ROCHESTER, NY.- The George Eastman Museum is presenting the new exhibition Building a Sustainable Future, on display August 30 through November 9, in the museum’s Potter Peristyle.

Visitors have the opportunity to take a peek behind the scenes and explore the ways in which museum staff work to balance preservation and access with implementing climate-aware and environmentally sustainable solutions.

As a leader in the preservation and conservation of photography and moving image artifacts, the George Eastman Museum needs to maintain suitable conditions for the storage and display of its collection objects. The museum’s staff seeks to better understand the environmental and climate effects of the museum’s work by considering:

• How does the institution’s energy consumption and creation of waste impact the local, national, and global environments?

• How can the museum mitigate these adverse effects through less permeable building envelopes, more efficient heating and cooling systems, or simple changes to lighting?

• How can these actions help drive change in how photography and moving image collections are preserved and accessed, while assuring the long-term preservation of the objects?

Through the exhibition, visitors can also learn about the history of how George Eastman’s mansion changed from a space for collection storage and display to a historic home and landscape, requiring careful attention to improving the building envelope. The exhibition explores how an upgraded HVAC system changed the climate in the technology and photography vaults to prolong the life of collection objects. Visitors find out about the museum’s unique building that stores nitrate film materials, and why it was recently upgraded, and see firsthand how small changes in gallery lighting affect a visitor’s experience, as well as the museum’s energy consumption.

This object-based exhibition highlights recent projects that the museum has undertaken that attend to these concerns.

Curated by Jamie M. Allen, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Curator and Head, Department of Photography