The legacy of actor/director/producer Philip Seymour Hoffman is a  point of pride for those in his hometown, who will soon be able to enjoy a memorial erected in  his honor at George Eastman Museum, outdoors near the Dryden Theatre. On Saturday, May 28,  a bronze life-size sculpture will be unveiled that depicts Hoffman appearing to be walking  toward the movie theater.  

The George Eastman Museum will present the 6th Nitrate Picture Show from June 2 to 5, 2022, at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, NY. The Nitrate Picture Show, the world’s only festival of film conservation, returns after a two-year hiatus for the sixth edition with a new lineup of nitrate prints on screen, the Nitrate Touch workshop, and two concerts on Thursday, June 2: the first on the George Eastman’s grand piano and the second on the Eastman’s Aeolian pipe organ.

Stories of Indian Cinema, which comprises two exhibitions—Abandoned and Rescued and Nandita Raman: Cinema Play House—will open at the George Eastman Museum on Saturday, November 11, with a preview on the evening of Thursday, November 9. Abandoned and Rescued tells the intriguing story behind the Eastman Museum’s recent acquisition of a collection of contemporary Indian films and posters. Raman’s Cinema Play House series features photographs the artist made in various single-screen cinemas in India, many of which are threatened by the emergence of multiplexes. Both exhibitions will be on view in the museum’s main galleries through May 13, 2018. 

The George Eastman Museum has announced its 2018 schedule of photography workshops, including several new programs, including a one-day tintype boot camp; hand-coloring film; creating Niepceotype, hyalotype, and albumen on glass plates; and an introduction to analog photography. In addition to workshops being held at the museum, excursion workshops are being offered on the Erie Canal and at Letchworth State Park. 

The George Eastman Museum has recently acquired and restored a rare collection of eighteen Lumière films. The nitrate reels, all in nearly pristine condition, consist of seven 35mm negatives and eleven 35mm positive prints, dating approximately between 1896 and 1903. The restored films will make their debut at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy on Wednesday, October 4, at 8:30 p.m.

The George Eastman Museum has announced the fall lineup for its Wish You Were Here lecture series. For more than 16 years, this popular photography lecture series has brought artists and photojournalists to the Rochester to share their stories and photographs. The series will begin on Thursday, September 28 at 6 p.m., with photographers Ahndraya Parlato and Gregory Halpern. 

The George Eastman Museum will be open to the public for FREE on Saturday, September 23, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the spirit of Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day Live!, the Eastman Museum is opening its doors to all visitors for the day to encourage the Rochester community to experience the photography exhibition Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time before it closes on October 22.

The George Eastman Museum has officially launched the Technicolor Online Research Archive available at technicolor.eastman.org. The online archive contains more than 40,000 documents from the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, ranging in date from 1914 to 1955. Notes, journals, correspondence, film tests, technical drawings, and other documents are now available for the public to search and browse.

As part of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival, the George Eastman Museum and TableTopOpera will present a multi-media presentation titled Within the Quota on Tuesday, September 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the museum’s Dryden Theatre.

The Board of Trustees of the George Eastman Museum has appointed Kevin Gavagan as its new Chair.

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Due to a major restoration project that has temporarily closed the East Porch and East Vista of George Eastman’s historic mansion, this is the first summer in 22 years that the George Eastman Museum is not hosting its annual Garden Vibes concert series. The museum plans to keep the music alive, however, with a special Hidden Garden Concert on Saturday, August 19, at 6 p.m.

The George Eastman Museum is hosting a community forum on Monday, July 17, at 6 p.m. to share information about its historic mansion restoration program and update community members about the next phase. In addition, the museum will share information about its plan to relocate and redesign the museum’s main public entrance to enhance accessibility for all visitors.

In honor of George Eastman’s birthday, today the George Eastman Museum will unveil a new interactive offering in Eastman’s historic mansion. In the screening room on the second floor of the museum, visitors can now watch historic footage and recent documentaries related to George Eastman—many of which are only available on-site at the museum.

