The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

dedicated to

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

and one of the world's oldest

film archives An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

, opened to the public in 1949 in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

. World-renowned for its collections in the fields of photography and cinema, the museum is also a leader in

film preservation Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the wid ...

and

photograph conservation The conservation and restoration of photographs is the study of the physical care and treatment of photographic materials. It covers both efforts undertaken by photograph conservators, librarians, archivists, and museum curators who manage photogr ...

, educating archivists and conservators from around the world. Home to the 500-seat Dryden Theatre, the museum is located on the estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the founder of

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

Company. The estate was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...

in 1966.

History

The Rochester estate of George Eastman (1854–1932) was bequeathed upon his death to the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of ...

. University presidents (first

Benjamin Rush Rhees Benjamin Rush Rhees ( 08 February 1860–05 January 1939) was the third president of the University of Rochester, serving from 1900 to 1935. Education Rhees, great-grandson of radical Baptist minister Morgan John Rhys, earned his undergraduate d ...

, then

Alan Valentine Alan Chester Valentine (February 23, 1901 – July 14, 1980) was an American academic who competed on the gold-medal winning American rugby union team in the 1924 Summer Olympics, was president of the University of Rochester, and served in ...

) occupied Eastman's mansion as a residence for ten years. In 1948, the university transferred the property to the museum and the

Georgian Revival Style Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I, George II, Georg ...

mansion was adapted to serve the museum's operations. George Eastman House was chartered as a museum in 1947. From the outset, the museum's mission has been to collect, preserve, and present the history of

and

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...

. The museum opened its doors on November 9, 1949, displaying its core collections in the former public rooms of Eastman's house. In October 2015, the museum changed its name from ''George Eastman House'' to the ''George Eastman Museum''. The museum's original collections included the Medicus collection of Civil War photographs by Alexander Gardner, Eastman Kodak Company's historical collection, and the massive Gabriel Cromer collection of nineteenth-century French photography. The Eastman Museum has received donations of entire archives, corporate and individual collections, and the estates of leading photographers, as well as thousands of

motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

s and massive holdings of cinematic

ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...

. But by July 19, 1984, the museum had a $500,000 deficit, and the museum's holdings were considered by many to be among the world's finest, but with the collections growing at a rapid pace, the museum was increasingly burdened by its own success. Additional space became critical to store and study the increasing number of collected objects. In 1985, the Smithsonian Institution was offered title, and control, if it agreed to leave the Eastman Archives in Rochester and pay $1 million a year towards maintenance. The Smithsonian would appoint the director and staff and set curatorial policies. In 1985, Kodak gave the Museum an endowment, the proceeds of the sale of its San Francisco office building, worth $13 million to $15 million on condition that it remain in Rochester, and the trustees must raise the money to build or renovate in Rochester. In January 1989, the museum's expansion facility opened to the public. In 1996, the museum opened the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in nearby Chili. One of only four film conservation centers in the United States (as of March 2006), the facility houses the museum's rare 35 mm prints made on cellulose nitrate. That same year, the Eastman House launched the first school of

in the United States to teach restoration, preservation, and archiving of motion pictures. The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation was founded with support from The Louis B. Mayer Foundation. In 1999, the George Eastman Museum launched the Mellon Advanced Residency Program in

Photograph Conservation The conservation and restoration of photographs is the study of the physical care and treatment of photographic materials. It covers both efforts undertaken by photograph conservators, librarians, archivists, and museum curators who manage photogr ...

, made possible with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program trained top photograph archivists and conservators from around the world. George Eastman Museum has organized numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, including '' New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape'' in 1975.

Governance

Directors

The current director of the George Eastman Museum is Bruce Barnes who was appointed in September 2012.

Board of Trustees

The George Eastman Museum is headed by a board of trustees. Nannette Nocon is the current Board Chair.

Finances

The George Eastman Museum's annual budget is approximately $10 million. As of December 2014, its endowment exceeded $35 million.

