The George Eastman Museum announced that its recent restoration of Murder in Harlem (1935), a rare film directed by Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951), has been selected to be screened in the Cannes Classic series at the 74th Annual Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) in France. The festival will be held from Tuesday, July 6, through Saturday, July 17, 2021. The Eastman Museum collaborated with the Cineteca di Bologna, in Italy, to preserve the film.

This summer, the George Eastman Museum will present two free film series in solidarity with Black Americans and Asian/Pacific Islander Americans: Spotlighting Black Film Artists and Celebrating Asian/Pacific American Directors. All are invited to attend the screenings at the Dryden Theatre.

India Heritage Museum will present a new visual arts exhibition, Indian Cinema: A Rochester Connection, beginning Saturday, May 8, and running through Sunday, June 13. This free exhibition includes contemporary Indian film posters provided by the George Eastman Museum and can be viewed at the Vinod and Vinay Luthra India Heritage Center at 2171 Monroe Wayne County Line Road, Macedon, 14502. The exhibit can be visited on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. 

The George Eastman Museum has been providing artists, educators, and enthusiasts ways to explore photographic and moving image processes for decades through its on-site Process Workshops. From how to make a tintype to turning digital negatives into prints, these in-person workshops drew people from around the world to learn from the museum’s experts. This year, the Eastman Museum is offering new ways to experience its workshops from wherever you are located.

The George Eastman Museum has recently received a donation of 20 reels, from 12 identified titles, of rare 35mm nitrate and diacetate film prints from historian John Goodman of Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

—The George Eastman Museum has appointed Jacqueline DiStefano, CPA as Vice President, Finance and Operations. She will be responsible for overseeing the activities of the accounting and finance, human resources, and information technology departments of the museum, as well as the Eastman Museum’s shop and cafe. DiStefano will be succeeding Thomas J. Combs, who is retiring, and will begin in her new role on July 16.

—Gail Albert Halaban: Out My Window will be on view at the George Eastman Museum beginning July 7. The exhibition will include artist Gail Albert Halaban’s photographs from the earliest to the most recent phases of her project, which until now has been seen only as discrete bodies of work from New York and Paris. This show features images made in cities all over the world, including Buenos Aires, Istanbul, New York, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Utrecht, and Venice, and showcases what urban neighbors see when they look across the street.

The George Eastman Museum has hired Katie Kalkstein as its Director of Annual Giving. Kalkstein will be responsible for managing the museum’s individual and corporate memberships as well as managing the museum’s annual fund campaign.

The George Eastman Museum is hosting a community forum on Wednesday, May 16, at 6 p.m., to share information about its historic mansion restoration program and update community members about the next phase.

The George Eastman Museum will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Animal House (Landis, US 1978) with a screening of a 35mm print of the film on Saturday, July 7 at 7:30 p.m. The film’s director, John Landis, and its costume designer, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, will introduce the film and, after the screening, will share stories and insights about the making of this classic.

—The Garden Vibes summer concert series will return to the George Eastman Museum this summer. The outdoor concerts will take place on the following Wednesday evenings: June 20, July 18, and August 15.

The George Eastman Museum has released the official program for this weekend’s 4th 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 4th Nitrate Picture Show will begin its official program at 4:30 p.m. today with a series of six short nitrate films, followed by  Sommarlek  (Summer Interlude, Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1951) at 7:30 p.m., and conclude the day with Holiday (George Cukor, US 1938), starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, at 10 p.m.

—The George Eastman Museum has announced that its popular Eastman Entertains: At the Movies, will be on view from Tuesday, May 8, through Sunday, May 20. For two weeks only, a spectacular array of creatively styled table settings and floral arrangements inspired by popular motion pictures—including My Fair Lady, A League of Their Own, Steel Magnolias, and The Goonies—will be displayed throughout the mansion of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman.

In anticipation of the 4th Nitrate Picture Show, the George Eastman Museum will host a special pre-festival event with a screening of a rare nitrate print of Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, UK 1948) on Thursday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m. The film is on loan from the Library of Congress. The 4th Nitrate Picture Show will officially begin at 9 a.m. on Friday, May 4, when the full program of film titles to be shown at the festival will be announced.  

The George Eastman Museum has acquired a large and comprehensive collection of photographs by David Levinthal as a result of donations from an anonymous patron and from Donald Rosenfeld Jr. The museum is now the most significant repository of Levinthal’s art in the world. The Eastman Museum will premiere the retrospective David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire on June 2, 2018. The exhibition will run through December 30, 2018.

The George Eastman Museum will be celebrating the 90th Academy Awards with a 23-film series at the Dryden through April, a special event with Jack Garner on February 16 discussing his award winner predictions, and a day of past Best Picture winners screening at Kodak Center on March 3.

The George Eastman Museum brings springtime to Rochester a few months early, with the annual Dutch Connection floral show, on view Friday, February 9, through Sunday, February 25. This colorful two-week display features thousands of flowering bulbs in George Eastman’s historic mansion.

Dreaming in Color: The Davide Turconi Collection of Early Cinema will open at the George Eastman Museum on January 13. Dreaming in Color is dedicated to a unique collection of more than 23,000 original nitrate frames of 35mm films dating from the early years of cinema (1897–1915). The frames were gathered by Italian film historian Davide Turconi (1911–2005) in the 1960s from a large collection of films acquired by Jesuit priest Josef-Alexis Joye (1852–1919).

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).

The George Eastman Museum has announced its 2017 schedule of photography workshops, including programs in making ambrotypes, tintypes, wet and dry collodion negatives, 35mm motion picture film, and digital negatives. In addition to the workshops being held at the museum, an excursion workshop in dry plates is also being offered in New York’s Letchworth State Park (named the best state park in a survey by USA Today last year).

Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road will be on view at the George Eastman Museum on October 1, 2016, through January 8, 2017. The exhibition presents recent work by Los Angeles–based artist Catherine Opie, one of the essential figures in contemporary photography. Opie’s photographs of the rooms, closets, shoes, clothing, and jewelry of Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) create an indirect yet intimate portrait of a life defined by wealth and fame. 

The George Eastman Museum has announced the fall lineup for its Wish You Were Here photography lecture series. The series will begin on Thursday, September 22 at 6 p.m., with photographer and RIT visiting professor Sean McFarland. His talk, Glass Mountains, Echoes, and Pictures of Us, will be followed by a book signing. McFarland’s work examines history, photography, and the representation of landscape to reveal how our perception of the earth is ever changing. His work is on view through October 2 in the museum’s exhibition Photography and America’s National Parks. The museum’s galleries will be open until 8 p.m.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant to support its project Passages: The Gabriel Cromer Collection in the amount of $148,079 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Museums for America program. The grant will allow the museum to catalog, digitize, and provide online access to its Gabriel Cromer Collection of early French photography, which includes photographs, lithographic prints, albums, books, cameras, lenses, and early motion studies.