The George Eastman Museum will be celebrating baseball this summer with America’s Favorite Pastime, a film series of twelve features spanning nearly ninety years of cinema history. As part of the series, which is presented in collaboration with the Rochester Red Wings, the Eastman Museum will host two special events: a screening of Bull Durham (1988) with writer/director and former Rochester Red Wing Ron Shelton in person on July 6, and a screening of Field of Dreams (1989) with writer/director Phil Alden Robinson in person on August 4. 

Lucinda Devlin: Sightlines is now on view at the George Eastman Museum through December 31, 2017. Photographer Lucinda Devlin has devoted her forty-year career to exploring the relationship between our bodies and the spaces they inhabit. Her work, made with a 2¼-inch camera and wide-angle lens, consists in large part of photographs of interiors associated with pleasure or pain.

The George Eastman Museum has announced it will premiere a retrospective of artist David Levinthal’s work next summer. The exhibition, David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, is set to open on June 2, 2018, and will run through December 30, 2018. 

The seventh annual George Eastman Museum PhotoFinish 5K will take place on Saturday, October 14, at 8 a.m. With a scenic course through Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts, the run/walk is open to everyone, including wheelchair users, and raises funds for local nonprofit organizations that make Rochester a great place to live and work. Individuals and teams can register now at eastman.org/5k.

The George Eastman Museum announced that it has been awarded a grant of $5,000 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences through its FilmWatch program. Grant funds will support live musical accompaniment for more than 15 silent films to be screened in the museum’s Dryden Theatre as part of the 2017–18 Silent Tuesdays program. 

The George Eastman Museum has released the official program for this weekend’s 3rd Nitrate Picture Show, the world’s first festival of film conservation. Following a day of workshops, behind-the-scenes tours, and talks in the Dryden, the 3rd Nitrate Picture Show will begin its official program at 4:30 p.m. today with a series of seven short nitrate films, and conclude the day with The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Irvin Reis, US 1947), starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Shirley Temple, at 10 p.m.

The George Eastman Museum will present the 3rd Nitrate Picture Show on May 5–7, 2017, at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, NY.  The schedule for this year’s festival includes ten programs of feature-length and short films from twelve international archives and collections. The titles in this year’s lineup—which have collectively won five Academy Awards—will be revealed at 9 a.m. on Friday, May 5.

Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time, an exhibition co-organized by the George Eastman Museum and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, explores Eugene Richards’s career as a photojournalist and documentary photographer from 1968 to the present. The Run-On of Time is the first museum retrospective devoted to Richards’s work and will open at the George Eastman Museum on June 10. The exhibition will remain on view through October 22.

At George Eastman’s historic mansion, the restoration of the East Porch—the second stage in a series of critical preservation projects taking place over several years—will begin in June. These projects are addressing historic structures and architectural elements that were not included in the major restoration of the mansion in 1990.

In the early 20th century, George Eastman frequently entertained friends, family, and business colleagues at his grand East Avenue residence. As Rochester’s leading citizen, Eastman was accustomed to entertaining, and he ensured that each luncheon, dinner party, and event was a memorable experience for his guests. In honor of this history, the George Eastman Museum presents Eastman Entertains: At the Movies for two weeks only, Tuesday, May 9, through Sunday, May 21.

As part of its celebration of the work of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the George Eastman Museum will present the East Coast premiere of Muhammad: The Messenger of God (Majid Majidi, Iran 2015) on Sunday, March 26 at 2 p.m. The film will be introduced by Vittorio Storaro, who will receive the George Eastman Award in recognition of his contribution to the art of film on the evening of Saturday, March 25. At the end of the screening, Dr. Muhammad Shafiq, executive director of the Brian and Jean Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue and professor of religious studies at Nazareth College, will provide context and commentary on the film, which has been the source of international controversy.

The George Eastman Museum will present Robert Cumming: The Secret Life of Objects, the first major US exhibition in nearly twenty years dedicated to the evolution of artist Robert Cumming’s practice. The exhibition will be on view February 18 through May 28, 2017.

The George Eastman Museum will honor Academy Award–winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro with the George Eastman Award on Saturday, March 25. The award recognizes Storaro’s distinguished contribution to the art of film. In accepting the honor, he joins the company of film legends such as Charles Chaplin, Joan Crawford, Cecil B. DeMille, Michael Douglas, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Martin Scorsese, James Stewart, Meryl Streep, and most recently, Michael Keaton. The George Eastman Award was established in 1955 as the first retrospective film award to honor artistic work of enduring value.

