The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $250,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through its Museums for America program to support its project Lost and Found: Classic Pakistani Cinema. The grant will allow the museum to identify, catalogue, repair, and clean 135 rare and fragile films from the Anwar Shiekh film collection. This project builds upon film conservation work that began in 2020 with a previous IMLS grant award for cataloging and conservation of more than 1,000 South Asian films.

The George Eastman Museum presents Selections from the Collection, the newest display of items from the museum's photography vaults on view in the Collection Gallery, starting Saturday, September 30.

The George Eastman Museum will present the works of photographer Gregory Halpern (American, b. 1977). The exhibition, 19 winters / 7 springs, will open at the museum on Saturday, September 16, 2023, and will run through Sunday, March 3, 2024.

The George Eastman Museum is proud to present Nellie Bly Around the World in 72 Days: A Magic Lantern Show as part of the 2023 Rochester Fringe Festival on Thursday, September 21 at 7 p.m. on the museum’s East Lawn. More information about the George Eastman Museum event, including ticket information, is available at eastman.org. Tickets for all Rochester Fringe Festival (Tuesday, Sept. 12 – Saturday, Sept. 23) events are now on sale at rochesterfringe.com, where more information is also available.

The George Eastman Museum is proud to present Nellie Bly Around the World in 72 Days: A Magic Lantern Show as part of the 2023 Rochester Fringe Festival on Thursday, September 21 at 7 p.m. on the museum’s East Lawn. More information about the George Eastman Museum event, including ticket information, is available at eastman.org. Tickets for all Rochester Fringe Festival (Tuesday, Sept. 12 – Saturday, Sept. 23) events are now on sale at rochesterfringe.com, where more information is also available.

The George Eastman Museum has appointed Daniel Peacock as an assistant curator in its Department of Photography. In his new role, Peacock will research the museum’s collection, collaborate on collection development, curate exhibitions at the museum, and author or contribute to scholarly publications. Peacock began in the position in July 2023.

The George Eastman Museum will host a community forum in the museum's Multipurpose Hall at 6 p.m. on Monday, June 26, to inform the public about the significant restoration projects that are underway to sustain the museum's National Historic Landmark. 

The George Eastman Museum announced today the opening of Gillian Laub: Southern Rites, an exhibition featuring American photographer and filmmaker Gillian Laub. The exhibition will be on display in the museum’s main galleries from June 30 through the end of 2023.

Southern Rites is a powerful photographic exploration of racial tensions and discrimination in the American South. Laub spent over two decades documenting the lives and experiences of individuals in Montgomery County, Ga., a community marked by deep-seated racial divisions.

The George Eastman Museum announced today the opening of Resistance and Rescue: Denmark and the Holocaust, an exhibition featuring American photographer Judy Glickman Lauder’s portraits of Danes who participated in rescuing Jews from deportation by Germany during World War II—and of Jews who were rescued. The portraits, taken in the early 1990s, are each accompanied by the story of the individual’s experience. The exhibition will be presented in the museum’s new Gallery Obscura through October 1.

The George Eastman Museum honored Jodie Foster with the George Eastman Award Thursday evening in front of a packed crowd. The George Eastman Award, established in 1955, is the museum’s highest honor in motion pictures and recognizes Foster’s distinguished contributions to the art of film.

The Garden Vibes summer concert series will return to the George Eastman Museum this summer after a three-year hiatus due to construction on the mansion and in the gardens. The museum will host the outdoor concerts on June 14, July 19, and August 16 on the east lawn, located on the east side of the mansion next to the Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden.

The George Eastman Museum will honor actor and filmmaker Jodie Foster with the George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of cinema on Thursday, May 25. Tickets for the benefit gala will go on sale to Eastman Museum members on April 25, and any remaining tickets will go on sale to the public on May 2. Tickets and other information for the gala and a related series of seven films at the Dryden Theatre will be available at eastman.org/eastmanaward2023.

