The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York.
World-renowned for its collections in the fields of photography and cinema, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and photograph conservation, 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 Company. The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
History
The Rochester estate of George Eastman (1854–1932) was bequeathed upon his death to the University of Rochester. University presidents (first Benjamin Rush Rhees, then Alan Valentine) 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 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 photography and film. 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 pictures and massive holdings of cinematic ephemera.
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 film preservation 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, 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.