My name is Tom Hoehn, a longtime member of George Eastman House. The current exhibit, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” (which, by the way, is just fantastic!) brought back a memory from my days as a kid in Rome, N.Y., that I wanted to share as guest blogger.

I was a fan of Norman Rockwell’s paintings, who wasn’t? As a kid I would write letters to people and almost 100% of the time I would get a
personal response. I couldn’t text them, “friend” them on Facebook, Google their address. I had to take a pen (or pencil in my case) to paper. My kids, who
can’t comprehend a world like this, wonder if dinosaurs wandered the streets of my hometown at that time as well.

I had a print of a Rockwell painting, his well-known self portrait, featuring him peeking around the canvas at a mirror. I had the idea of sending
it to him for a signature. Industrious kid that I was I put it in a mailing tube and carefully penned his name in his trademark block letter style hoping
to get his attention.  I addressed it “Norman Rockwell, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.” It had to find its way to him. I was a kid, what did I know? I also enclosed two $1 bills for return postage.

A short time later I got a response! Unfortunately, it was my print, unsigned, with a letter stating he was under contract and couldn’t sign
prints. However, Mr. Rockwell took the time to send me this postcard.

I also noted he hand wrote his return address on the envelope. Taking time to personally respond to a kid. What a guy.

I was happy because I got my requested signature! But that isn’t the end of the story. About a week later I got another envelope from Norman Rockwell, again with a handwritten address. Enclosed was the reminder of my $2 — in 13-cent stamps!

That’s just so, well, Norman Rockwell!

By Jeremy Clowe, Norman Rockwell Museum

President Barack Obama opened the doors of the White House on July 15, 2011, for a special meet and greet with Norman Rockwell Museum Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt; Museum President Anne Morgan; and Museum Trustee Ruby Bridges Hall. The meeting was held to celebrate the White House exhibit of Norman Rockwell’s classic 1963 painting “The Problem We All Live With, ” which was inspired by Bridges’ history-changing walk integrating William Frantz Public School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. President Obama requested the loaning of the painting from the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum to honor the 50th anniversary of Bridges’ childhood experience.

President Barack Obama, Ruby Bridges Hall, Norman Rockwell Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt, and Museum President Anne Morgan, view Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” hanging in a West Wing hallway near the Oval Office, July 15, 2011. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza. Courtesy The White House. All rights reserved.

“It was deeply moving to hear President Obama speak with Ruby Bridges about her school experience and Norman Rockwell’s painting,” says Ms. Norton Moffatt. “He acknowledged Ruby’s walk to school and her mother’s courage as the direct heritage that made it possible for him to serve in the White House.” Ms. Bridges Hall replied, “we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.”

From left to right: Norman Rockwell Museum Trustee Ruby Bridges Hall, President Anne Morgan, and Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt, wait outside the west entrance of the White House to meet with President Barack Obama. Photo ©Norman Rockwell Museum. All rights reserved.

During the afternoon meeting, the President showed his guests an original copy of The Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln, hanging in the Oval Office over a bronze bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the same room, the group viewed Rockwell’s original painting of the Statue of Liberty, painted for the July 6, 1946 cover of The Saturday Evening Post, and donated to the White House in 1994 by film director Steven Spielberg, who also serves on the Museum’s Board of Trustees.

‘The Problem We All Live With’ will be on view at the White House through October 31, hanging right outside of the Oval Office.

White House blog “President Obama Meets Civil Right Icon Ruby Bridges”

Mr. Jeremy Clowe is the manager of Media Services at the Norman Rockwell Museum and originally appeared on their site. Mr. Clowe will be presenting  The Stories Behind Rockwell’s Famous Faces at 2 p.m. Aug. 7 at George Eastman House.

