Anthony Bannon

Bannon has lectured at museums, colleges, and festivals worldwide. He currently serves as chairman of the Lucie Awards/International Photography Awards and was awarded the Golden Career Award in 2007 by the FOTOfusion Festival of Photography & Digital Imaging for his “far-reaching leadership and scholarship in the cultural community.”

Bannon additionally held the position of the college's assistant vice president and director for cultural affairs from 1994 to 1996. The Office of Cultural Affairs developed and advanced faculty, student and staff talent by locating, encouraging, assisting and presenting examples of intellectual and creative excellence from the college community. The objective of the office, established by Bannon, was to develop and sponsor collaborations across disciplines, often with organizations and individuals off campus, and to develop associations for the Foreign Exchange Program (particularly with the Latvian Academy of Fine Art and the Fachhochschule in Dortmund, Germany). Bannon's teaching experience has included adjunct positions at Sierra Nevada College in Nevada; State University of New York College at Buffalo; Empire State College in Buffalo; and Rochester Institute of Technology.

For the next decade, from 1985 to 1996, Bannon was with the State University of New York College at Buffalo. He served as director of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, which is dedicated to the work and archives of Charles Burchfield (1893–1967), an American watercolorist. The center holds the largest collection of Burchfield works, journals and ephemera. It also serves as a regional museum, collecting art, craft and design by artists who have lived in Western New York State, including the largest collection of Roycroft objects from the Arts and Crafts Movement. The center is the repository of the Charles Rand Penney Collections. As a presenting organization, the Burchfield-Penney programs in all the visual arts, including architecture, design, film, video, craft and folk art, as well as literary arts and music.

Bannon began his career as a journalist, working from 1966 to 1985 for The Buffalo News, a metropolitan daily with a peak circulation of more than 400,000. He initially served as a theater and dance critic, and was a critic fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Foundation and the American Dance Congress in 1969. Bannon later served as the newspaper's film, video, and architecture critic, finally concentrating on the fine and camera arts from 1977 through 1985. When a Sunday edition was initiated in 1977, he was appointed its art section editor. Reflecting Buffalo’s long-standing tradition of civic commitment to culture, the Buffalo News encouraged Bannon to teach, to make films, to serve as a dramaturg for theater productions, and to organize exhibitions in the visual arts.

Bannon studied biology at St. Bonaventure University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1964. He earned a master's degree in English, with a concentration in criticism and film in the Center for Media Study, from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976. Bannon earned his Ph.D. in 1994 from the State University of New York at Buffalo from the English Department, with a concentration in Culture Studies. His thesis was titled Robert Longo: A Practice of Art.

The Eastman Museum, which opened to the public as a museum in 1949, has unparalleled collections — 400,000 photographs by 9,000 photographers, from the earliest daguerreotypes to the most recent digital images; 20,000 items of camera technology; 30,000 motion picture titles and 3.5 million publicity stills and posters; and one of the world's most comprehensive libraries of photographic books, manuscripts, and journals. While preserving one of the richest historical collections, the Eastman Museum also has as an aggressive acquisition program of contemporary works.

Anthony Bannon (born December 6, 1943) is an arts administrator in Western New York. He served as the director of the George Eastman Museum from 1996 to 2012 as well as the executive director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College. During his tenure at the George Eastman Museum, Bannon launched programs in photo and film preservation, acquired the Technicolor and Merchant Ivory Productions archives, and established an online presence for the museum's classic images.

The George Eastman Museum combines the world's leading collections of photography and film with the stately pleasures of the Colonial Revival mansion and gardens that Eastman Kodak Company founder George Eastman called home from 1905 to 1932. Eastman is heralded as the father of popular photography and motion picture film.