Gallery Obscura, George Eastman Museum’s newest exhibition space, is set to open on Saturday, March 4. The inaugural exhibit will be produced in collaboration with the Flower City Arts Center, which will run through June 1.

Gallery Obscura will take on a unique role – featuring exhibitions created or presented in collaboration with community organizations and school and youth programs, projects focused on Greater Rochester, and exhibitions from the museum’s collections that are thematically related to community events or that support other museum initiatives and programming.

The George Eastman Museum will present the seventh edition of the Nitrate Picture Show in late spring. The world’s only festival entirely dedicated to nitrate film will be held June 1-4, 2023 at the Dryden Theatre, the George Eastman Museum’s historic venue for film exhibition in Rochester, N.Y. Festival passes are currently available for purchase through the museum’s website at eastman.org/nitrate-picture-show.

The George Eastman Museum, in collaboration with the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, recently announced the first-ever museum exhibition dedicated to longtime photographer Marcia Resnick. Following presentations at Bowdoin and in Minneapolis, the exhibition opens at the George Eastman Museum Saturday, February 11.

The legacy of actor/director/producer Philip Seymour Hoffman will continue to be celebrated at the George Eastman Museum. A life-size bronze sculpture of the actor, created by David A. Annand, has been donated to the museum. Erected on the sidewalk in front of the museum’s Dryden Theatre in May 2022, the sculpture was initially on loan.

The George Eastman Museum will bring an early dose of spring to Rochester this February with its annual Dutch Connection floral show. The display will open to the public on February 10 and will remain on view for two weeks. The annual show is a welcome treat in the midst of winter, with thousands of tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, amaryllis, and spring annuals in various vibrant shades filling areas of George Eastman’s historic mansion. Tropical orchids courtesy of the Genesee Region Orchid Society will also be on display throughout the mansion.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $600,000 for the restoration of the museum’s historic garden structures from the New York State Office for Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation through Title 9 of the Environmental Protection Act of 1993, in conjunction with the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council. The restored structures on George Eastman’s estate, a National Historic Landmark, will include the pergola in the Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden, the grape arbor in the Rock Garden, and the loggia in the West Garden.

The George Eastman Museum recently completed a major upgrade to the crucial environmental conditions of its collection storage areas. The Environmental Improvements Implementation Project, at a total cost of $1,246,000, included the replacement and upgrade of 30-year-old systems that controlled the temperature and humidity for the photography vault, technology vault, and photography study center. The project was funded with a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; grants from the William and Sheila Konar Foundation, the ESL Charitable Foundation, and the Elaine P.

The George Eastman Museum will present the 6th Nitrate Picture Show from June 4 to 7, 2020 at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, NY. The Nitrate Picture Show, the world’s festival of film conservation, will celebrate its 6th year with a new, extended lineup of nitrate prints on screen, workshops, and behind-the-scenes tours of the museum and its collection areas.

The George Eastman Museum has announced it will break ground on January 6, 2020, for a new visitor center, which includes construction of the ESL Federal Credit Union Pavilion. The visitor center project, which involves relocating the museum’s main entrance to the west side of the building, is the most significant structural change to the museum since the gallery and collections building was constructed in 1989. The project is expected to be complete by July 2020.

The George Eastman Museum, in partnership with the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, and Hamilton College will present Filmi Worlds: A Festival of Indian Cinema at the Dryden Theatre on November 21. The festival continues on November 23 and 24. This three-day film festival and symposium will combine film screenings, scholarly talks, and public conversations about South Asian film.

Cinephiles know a film comes to life only when it is presented on the big screen. With digital theaters becoming the norm, the need for a skilled film projectionist is becoming so rare that the craft itself is in danger. The Art of Film Projection—A Beginner’s Guide is the George Eastman Museum’s venture to capture the essence of film projection from both sides of the machine and to offer a playbook to reproduce the magic of cinema for an audience.