Unidentified Photographer
FORT SUMTER SHOWING THE EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT BY THE ARTILLERY OF THE ARMY
& NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES WHILE OCCUPIED BY THE REBELS FROM APRIL 1861 TO FEBRUARY 1865, ca. 1865, Albumen print
 

Unidentified Photographer

FORT SUMTER SHOWING THE EFFECTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT BY THE ARTILLERY OF THE ARMY & NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES WHILE OCCUPIED BY THE REBELS FROM APRIL 1861 TO FEBRUARY 1865, ca. 1865,  Albumen print

The tale of the American Civil War has been told thousands of times. Historians,
both academic and amateur, have delved into the past to understand just how
the Confederate States of America decided to secede from the Union to form an
independent country, and how, in response, the Union eventually quashed their
attempts. Our current exhibition considers photography and its relationship to the War Between the States.
The George Eastman House collection holds over 1,100 photographs related to
the civil war, a modest number in relation to national standards. The strengths of this collection are some unique items, including a series of photographs found in a United States Postal Service dead letter office, several portraits of Confederate officers aboard the C.S.S. Alabama, and an album assembled to commemorate the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In addition, items such as Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War provide extensive holdings of war-related scenes and landscapes.
It is estimated that over 620,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War
along with countless civilians. This remains the highest number of deaths for
American soldiers in any war. Photography played an important role in bringing this sobering reality to the public as, for the first time in history, photographers
showed the dead that remained on battlefields, and publishers had the ability to
reproduce these images in quantity. In addition, images showing the destruction
of cities, new American heroes, and arsenals of troops filled the pages of popular
journals such as Harper’s Weekly and Humphrey’s Journal.
Photography was still in the early stages of its invention. Therefore, many photographers were new to their craft and as the war raged on, photographic supplies were sometimes expensive and hard to come by. In addition, the existing processes could not capture the chaos of battle, with the cannons flaring and men fighting in combat.
Now at the sesquicentennial of these events, the stillness of what remains in these photographed scenes resonates in American minds. Destruction, struggle, and loneliness are evoked by the haunting, empty scenes, but we may also perceive an impression of valor in a young face, a sense of patriotism for a chosen side, a feeling of dignity in the face of death.

The three-minute reel, which archivists estimate was filmed in 1861 or 1862, reveals an active battlefield as well as behind-the-scenes footage of Union soldiers in encampments and marching in formation.

After finding the unmarked reel and after determining its authenticity, Eastman House contacted filmmaker Ken Burns. He plans to visit the museum immediately to begin research.

“This moving footage would have significantly enhanced my Civil War documentary,” said filmmaker Ken Burns, who earned an Emmy® Award for his nine-part documentary The Civil War (1990), which featured thousands of still photographs. “We are seriously considering opening up the film to include this priceless new material.”

Eastman House preservation staff has painstakingly created digital scans of the rare and fragile footage, allowing for the creation of online video.

Click on the video link below to be among the first to witness history – the first motion pictures ever captured of the Civil War!

My grandfather along with his father, like many other Rochesterian men, worked for the Eastman Kodak Company. Throughout my grandfather’s time working at Kodak and exploring his photographic hobby, he collected an array of classic cameras. Each room in his house has several cameras resting on dressers, antique china cabinets, wooden tripods, and any other flat surface providing a home for a piece of his vintage collection. Antiquated photographs as well as stereographs can be seen accompanying the cameras that took them.

While walking through George Eastman House’s new exhibition, Between the States: Photographs of the American Civil War, nostalgia overcame me. Hanging a right after entering the exhibit doors and coming around the first wall brings you “front and center” with two authentic cameras used to shoot American Civil War photography. Just as in my grandfather’s house, I was brought face to face with pieces of photographic history.

The 1864 stereo camera owned by the M.B. Brady Studio, now in the collections of George Eastman House and now on exhibit.

One of the cameras in the exhibit, along with another on loan to the Newseum in Washington, D.C., were used by the studio of Mathew Brady, the prolific Civil War photographer. They are the only two known Brady cameras in existence today. These, along with the Lewis wet-plate camera also on view in the Eastman House exhibition, are held exclusively in George Eastman House archives.

Brady’s stereo camera was acquired by George Eastman House from Graflex Inc. and was found in Auburn, N.Y., amidst a collection of Brady’s glass plates. This camera was used to produce a pair of 4½ x 4½-inch images. The images would be separated, cropped and mounted together side by side. Looking at the two images through a stereographic viewer would produce a seemingly three-dimensional image.

Grandpa also has a couple of stereographs lying around his house. I remember my amazement looking through a pair of stereograph glasses resembling 19th-century bifocals and viewing the two images combined to make one with depth and length. You can sense this awe two feet away from the two cameras as George Eastman House has provided a Brady stereotype and a beautiful viewer constructed by a student of the graduate program.

