From the Director: Thankful for Ten Years
From the November/December George Eastman Museum bulletin
Ten years ago, I was honored to become the Ron and Donna Fielding Director of the George Eastman Museum. I cherish our great staff, the Eastman Museum Council, and all of our members, donors, and volunteers
for their dedication and contributions. Our trustees and trustees emeriti have supported us in formulating and realizing our strategic vision. In particular, I thank Thomas Jackson, Steven Schwartz, Kevin Gavagan, and Nannette Nocon, who have each served with steadfast commitment as Chair of the Board of Trustees during my tenure.
The museum’s facilities, collections, and programs have made extraordinary progress in the past decade. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has supported our ongoing activities and ambitious program of capital projects, which have addressed numerous long-term fundamental issues.
The Thomas Tischer Visitor Center has been the most important advance in our visitors’ experience since George Eastman’s historic mansion was restored in 1990. It is convenient, accessible and welcoming to all. The Open Face eatery has been tremendously popular and enabled our guests to enjoy the Palm House and its garden views.
We have invested more than $5 million in the restoration of George Eastman’s historic estate, including the Palm House, porte cochere, Conservatory roof, North Organ, East Porch, Bruce B. Bates Colonnade, 68 mansion windows, and pergola in the Schuyler C. Townson Terrace Garden. In the coming years, we will restore the Rock Garden and its grape arbor, the West Garden and its loggia, and the mansion’s chimneys, parapets, dormers, and roof.
Preservation of our collection objects is an imperative. We have transformed the storage environments that are critical to the long-term preservation of our photography collection and technology collection. This coming winter, we will upgrade our offsite storage facility for our collection of nitrate films.
We have purposefully added to our world-class collections. In photography, ranging from nineteenth-century vernacular photographs to works by renowned contemporary artists. In cinema, spanning from films by the Lumière brothers to the complete moving images works of William Kentridge. In technology, ranging from rare or unique boxes of the two earliest Kodak films to pioneering digital cameras. The George Eastman collection has added thousands of photographs and papers that had been held at the University of Rochester, as well as George Eastman’s bed. We thank all of the donors to our collections.
Our exhibitions, in the galleries and the Dryden Theatre, have been diverse, engaging, and enlightening. We present about ten gallery exhibitions annually. Our recent exhibition Joshua Rashaad McFadden: I Believe I’ll Run On was an early-career survey of works by a contemporary artist, exploring issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity. We have created an ongoing exhibition program for contemporary moving image artworks. Opening in March 2023, our new Gallery Obscura will exhibit works in collaboration with community organizations.
Our flourishing book publishing program, supported by the George Eastman Museum Publishing Trust Endowment, produced ten books in the past eight years. The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915–1935 received two book awards, and David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire won the coveted “Best in Show” Prize from the American Alliance of Museums. We recently published The Cromer Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Photography, about our museum’s foundational collection, and the catalog for the McFadden exhibition.
The George Eastman Museum’s most persistent challenge is funding our annual operating expenses. This year, we must increase our Annual Campaign income by at least 20% to balance our budget. I ask everyone who cares about our museum to increase your support so that we can fully maintain our staff and programs, which are essential to our present and our future.
I look forward to advancing our mission — preservation of our collections and George Eastman’s estate, leadership in our fields, and service to our communities — over the coming years. Thank you for your support.
Bruce Barnes, Ph.D.
Ron and Donna Fielding Director
May/June 2022 Bulletin
