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. 

The George Eastman Museum announced today that it has been awarded a grant of $5,000 from The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences through its FilmWatch program. Grant funds will support live musical accompaniment for 20 curated silent films to be screened in the museum’s Dryden Theatre as part of the 2016-2017 Silent Cinema Tuesdays program. 

As part of the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival, the George Eastman Museum will be screening the rarely seen documentary by Bernard Shakey (aka Neil Young) Muddy Track (1987) on Sunday, September 18 at 2 p.m. The screening will be held in the museum’s Dryden Theatre, located at 900 East Avenue. 

A major new exhibition, A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age, will be on view at the George Eastman Museum from October 22, 2016, through January 29, 2017.