The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the museum’s preservation of Highlights and Shadows (US 1937), a film by James Sibley Watson Jr. Today, the NEA announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2016, including this Art Works award to the Eastman Museum. 

The George Eastman Museum officially announced today that it will be presenting the 2nd Nitrate Picture Show this coming spring. The festival will be held April 29–May 1, 2016 at the Dryden Theatre, the George Eastman Museum’s historic venue for film exhibition in Rochester, NY. The Dryden Theatre—one of only a few archival venues in the world that can project nitrate film—is home to the museum’s ongoing program of past and present cinematic works from all countries.

The George Eastman Museum has recently acquired the world’s largest collection of contemporary Indian cinema held by a museum or film archive. The collection consists of 775 prints representing 597 film titles, all in 35mm format, made between 1999 and 2013. In addition, about 6,000 film posters were acquired as part of the collection. This exceptional donation represents not only films from the Hindi-language film industry commonly known as “Bollywood,” but also Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu productions. The languages represented in these films include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Many titles are from acclaimed masters of Indian cinema, such as Mani Ratnam, Ashutosh Gowariker, Anurag Kashyap, Nagesh Kukunoor, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

George Eastman Museum has always been Rochester’s home for the holidays. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Sweet Creations—the exquisite display of dozens of cleverly designed and deliciously decorated gingerbread houses and objects located throughout museum. As one of the Greater Rochester community’s most beloved holiday traditions, the display will be on view November 7 through December 16. 

The George Eastman Museum will premiere the latest body of work from photographer Brian Ulrich, The Centurion, on October 31. An artist drawn to exploring the visual landscape of America’s consumption economy, Ulrich has spent the last several years photographing sites and people associated with extreme wealth. This exhibition of 23 of his recent photographs will be on view in the museum’s Project Gallery through February 14, 2016.