The New York Transit Museum, co-sponsored by the New York Public Library, will host an event to honor Kodak’s iconic Coloramas—the gigantic panoramic advertising images that depicted stylized American life from 1950 to 1990—that hung above Grand Central Terminal’s Main Concourse for four decades.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
6:00 p.m. ET
Free and open to the public. Reservations must be made before hand at the following link: http://mta.info/mta/museum/programs.htm
New York Public Library, Berger Forum at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Room 227
5th Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY, 10016
The event will feature a screening of Debergerac Productions’ award-winning documentary Colorama: The Stories Behind the Pictures, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with the documentary’s producers and former Kodak Colorama photographers. Panelists include:
- Mike Champlin: Founder and CEO of Debergerac Productions, and producer of the documentary Colorama: The Stories Behind the Pictures. Champlin’s documentary won the 2005 Telly Awards Silver Medal for Film & Video.
- Steve Kelly: Former Kodak senior photographer. Along with co-producing the Colorama documentary, Kelly was the last Colorama photographer on the Eastman Kodak staff, and shot about 15-20 of the iconic photos throughout his career.
- Sam Campanaro: Former Kodak photographer. In August 1984, Campanaro was one of two photographers to capture the “Fifteen Babies” image that became the most famous Colorama photograph in history. Campanaro was an Eastman Kodak photographer for 42 years.
A collection of thirty-six prints of original Colorama images are currently on display in the New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex in Grand Central Terminal through November 1, 2012.
The New York Transit Museum, one of the city’s leading cultural institutions, is the largest museum in the United States devoted to urban public transportation history and one of the premier institutions of its kind in the world. The Museum explores the development of the greater New York metropolitan region through the presentations of exhibitions, tours, educational programs and workshops dealing with the cultural, social and technological history of public transportation. Since its inception more than a quarter century ago, the Museum – which is housed in a historic 1936 IND subway station in Brooklyn Heights – has grown in scope and popularity. The New York Transit Museum operates a Gallery Annex in Grand Central Terminal that presents changing exhibitions. As custodian and interpreter of the region’s extensive public transportation networks, the Museum strives to share through its public programs their rich and vibrant history with local, regional, and international audiences.
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is part of The New York Public Library, which consists of four major research libraries and 87 branch libraries located in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is renowned for its extraordinary historical collections as well as its commitment to providing free and equal access to its resources and facilities. It houses some 15 million items, among them the papers of William J. Wilgus (1865-1949) civil engineer for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad and supervisor for the planning and construction of modern Grand Central Terminal.