Collections

The museum's holdings comprise more than 400,000

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...

s and negatives dating from the invention of photography to the present day; 28,000 motion picture films; three million other cinematic objects, including letters, scripts, musical scores, lobby cards, posters, film stills, and celebrity portraits; more than 16,000 objects of photographic and cinematographic

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

; an internationally renowned research collection of books, periodicals, and other materials on photography and moving images; and George Eastman's home furnishings and decorative arts, personal and business correspondence, private library, photographs, negatives, films, and related personal items.

Photography collection

The photography collection embraces numerous landmark processes, objects of great rarity, and monuments of art history that trace the evolution of the medium as a technology, as a means of scientific and historical documentation, and as one of the most potent and accessible means of personal expression of the modern era. More than 14,000 photographers are represented in the collection, including virtually all the major figures in the history of the medium. The collection includes original vintage works produced by nearly every process and printing medium employed. Notable holdings include: * One of the world's largest collection of daguerreotypes, including more than 1,000 by Southworth & Hawes * A major collection of nineteenth-century photographs of the American West by photographers including Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, and

William Henry Jackson William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942) was an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of Am ...

* A major collection of ca. 1890s–1910s glass negatives from French photojournalist

Charles Chusseau-Flaviens Charles Chusseau-Flaviens (13 February 1866 – 15 October 1928) was a self-employed French photojournalist from the 1890s to the 1910s. His distribution of other photographer's work for publication created one of the first photo press agencies, ...

* The photographic estates of Lewis Hine,

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with tr ...

Alvin Langdon Coburn Alvin Langdon Coburn (June 11, 1882 – November 23, 1966) was an early 20th-century photographer who became a key figure in the development of American pictorialism. He became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of el ...

, Nickolas Muray and

Victor Keppler Victor Keppler (; 1904 – 2 December 1987) was an American commercial photographer and author. Biography Keppler was born in Manhattan. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and City College of New York. Throughout his career as a photographe ...

* A major collection of

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

’ early and vintage prints The museum's collection includes works by leading contemporary artists, including

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Candida Höfer Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, ...

David Levinthal David Lawrence Levinthal (born March 8, 1949) is an American photographer who lives and works in New York City. He uses small toys and props with dramatic lighting to construct miniature environments for subject matters varying from war scenes to ...

, Cindy Sherman,

Adam Fuss Adam Fuss (born 1961) is a British photographer. Early life Adam Fuss was born in England in 1961. His father manufactured women's coats and his mother was an Australian fashion model. Fuss's father suffered a stroke in 1963 and required cons ...

, Vik Muniz, Gillian Wearing,

Ori Gersht Ori Gersht (born 1967) is an Israeli fine art photographer. He is a professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Kent, England. Biography Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv. He graduated in Photography, Film and ...

, Mickalene Thomas, Chris McCaw, and Matthew Brandt.

Moving image collection

The George Eastman Museum Motion Picture Collection is one of the major moving image archives in the United States. It was established in 1949 by the first curator of film, James Card (1915–2000) who helped to build the George Eastman Museum as a leading force in the field with holdings of over 25,000 titles and a collection of stills, posters and papers with over 3 million artifacts. The George Eastman Museum's collection includes the complete moving-image works of

William Kentridge William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by ...

George Eastman Legacy Collection

This collection includes George Eastman's house and the George Eastman Archive and Study Center. Opened in April 1999, the George Eastman Archive and Study Center contains Eastman's personal possessions and documents pertaining to Kodak's early history. It has over half a million items within its climate controlled vault. The archive is accessible from the second floor of the house. Items within the house itself include fragments of Eastman's coffin, a mounted elephant head, and an Aeolian pipe organ.

Fire

On May 30, 1978, a two-alarm fire affecting four buildings resulted in the loss of some rare movie films and still photographs in the collection, though not as bad as originally feared.

George Eastman Awards

The George Eastman Museum established the George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of film in 1955 as the first award given by an American film archive and museum to honor artistic work of enduring value.