Also gracing the glass case in the Between the States exhibition is a Lewis wet-plate camera. The Polaroid Corporation gifted this aged artifact to Eastman House. The camera, manufactured by Henry James Lewis, was conventional of Civil War photographic equipment. It also produced two images, although these were 3¼ x 4½-inch. This wet-plate camera closely resembles the daguerreotype camera, which Lewis’s father and brother had previously produced. This camera provides a perfect representation of the size and style of camera that had to be lugged around on the bloody battlefields of the Civil War.

This exhibition is important to Rochester and the history of American photography. I was fortunate to have my grandfather introduce me to historic cameras at an early age. We, as citizens of Rochester, are innately enriched with photographic history. We hold here, in our own backyard, images of a war that has shaped our nation to this very day. This is evident in the accompanying exhibit Still Here: Contemporary Artists and the Civil War.

The opportunity to view the apparatus by which these images were captured is exclusive to Rochester and George Eastman House, where you can experience the amazement and power these cameras display.

The Baby Picture Colorama will always be my favorite!

No matter what’s going around you, no matter what life issues you’re dealing with, no matter what mood you’re in …the baby picture MAKES you stop and smile!

So proud that my nephew Evan was one of the adorable models in the picture!(28 years ago!)
Even more proud that my father Sam Campanaro snapped the infamous shot!
He was and always will be an inspiration to the lives he touched through the years with his pictures!

Thank you to the Eastman House for letting the public enjoy all the coloramas again.
Congratulations to all the models and photographers for making us smile!

…and this one from VickiJo Claire:

What a wonderful experience to be part of the famous baby picture. We still try to keep track of those beautiful babies who are 26 years old this year. My how time flies. I can’t believe that that picture is still up and in circulation making many people smile in nurseries , bus stations , doctors offices, and gift shops around the world.   Thank you Sam…. , Dad, Peeps( as his many grandchildren call him )…. We love you!

…and finally, from ‘proud dad’, Barry Fitzgerald:

It is with fond memory that I look back on the day that my daughter Christine was selected to be one of the “Kodak Kids” back in the 80′s shortly after she arrived in  our home from Korea.. Although I am sure the photography time at Kodak Office was more then a little trying for my wife while they tried to get the  infants to hold still for that one picture and others to come but the outcome was well worth the effort as she and I  took a great deal of pride in not only seeing the picture with our daughter in it but hearing about it from our friends and strangers as it gave us a chance to brag about our little girl to who ever would listen.Sam Campanaro was the photographer . He was a true gentlemen who always spoke fondly of his kids even years later  and remembered then all name . I had the picture hanging in my office at Kodak for 30+ years and it never stopped getting positive comments. Christine is an attorney now in California who has continued to make me proud of her now just as she did in each photo session when she was little .

Don’t forget to check out our Colorama Story Facebook page for videos of the Colorama photographers, models, and friends sharing their memories (coming Sept. 24th), to browse images from the exhibition, and to post your own story.

Colorama #553 on disaply in Grand Central Terminal from August 15-September 22, 1988. Photogrpahy by Norm Kerr.

As we enter the last month of our Colorama exhibition at the Museum, we’d like to share some of the stories people have sent us about their own connection to these images— and the times they captured (and manufactured) of a by-gone era. Over the next four weeks, we’ll be blogging some of our favorites entries to close out the exhibit. Our first is from David Spiro, Director of Public Relations and Development of Rochester’s Blackfriars Theatre:

While I have been living here in Rochester for the past eleven years, I am Brooklyn born, Bronx raised, and Grand Central Terminal (GCT) is without a doubt still my favorite building in NYC, hands down. I spent many a time passing through the building for one purpose or another, and every time I go home to visit my family (my mother still lives in the Bronx neighborhood where I was raised) I always try to take the time to go into Manhattan to soak in the energy that only it can offer, visit some of my favorite eateries, and of course take the time to walk through GCT. The Colorama is very much an important part of my memories.

