Rochester, NY—The George Eastman Museum will open on Monday, April 8 in celebration of the 2024 total solar eclipse. Titled Focus, Click, Totality! is a special event that will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It will showcase the historic gardens and grounds as a viewing area for the once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.
Focus, Click, Totality!
Visitors will have the opportunity to view a display of pinhole cameras from the museum’s extensive collection. They can also see a selection of eclipse-related works in the Collection Gallery. Furthermore, visitors of all ages can walk into a camera with a mobile camera obscura on the grounds and make their own pinhole projector in the museum’s Discovery Room. Musician Maggie Paxson will also perform moon-themed songs on the East Lawn prior to the eclipse. Moreover, the museum’s resident organist, Joe Blackburn, will perform space-themed music on George Eastman’s original Aeolian pipe organ.
Attendees can also track the progress of the eclipse through a live NASA feed in the museum’s Dryden Theatre, prior to heading out to the museum’s Library Garden and East Lawn. Both are picture-perfect locations to view the solar eclipse in its totality phase at 3:20 p.m. This phase will last for an impressive three minutes and thirty-eight seconds. What’s more, at 4 p.m., the Dryden Theatre will screen the 1986 classic Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, starring Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.
Additionally, the museum will be open during regular hours the weekend prior to the total solar eclipse. It will feature celestial and technology displays in the Collections Gallery as well as activities in the Discovery Room. On Saturday, April 6, the museum will present a 7:30 p.m. screening of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). An eclipse features prominently in the film.
Admission
Admission to Focus, Click, Totality! is $35 for adults, $20 for youth 5–18 and free for children four and under. Tickets include admission to the museum, all activities, access to the viewing area in the garden, free eclipse glasses as well as the film screening. However, admission does not include parking. Side street parking is extremely limited with an array of eclipse activities also planned at the Rochester Museum & Science Center and the Memorial Art Gallery. A limited number of parking spaces are available at the museum for those who purchase a $100 parking pass (not including admission). Visitors are encouraged to park at the museum and explore all the other festivities within walk distance. To register, click here.
George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States. It is locat
ed on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Moreover, its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 41,000 motion picture films, as well as the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology. It is also one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema.
Additionally, it has extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. Further, as a research and teaching institution, the museum has an active publishing program. Its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) also makes critical contributions to film preservation.