The George Eastman Museum and the University of Rochester have announced that two collections of George Eastman’s papers have been reunited at the Eastman Museum. The university’s Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation (RBSCP) has recently transferred a group of letters and photographs that it has housed since 1976 to the museum’s George Eastman Legacy Collection, established in 1989. 

Democrat and Chronicle entertainment columnist Jack Garner will offer his take on the 2017 Academy Award nominations and predict the winners in the major categories on Monday, February 13 at 6 p.m. in the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum.

The George Eastman Museum presents virtual springtime, with the annual Dutch Connection floral display, on view Friday, February 10, through Sunday, February 26. This colorful two-week display will feature thousands of flowering bulbs, displayed throughout the historic mansion.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant of $468,881 from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, via the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, to continue its ongoing restoration of George Eastman’s mansion, a National Historic Landmark.

The George Eastman Museum received a grant award of $20,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works program to preserve two 35mm nitrate film prints: The Rich and the Poor (American Film Manufacturing Co., US 1911) and The Inevitable Retribution (Biograph, US 1915). The NEA announced awards totaling more than $30 million as part of the its first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017.

The George Eastman Museum will present the 3rd Nitrate Picture Show this spring. The festival will be held May 5–7, 2017 at the Dryden Theatre, the George Eastman Museum’s historic venue for film exhibition in Rochester, NY. Festival passes for the Nitrate Picture Show, the world’s festival of film conservation, will go on sale at 12:01 a.m. (EST) on Monday, December 12, 2016. Passes will be available for purchase through the museum’s website at eastman.org/nps. 

The George Eastman Museum will present its recently acquired, brand-new 35mm print of the roadshow version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), complete with the music meant to be heard before the film’s beginning, during the intermission, and at the end. Writer and director Stanley Kubrick’s visionary sci-fi masterwork will be shown at the museum’s Dryden Theatre on Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 7:30 p.m. The film’s star, Keir Dullea, who played astronaut Dave Bowman, will introduce the film and, after the screening, will share stories and insights about its making. Dullea will also sell and sign photographs before the screening and following the discussion. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. 

The George Eastman Museum will open Richard Renaldi: Manhattan Sunday on January 21, 2017, in the Project Gallery. Exhibited at a museum for the first time, photographer Richard Renaldi’s new series consists of portraits, urban still lifes, and streetscapes made in the wee hours of Sunday morning, when post-bacchanalian characters join early-morning workers in New York City’s nooks and crannies. Richard Renaldi: Manhattan Sunday will be on view through June 11, 2017. 

The George Eastman Museum will host contemporary artists this fall and winter to speak about their work. Los Angeles–based photographer Elena Dorfman and Armenian-American photographer Diàna Markosian will speak as part of the museum’s Wish You Were Here lecture series, and Chicago-based artist Jason Lazarus will discuss his Too Hard to Keep (T.H.T.K.) project, an installation of which is on view in A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age.

The George Eastman Museum will kick off the holiday season on November 4, when the annual Sweet Creations—the exquisite display of dozens of cleverly designed and deliciously decorated gingerbread houses­—opens to the public. As one of the Greater Rochester community’s most beloved holiday traditions, the display will be on view through December 14. 

The George Eastman Museum has launched a new platform that allows public online access to more than 250,000 objects from its world-class collections at eastman.org/collections-online. Objects from the museum’s photography, technology, and George Eastman Legacy collections are now searchable, and more objects from the museum’s vast holdings are being added on an ongoing basis. Objects from the moving image collection will become accessible in the coming months.

The George Eastman Museum will open a new rotation in its History of Photography Gallery on October 29. This installation, curated by Heather Shannon, assistant curator in the Department of Photography, provides an overview of the history of photography through photographs made in Mexico by artists, photojournalists, and archaeologists, as well as unidentified tourists and studio photographers from Europe, the United States, and Mexico. The installation begins with a daguerreotype that dates to 1839, the year the invention of photography was announced, and ends with a triptych from contemporary Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena’s critically acclaimed series Carpoolers (2011–12).