At the core of the George Eastman House mission is the preservation of its collections for future use. The museum is committed to maintaining climate-controlled storage facilities for its holdings, and implementing new preservation methods as standards evolve. Accordingly, the collections are housed in cool vaults, and cold storage is utilized when possible for the color photography collection, or highly unstable nitrate film stock.

During exhibition, however, the collection encounters a much more volatile environment, exposed for long periods of time to light and conditions better suited for museum visitors than objects. The museum aims to control the ambient atmosphere during exhibition as much as possible. Gallery visitors will notice a variance in light levels illuminating the photographs, determined according to each process's susceptibility to light damage. Chromogenic color photographs are very unstable, visibly fading over time even in dark-storage conditions—thus, they receive the least illumination during exhibition. Inkjet photographs, a relatively new process, have proven to be stable in accelerated-aging tests. However, until more definitive color-keeping characteristics of these objects can be tested in real-time conditions, the museum's Conservation department recommends light exposure levels matching those of traditionally printed color photographs.

Stefanie Petrilli
Ola Dlugosz