I think the thing that stands out most is the summer of 1979. My aunt was able to get me a summer job working at the property tax office in Brooklyn, repossessing little old ladies houses. (Okay, no I didn’t really do that, as I was just doing basic clerical work.) Most of the time, I took the #6 train from Pelham Bay station in the Bronx, and changed at Grand Central Station for the #4 into Brooklyn. (It’s important to note that “Grand Central Station” refers to the subway station, While GCT refers to the actual terminal above it. )

Once or twice a week however, I would take the express bus from my Bronx neighborhood into Manhattan, get off at the 42nd Street and 5th Avenue stop, and then walk the few blocks to Grand Central to hop the #4. Coming into GCT via the 42nd Street entrance, with the Park Ave. viaduct overhead was my favorite approach. It led you directly to the main concourse area of the terminal where you could look up at the magnificent ceiling with the constellations in their gold painted glory overhead. There was the famous GCT clock, the main meeting place for so many people, as well as it’s information booth below it, guiding customers to their proper Metro-North train, and during that time, to their Amtrak train.

If you looked to the right, there it was: The Colorama. If it wasn’t the biggest picture in the world, it sure should have been. The pictures would vary every few weeks, from nature, to cityscapes, to people, but the thrill was always wondering what would come next? I always had to pass underneath it to get to the part of the subway platform I need be at, and always marveled at it, wondering how they were able to blow a picture up that enormously? It was also, as its name suggest, bathed in the most glorious saturation of color. One always saw tourists gawking in amazement, and taking pictures of a picture.

While the restoration of GCT was very welcome as it opened up the main concourse to more natural light, the removal of the Colorama (as well as the old clapboard flip-style train arrival/departure board) was a sad event. To hear that it is being donated to the Eastman House was joyous to read, and here’s hoping it goes on prominent display. You can be sure that this Bronx boy will be among the first on line to see it.

Don’t forget to check out our Colorama Story Facebook page for videos of the Colorama photographers, models, and friends sharing their memories (coming Sept. 24th), to browse images from the exhibition, and to post your own story.

Dr. Alison Nordström

From left to right:  Bonnie Gordon, John Pfahl, Colin Thomson, Marvin Kitman, and Ben Fernandez on tour with Dr. Nordström

The exhibition also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 42-story building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas. The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed building, constructed in 1960, sits on Sixth Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets in Manhattan— right across from Radio City Music Hall.

DISSENTERS, 1967, by Benedict J. Fernandez. George Eastman House collections

That same decade also saw many new photography styles come to life— collage, street photography, photojournalism coverage of riots. The 60-print exhibit from the Eastman House archive explores each of these styles through photographers who were just beginning to create a name for themselves as well as established artists then in the midst of successful careers. They include Harry Callahan, Benedict J. Fernandez, Hollis Frampton, Betty Hahn, Robert Heinecken, Mary Ellen Mark, Roger Mertin, Arnold Newman, Aaron Siskind, and Garry Winogrand.

The selection reveals high modernism at its apogee happily co-existing side by side with burgeoning postmodernism: Arnold Newman was well-known for his commercial and art photographs, while Harry Callahan’s street portraits and beautifully framed architectural views had enormous influence on his students and contemporaries. Robert Heinecken appropriated photographs to create his collage-like works, while Benedict J. Fernandez was embedded in the protest movement, creating powerful reportage that presented both sides of some of the most volatile issues of the time. Street photographer Garry Winogrand captured the essence of the period with his surreal images at a time when Aaron Siskind had shifted away from his documentary style of the 1930s toward abstractions of graffiti and images that flatten the photographic plane.

60 from the 60s is on view through Feb. 18, 2011.

PPCM students discuss sequencing pieces in the exhibition

As students studying the history of photography, we were interested in photographs that are slippery, that change meaning depending on where the image is first encountered or how it is presented. We are lucky at George Eastman House that we collect a large range of photographs, art and otherwise, that have had a multitude of meanings throughout their existence before entering our collection. Our title, Art/Not Art, refers to the polarizing question we often ask of photographs, is it art or is it not?

Many of the photographs shown in Art/Not Art are art photographs, according to our utilitarian definition of the term, as they were they bought, sold, exhibited, and written about as art. However, this contextual information is not immediately apparent when standing before these photographs. The diversity of practice in contemporary art photography is well represented in the exhibition—the four photographs from Elijah Gowin’s “Of Falling and Floating” series looks radically different from Robert and Sheena ParkeHarrison’s “Suspension,” which in turn bears little in common with Binh Danh’s contemporary daguerreotype, a portrait from the Tuol Seng Genocide Museum.

