John Shearer & Hugh Price

Filmed at the Neuberger Museum of Art on September 26, 2018.

John Shearer, American photographer, and Hugh Price, U.S. activist and former President of the National Urban League, engage in a discussion exploring photography’s power to bear witness to events in American history, specifically referring to Shearer’s photographs from the 1960s and 1970s.

This event was part of the Yasseen Lectures on the Fine Arts

Shearer, a resident of Katonah, NY, photographed some of this country’s darkest moments. One of his best known photographs, taken at the age of 17, is John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s coffin at President Kennedy’s funeral. Notably, he was the only photographer allowed inside the Attica Prison during the riots in 1972.

Hugh Price, a local activist, is a former president of the National Urban League, and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Support for this In Conversation program is provided by the New York Community Trust—Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts.

About the Yasseen Lectures on the Fine Arts
Every two years, the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College offers the Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts, which brings acclaimed scholars and artists to the Purchase College campus to discuss their work and address contemporary ideas and issues. The lecture series, which began in 1974, was endowed by the late Leonard C. Yaseen and his wife Helen, former residents of Larchmont, who financed a similar series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featured speakers have included Claes Oldenburg, Maya Angelou, