Building a Sustainable Future
Friday, September 12 at 1 p.m. EDT
Online
Free to all; advance registration required.
Curated by Jamie M. Allen, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Curator and Head, Department of Photography
This project was funded in part by the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI) of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. FCI is the first nationwide program to support energy efficiency and clean energy use for the visual arts and the largest private national grantmaking program of its kind for cultural institutions.
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. The George Eastman Museum is supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. For more information, visit eastman.org.
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