Robert and Sheena ParkeHarrison, SUSPENSION, From the Series: Earth Elegies, ca. 1999-2000

Perhaps Binh Danh’s daguerreotype should then be compared to Ron Haviv’s “Darfur Girl,” a large-scale chromogenic print depicting three girls searching for firewood near a displaced persons camp in Sudan. In the summer of 2005, UNICEF sponsored Haviv to document the conflict in Darfur’s effect on children. While the composition and the scale suggest that this piece is contemporary art photography, does the use of this image to raise funds for UNICEF mean that it cannot be considered art? And, if Binh Danh’s daguerreotype is art, does that label limit its ability to document genocide?

Ron Haviv, DARFUR GIRL 2005.

Many of the photographs shown in the exhibition have been published in different places, for reasons that are not obvious when looking at the photographs. Joel-Peter Witkin’s series, “A History of Hats in Art,” was initially printed in The New York Times Magazine as a series of fashion photographs featuring extravagant haute-couture headwear. Alex Webb’s “US/Mexico Border (San Ysidro, CA)” was printed in Harper’s Magazine on an article on illegal immigration published roughly fifteen years after the photograph was taken. E.J. Bellocq’s photographs are more mysterious. Bellocq, a commercial photographer from New Orleans in the early twentieth century, took a series of photographs of women from the city’s Storyville red light district. His negatives were discovered after his death, and purchased by Lee Friedlander who printed his images and popularized them as art objects in the 1970s.

This was the first show that many of us have curated, and our approach to the photographs is typical of the questions that we often ask ourselves as future professionals in our field. Given the care and attention that we must provide to each individual item that enters our collection—a process that includes accessioning the item, assessing its condition and recommending conservation work when required, housing the item according to archival standards, cataloguing the item into our electronic database, providing access to the public via the research archives and through exhibitions, and, finally, maintaining it in perpetuity in our ever-shrinking vault—the acquisition process is very rigorous, and very important. So, how best to show the diversity of material that eventually makes it into our collection?

As much as any lovers of photography, we were moved by how stunning some of the items collected in the past five years are. As students of photography, we were also interested in how slippery some of the meanings of the photographs were over time, and in different contexts. The range of aesthetics in art photography, and the different applications of photography, whether for fashion, photojournalism, or for more personal reasons, suggests the impossibility of just looking at a photograph to determine if it is art, or not art.

As future custodians of collections of photography, we encourage an approach to photography that understands the rare slipperiness of the medium of photography, where images and objects often have unknown and unexpected trajectories before they come to our attention as candidates for acquisitions.

What We’re Collecting Now: Art/Not Art was curated by Jami Guthrie, Emily McKibbon, Loreto Pinochet, Paul Sergeant, D’Arcy White, and Soohyun Yang. The exhibit is on view through October 24th.

George Eastman House invites one to consider art outside the comfort zone, by experiencing an exhibition of photographs by the contemporary, and often controversial, artist Roger Ballen. The 74 black-and-white images of his mini-retrospective, titled Roger Ballen: Photographs 1982-2009, are on display through June 6. Ballen himself will join us for a lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 15.

South African artist Ballen is known for his thought-provoking photography and his particular attention to rich detail, photographing his human and animal subjects in complex, fictional scenes filled with symbolism.

Tommy, Samson, and a Mask, 2000, by Roger Ballen

Ballen’s work is fascinating, compelling, mysterious. It encourages viewers to step outside of their understanding of reality in a photograph, challenging them to assess things differently.

Critics have called Ballen’s images powerful social statements that at the same time are disturbing psychological studies.  Aperture Magazine described his work as “images from a waking dream; compelling and surrealistic with sparkles of dark humor,” and Australia’s Artlink Magazine said they are “freeze-frame images stolen from the sub-conscious … Ballen’s bizarre tableaux are an illustration of the real world.”

Visitors to Eastman House have recorded both positive and negative remarks in a comment book inside the gallery. One visitor wrote, “Dark, repressive. I see the thoughts in these images, but wonder how and why this art?” Another described the exhibition as “an awake nightmare.” Some have replied with single words, such as “Freakish,” “Creepy,” “Scary,” and “What?” Positive notes include, “Dark but inventive and edgy,” “Touching and inspiring,” and “Thanks for bringing challenging work to Rochester.”

