The George Eastman Museum presents the exhibition Evoke: A Youthful Expression, on view through March 9, 2025, showcasing the work of student artist participants of In Control, a program of Planned Parenthood of Central and Western New York.

The George Eastman Museum will honor actor Goldie Hawn with the George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of cinema on Tuesday, October 22.

The George Eastman Museum is delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition, Scene at Eastman, which will open on October 25, 2024 and close on April 20, 2025. The exhibition will comprise a set of photographs and sculptures made in aluminum, glass, concrete, paper, tin, and other materials. The photographs and sculptures in Scene at Eastman (“the works”) describe various acts and instances of apprehension, of address, of attendance to the presence of others. Some objects are original, others appropriated. The viewer’s own practice of looking is solicited by the works.

The George Eastman Museum has received a grant award of $98,220 from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Climate Initiative—the largest private national grantmaking program to support climate change action at cultural institutions and the first nationwide program of its kind for the visual arts. The grant supports the installation of a new LED lighting system in the museum’s Main Galleries and adjacent exhibition spaces.

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the birth of American dancer, actor, singer, and choreographer Fred Astaire, the George Eastman Museum is pleased to announce the online publication of a unique piece of film history: a 1936 screen test of Astaire’s sister Adele, a Broadway legend in her own right. This is the only known footage of her acting and singing. Unseen for nearly ninety years, it will now be accessible to the public, going live at eastman.org/dark-victory-test on Wednesday, May 8, 2024.

The George Eastman Museum has announced the next phase of a multiyear project to create a new exhibition on George Eastman’s life and legacy. The George Eastman Story Lab, which will open on Saturday, May 18 in the mansion’s second-floor Sitting Room, will offer visitors the opportunity to provide feedback on the direction of the future exhibition. 

To kick off the eighth annual Nitrate Picture Show, the George Eastman Museum will screen a unique tinted nitrate print of D.W. Griffith’s silent masterpiece Intolerance (1916) on Thursday, May 30 at 6:30 p.m. The Nitrate Picture Show is the first festival in the world entirely dedicated to screening original nitrate prints from the 1910s to the 1950s, from silent cinema to Technicolor spectacles. The full program of film titles being shown this year will be announced at a press conference at 10 a.m.

The George Eastman Museum has appointed historian and curator Michelle Finn, PhD, as curator of the George Eastman Collection, with responsibility for George Eastman’s 35,000‑square-foot mansion, its contents, and archival materials comprising more than 200,000 items. Finn will start in the position on April 15.

The George Eastman Museum continues its 75th anniversary celebration with the opening of the exhibition New Directions: Recent Acquisitions on Saturday, March 16 in the Project Gallery. New Directions features work acquired by the museum over the past five years, and showcases significant developments in photographic practice.

The George Eastman Museum will present a benefit film screening on Sunday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. In Spring (Navesni; Vesnoi, Mikhail Kaufman, USSR [Ukraine] 1929, 65 min., 35mm) is a seminal work of Ukrainian cinema as well as a hymn to the miracle of life. The fact that it was filmed in and around Kyiv makes it particularly poignant today. The silent film was directed by filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman and will be accompanied by Dr. Philip C. Carli on piano. 

The George Eastman Museum has appointed Phil Taylor as an assistant curator in its Department of Photography. He will be based primarily in New York City. His role will include participating in collection development, curating exhibitions at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, and authoring or contributing to accompanying publications and other scholarly books. 

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.

The George Eastman Museum has recently completed a major upgrade to the environmental conditions of its collections areas, with grant support of $300,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The more than $800,000 Environmental Improvements Implementation project included the replacement of a 30-year-old system that controlled the temperature and humidity for the photography vault, technology vault, and photography study center. 

The George Eastman Museum will present Anderson & Low: Voyages and Discoveries in its main galleries beginning October 18. The exhibition is the US premiere of UK-based artist duo Anderson & Low’s most recent series, Voyages. For this exhibition, the artists also selected works from the Eastman Museum collection that they perceived to resonate with their work. In addition, the show will include excerpts from Anderson & Low’s previous bodies of work and new photographs made in response to their explorations of the museum’s collection.

This Saturday, July 20, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the George Eastman Museum will be celebrating “Moon Day” throughout the day with a special boot camp style photo workshop, a Focus 45 talk, gallery tours, and film screenings.  In addition, visitors are encouraged to visit the moon inspired rotation in the History of Photography Gallery which examines the intersecting histories of photography and space exploration, as well as a new installation by artist Penelope Umbrico, Everyone’s Photos Any License that will be in view