NEWSLETTER
Thursday, July 16, at 8 p.m. in the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum
Rochester, N.Y. (July 1, 2026) —General admission tickets are now on sale for an evening with George Eastman Award recipient and Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer. Part of the George Eastman Award events, the George Eastman Museum’s most important annual fundraiser, Spencer will join Jared Case, curator of film exhibitions, for an onstage conversation before a special screening of Hidden Figures (2016) at the Dryden Theatre on Thursday, July 16, at 8 p.m.
Tickets to the event are $50 and can be purchased online.
Spencer will accept the George Eastman Award at a ceremony and gala the following day, Friday, July 17 at 8 p.m., also at the Dryden Theatre. Limited tickets remain and can be purchased at eastman.org/eastmanaward2026.
Octavia Spencer’s performance as Minny in The Help (2011) earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, SAG Award, and Broadcast Film Critics’ Choice Award, among numerous other accolades. She has since received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Hidden Figures (2016) and The Shape of Water (2017). She served as an executive producer on the critically acclaimed drama Green Book (2018), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture–Musical or Comedy.
Additional acting credits include Fruitvale Station (2013), for which she was awarded Best Supporting Actress by the National Board of Review; Snowpiercer (2013); Luce (2019), which brought an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for Best Supporting Female; Get on Up (2014); The Shack (2017); Apple TV+’s Spirited (2022); and voice roles in Zootopia (2016), Dolittle (2020), and Onward (2020).
In 2019, Spencer launched her production company, Orit Entertainment. Its next project, Ride or Die (premiering July 15), stars her alongside Hannah Waddingham and Bill Nighy. Spencer is executive producer of this action-adventure series for Amazon Prime Video.
About Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, US 2016, 127 min., DCP)
Throughout the history of NASA, mathematical computations were done by “computers”—people with the know-how to ensure the numbers were correct, including the “West Area Computers,” which refers to the Black women segregated from the rest of the facility. The film follows three of these women: Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), who was instrumental in integrating the new IBM machines in the facility; Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson), who devised and confirmed many of the calculations necessary for spaceflight; and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), who blazed her own trail as an engineer. Detailing the racism and sexism these three women needed to overcome just to contribute to the Space Race, this is a touching, inspirational story for everyone, earning Spencer her second Academy Award nomination.
Sponsorship
Wegmans is the Corporate Sponsor for the film screening of Hidden Figures.
About the George Eastman Award
The George Eastman Award was established in 1955 as the first award to recognize the enduring artistic value of the oeuvre of a film actor, director, or cinematographer. The first two presentations of the award in 1955 and 1957, known as the Festival of Film Artists, were a tribute to the legends of the silent film era (1915–1930). Since then, the George Eastman Award has honored a range of actors, directors, and cinematographers.
About the 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, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 450,000 photographs, 31,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program, and its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation. The George Eastman Museum is supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. For more information, visit eastman.org.
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Attn Media: A high-resolution image of Octavia Spencer along with film stills from Hidden Figures can be found here.