Puppies in Fishtanks, 2000, by Roger Ballen

If one only visits exhibitions of work he or she already knows, or already loves, he or she gets caught up in old, safe ideas, being trotted out yet again. The role of art may well be to describe the process of engagement, an ever vigilant search for what is not understood.

For instance, if one goes to the theater to see Samuel Beckett, whom Roger Ballen marks as one of the people he pays attention to, that theatergoer might come out and not have the slightest understanding of what her or she just saw.

Ballen’s unique artistic vocabulary, which he composes using a square format, creates visual ambiguities as universal metaphors of the human condition. Our relationship with a photograph can be structured in a lot of different ways. Like anyone off on a trail of understanding, Ballen found the camera a way to mediate, to look more strongly, more intently, to segregate an aspect he wanted to examine or look at, and made a picture of it.

In that vein, German filmmaker Werner Herzog said, “Images are almost impossible. Artists had to dig for them within this damaged landscape, and did so simply because we urgently need images to accord with the state of civilization and our own innermost souls.”

Ballen’s photographs of people and places have a wonderfully rich, magical, if not spiritual, engagement of mystery. His subjects are people who may not be your favorite folks to sit down and have dinner with, but perhaps this is an occasion to engage that challenge and that conversation.

At the Ballen exhibition, a visitor will find things here he or she is not used to looking at, whether it be people or ways in which photographs are created. With the right attitude, this art can be very fruitful for all of us, and the promise of the process rewarding.

View the complete talk ROGER BALLEN: PHOTOGRAPHS 1982-2009 [Parts 1-5] on our YouTube Channel.

Jeff Bridges earned a Golden Globe® Award in January for his role in CRAZY HEART, for which he has been nominated for an Oscar®.

During his 2004 visit to Eastman House to celebrate his exhibition Jeff Bridges —Pictures and a Dryden Theatre film series dedicated to his film career, Bridges also received the award of George Eastman Honorary Scholar for his work in motion pictures and photography. The exhibit was the first museum exhibition of his work and one of the most popular in the Museum’s history. And Bridges? Well, ‘the Dude’ was one of the most gracious, modest, and approachable artists we’ve ever hosted.

 “It is such an honor to have a photography exhibition at George Eastman House,” Bridges told the sold-out audience. “To be recognized by this incredible museum for my photography, and as a George Eastman Honorary Scholar, is one of the proudest moments of my career.”

Jeff Bridges signs a copy of his book at George Eastman House in July 2004, while talking with Eastman House Trustee Chris Pulleyn.

Past recipients of the award include actors Tony Curtis, Dennis Hopper, and Richard Widmark; filmmakers John Frankenheimer, Norman Jewison, Ken Burns, Philip Kaufman, and John Landis; cinematographer Haskell Wexler; film critic Roger Ebert; and animation artist Ray Harryhausen.

 Bridges has appeared in more than 60 motion pictures and began taking photographs as a teenager. Jeff Bridges —Pictures featured an intimate collection of images he captured of cast and crew on his movie sets (including the Coen Brothers 1998 classic, The Big Lebowski). His black-and-white pictures were shot with a Widelux F8 camera (a wedding gift from his wife, Sue) that pans nearly 180 degrees.

 “One of the things I love about the wide-format camera is that when you take the picture, many people aren’t aware that they’re in the photos,” Bridges said. “Viewers can really look around in each photograph and see many little worlds and scenes going on. I think that is more how we experience life.”

The Eastman House exhibit was based of Bridges' book PICTURES. All proceeds from the book went to charity.

For those of you in the deep freeze like us in Western NY, we invite you to enjoy this moment of spring color:

a glimpse at last year's display

The 2010 arrangement is based on George Eastman’s own selection from 100 years ago.  He ordered the bulbs from a Dutch company a year early in 1909 and grew them to maturity in his greenhouses.  Once they were organized, he would invite his friends and family to his home to enjoy the colorful display. 

The bulbs will be here February 12-28. A small exhibit will also be presented on the second floor of the house showing Mr. Eastman’s activities throughout 2010.

For  more info,visit http://www.eastmanhouse.org/Main/exhibitions/detail.php?title=dutch-connection-2010