Recipients

*1965 - Fred Astaire (Actor) *1973 - Johnny Weissmuller (Actor) *1975 - Blanche Sweet (Actor) *1976 -

George Cukor George Dewey Cukor (; July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) was an American film director and film producer. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO when David O. Selznick, the studio's Head ...

(Director),

Karl Struss Karl Struss, A.S.C. (November 30, 1886 – December 15, 1981) was an American photographer and a cinematographer of the 1900s through the 1950s. He was also one of the earliest pioneers of 3-D films. While he mostly worked on films, such as F.W ...

(Cinematographer) *1978 -

James Stewart James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military pilot. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morality ...

(Actor),

Willard Van Dyke Willard Van Dyke (December 5, 1906 – January 23, 1986) was an American filmmaker, photographer, arts administrator, teacher, and former director of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art.http://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/6278/rel ...

(Director) *1982 -

Joan Bennett Joan Geraldine Bennett (February 27, 1910 – December 7, 1990) was an American stage, film, and television actress. She came from a show-business family, one of three acting sisters. Beginning her career on the stage, Bennett appeared in more t ...

(Actor), Louise Brooks (Actor),

Dolores del Río María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete (3 August 1904 – 11 April 1983), known professionally as Dolores del Río (), was a Mexican actress. With a career spanning more than 50 years, she is regarded as the first major female Latin Am ...

(Actor), Myrna Loy (Actor),

Maureen O'Sullivan Maureen O'Sullivan (17 May 1911 – 23 June 1998) was an Irish-American actress, who played Jane in the ''Tarzan'' series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She performed with such actors as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, William ...

(Actor), Luise Rainer (Actor), Sylvia Sidney (Actor) *1987 -

Gregory Peck Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood ...

(Actor) *1990 -

Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall (; born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014) was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary ...

(Actor) *1992 -

Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn (born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognised as both a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen ...

(Actor) *1994 -

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, incl ...

(Filmmaker) *1997 - Isabella Rossellini (Actor) *1999 - Meryl Streep (Actor) *2003 - Kim Novak (Actor) *2012 - Richard Gere (Actor, Activist) *2013 - Roger Corman (Director, Producer, Distributor) *2015 -

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

(Actor, Producer) *2016 - Michael Keaton (Actor) *2017 -

Vittorio Storaro Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C. (born 24 June 1940) is an Italian cinematographer widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history, for his work on numerous classic films including '' The Conformist,'' '' Apocalypse No ...

(Cinematographer) *2019 - Julia Roberts (Actor, Producer)

George Eastman's Estate

George Eastman built his residence at 900 East Avenue between 1902 and 1905. He created a unique urban estate complete with of working farm land, formal gardens, greenhouses, stables, barns, pastures, and a , 50-room Colonial Revival mansion with a fireproof structure made of reinforced concrete. Eastman's house presented a neoclassical Georgian Revival facade of decorative craftsmanship. Beneath this exterior were such modern conveniences as an

electrical generator In electricity generation, a generator is a device that converts motive power ( mechanical energy) or fuel-based power ( chemical energy) into electric power for use in an external circuit. Sources of mechanical energy include steam turbines, ...

, an internal telephone system with 21 stations, a built-in vacuum cleaning system, a central clock network, an

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They ...

, and a great Aeolian

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks' ...

. Eastman used the house as a center of the city's rich musical life from 1905 until his death in 1932. The estate was declared a

in 1966. and

References

External links

George Eastman Museum
within

Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world. It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...

Official websites

Official George Eastman Museum website

Flickr.com: Eastman House

Guides

RocWiki.org: George Eastman House article

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eastman, George, House Museums in Rochester, New York Historic house museums in New York (state) Houses in Rochester, New York Photography museums and galleries in the United States Art museums and galleries in New York (state) Biographical museums in New York (state) Kodak Film archives in the United States Photo archives in the United States Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) National Register of Historic Places in Rochester, New York National Historic Landmarks in New York (state) Museums established in 1949 1949 establishments in New York (state) Georgian Revival architecture in New York (state) FIAF-affiliated institutions