To celebrate the 2024 total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, The George Eastman Museum is having a “Focus, Click, Totality!” special event to showcase the historic gardens and grounds as a viewing area for this once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m, admission to Focus, Click, Totality! is $35 for adults, $20 for youth 5-18, and free for children four and under.

Admission includes admission to the museum, access to the viewing area in the garden, eclipse glasses, and the film screening.

Eclipse Activities

Visitors will have the opportunity to view a display of pinhole cameras from the museum’s extensive collection and a selection of eclipse-related works in the Collection Gallery.

Visitors of all ages can walk into a camera with a mobile camera obscura on the grounds, and make their own pinhole projector, as well as cyanotypes and phenakistoscopes in the museum’s Discovery Room.

Musician Maggie Paxson, who delighted patrons with a sing-along event last fall, will perform moon-themed songs on the East Lawn prior to the eclipse, and the museum’s resident organist Joe Blackburn will perform space-themed music on George Eastman’s original Aeolian pipe organ.

Visitors can track the progress of the eclipse through a live NASA feed prior to joining others in the museum’s Library Garden and East Lawn, two picture-perfect locations to view the solar eclipse in its totality phase at 3:20 p.m. for an impressive three minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

At 4 p.m., the Dryden Theatre will screen the 1986 classic Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring Nimoy and William Shattner.

The George Eastman Museum will also be open during regular hours the weekend prior to the total solar eclipse, with celestial and technology displays in the Collections Gallery and activities in the Discovery Room.

Parking

Admission does not include parking or the workshop. Side street parking is extremely limited with an array of eclipse activities also planned at the Rochester Museum and 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). Park at GEM and explore all of the other festivities within walk distance.

Free Shuttle Bus

The George Eastman Museum is partnering with First Student to provide free shuttle busses to allow visitors to shuttle around Rochester.

The bus will travel in a continuous loop between the South Avenue and East End garages, the Eastman Museum, The Strong Museum, the Memorial Art Gallery, and the Rochester Museum & Science Center April 6-8, with service extended to the Rochester Public Market on Monday, April 8.

To learn more, visit - www.eastman.org/eclipse