The George Eastman Museum will kick off the holiday season on November 8, when the annual Sweet Creations—the exquisite display of dozens of cleverly designed and deliciously decorated gingerbread houses­—opens to the public. The display will be on view through December 15. The historic mansion will then be closed on December 19, 2019, and reopen on February 14, 2020, for Dutch Connection, to accommodate construction in the historic Colonnade. The museum’s galleries, store, and cafe will remain open through the holiday season.

The George Eastman Museum announced today that it will honor the late actor Robert Forster on Saturday, November 2 with special screenings of Medium Cool (1969) at 1 p.m. and Jackie Brown (1997) at 4 p.m. in the Dryden Theatre.

A longtime supporter of the George Eastman Museum, Forster was first elected to its board of trustees in 2001 and served as a trustee until 2010, when he was elected as a trustee emeritus.

The George Eastman Museum will open a new rotation in its History of Photography Gallery on October 26, which celebrates contributions by a selection of photographers who immigrated or moved to the United States. Many became naturalized citizens as they recorded their perspectives on an unfamiliar country, and most have become key figures in the history of photography.

After taking a brief intermission that began in July to accommodate construction at the museum, the Dryden Theatre will raise its curtain again on Friday, October 11 at 7:30 p.m. with a screening of The Killing Floor (Bill Duke, 1985). The theater will resume its daytime screenings on October 15, with a recent work by multimedia artist Lena Herzog, Last Whispers—Oratorio for Vanishing Voices, Collapsing Universes and a Falling Tree.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $340,615 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Division of Preservation and Access, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program for its Protecting Nitrate Film Heritage project. Grant funding will support the creation of a reliable, safe, and sustainable environment for the museum’s renowned and extremely fragile collection of 35mm nitrate-based film materials housed at the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in Chili, New York.

The George Eastman Museum will be open to the public for FREE on Saturday, September 21, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the spirit of Smithsonian magazine’s Museum Day, the Eastman Museum is opening its doors to all visitors for the day to encourage the Rochester community to experience the exhibitions The Art of Warner Brothers Cartoons and Tanya Marcuse: Woven, and the History of Photography Gallery, as well as hands-on activities for all ages in the Discovery Room.

The George Eastman Museum has announced the fall lineup for its Wish You Were Here lecture series. For nearly 20 years, this popular photography lecture series has brought artists and photojournalists to Rochester to share their stories and photographs from around the world. The 2019 series will kick off on Thursday, September 12 at 6 p.m., with photographer Larry McNeil.

The George Eastman Museum and the Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis, will premiere the first large-scale retrospective of artist Bea Nettles’s fifty-year career this fall. The exhibition, Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory, was co-organized by the two institutions and will open at The Sheldon on October 4, and remain on view through December 28. The George Eastman Museum will present the show in Rochester January 31–June 14, 2020.

The Eastman Museum Council will present its Movie on the Lawn event featuring Ratatouille (2007) on Friday, September 6 at 7 p.m. on the north lawn of the George Eastman Museum. In case of rain, the event will be moved to Saturday, September 7.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $350,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Program, to support its project Preserving and Improving Access to the Boyer Collection. The grant funds will allow the museum to catalog and digitize the entire Boyer collection, giving the public complete access to images of the objects, as well as support the hiring of two project staff, a cataloguer and an object photographer, for the term of the grant.

The George Eastman Museum has appointed Peter Bagrov, PhD, as Curator in Charge of its Moving Image Department. He will assume the post on August 16. Bagrov was previously senior curator of Gosfilmofond, the national film archive of Russia, and has nearly twenty years of experience as a film curator and scholar.

This week, the George Eastman Museum will begin a major restoration of the Colonnade of George Eastman’s mansion, a National Historic Landmark.
The Colonnade is the passageway—lined with windows onto the Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden—between the Palm House and the dining room in George Eastman’s historic mansion. This structure provides the only interior route between the museum’s main entrance and galleries and the historic mansion and Terrace Garden.

As part of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival, the George Eastman Museum will host a Hidden Garden Concert on Friday, September 13 at 6 p.m., featuring musicians from several Rochester bands, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tom Petty's album Wildflowers.