Academy Award winner Michael Douglas recently received a Bennett recognition award from George Eastman House honoring his distinguished contribution to the art of film. The award, called the George Eastman Award, is the museum’s highest honor in motion pictures. The George Eastman Award was established in 1955, and was the first film award given by a U.S. cultural institution to honor artistic work of enduring value. Past recipients include Charles Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Martin Scorsese, James Stewart, and Meryl Streep.
Douglas has close to 50 years experience in film, theatre and television. He has won two Academy Awards, 3 Golden Globe Awards, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, the Producers Guild Award, and the New York Film Society’s Charlie Chaplin Award.
For this award, George Eastman House selected the unique Bennett recognition award “Elite”, designed by sculptor Tom Bennett. This award was cast in bronze, and featured a combination of natural patina and high-polished edges. The sculpture was mounted in a 4x4x4 black marble base with gold-fill engraving with the award name, award purpose, recipient name and year of presentation.
Douglas received the award at a special awards presentation held May 14, 2015, at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, New York.
George Eastman House holds unparalleled collections—encompassing several million objects—in the fields of photography, cinema, cameras and related technology, and photographically illustrated books. The museum is located in Rochester, New York, on the National Historic Landmark estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, who was the father of popular photography and motion picture film. Established as an independent nonprofit institution in 1947, it is the world’s oldest photography museum and third largest film archive in the United States. The cinema collection includes 28,000 film titles and millions of cinema-related publicity stills, posters, scores, scripts, and pre-cinema artifacts. The museum’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation is regarded as the premier venue of professional training in film preservation, restoration, and archiving. Many filmmakers—including Kathryn Bigelow, Ken Burns, Cecil B. DeMille, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese—have chosen to preserve their films at the George Eastman House film archives.