I am looking forward to reading your thoughts. For ours is a time rich with the possibility to listen, and to make clear our positions.

As director of one of the great collections in the world, I represent a profound instrument for communication. The photographs and moving pictures, the books and technologies, and the objects that reflect the legacy of George Eastman are vehicles ready to carry the curious to most any intellectual, emotional, spiritual destination they might venture to travel.

This is particularly true today. For where once it could have been said that museums sat back and waited for their audience to come to them, now museums have stepped forward into their communities to ask how best they might serve. In the past, it could have been said that museums believed their prime responsibility ended with the collection and care of objects held in support of mission. Exhibition and interpretation for the public in these museums was a secondary objective. Now it is clear that our responsibilities just begin with collections and their exhibition.

Both museums and newspapers were masters at making declarations. Neither was very interested in the two-way street of communication. Their pronouncements were entirely one way. But most newspapers now have developed an internet face that enlarges the op-ed page that several decades ago was designed to provide the much needed forum in which readers could write. Museums like Eastman House have also encouraged audience response, established a rich virtual life and even built exhibitions around audience input. Picturing What Matters and Why Look at Animals? were two exhibitions at Eastman House that incorporated audience images, and both now tour around the world, providing a foundation for engagement of other places – and other peoples’ – pictures.

I began my professional life writing for newspapers in Western New York and for magazines nationally. I enjoy the press and its traditions, and admire its drive to open avenues for communication. The social institutions of the press and of museums are venerable pillars in the structure of culture, both locally and globally. Both have incorporated new opportunities in technology to encourage understanding of the issues we mediate. Blogs are one of the media we can use, and we should use as many as we can.

This attitude is basic to the hospitality of George Eastman House for ideas. We begin by being as accessible and as transparent as we can. Sometimes our care for and conservation of collection can present apparent cross-purposes to accessibility. But as Grant Romer, long-time director of the Conservation Department at Eastman House notes, “Conservation is access over time.” When we understand our commitment to the effective lifespan of an object, we can calculate the access we can permit.

I recall the surprise an editor at Forbes Magazine expressed when I told her that if a visitor comes to Eastman House and wants to see something in our collection, we will make every effort on the spot to provide that access. If there is a place at the table in archives, and if there is a curator or archivist available, we will provide access in hopes of fulfilling a visitor’s desires. It is true that some objects are more difficult to retrieve than others, but the principal is intact. If at all possible, we mean to serve the needs of our visitors.

So with this inaugural blog, let me invite our audience to share ideas and make known their needs. I plan to write often, and I look forward to hearing from you in the meantime.

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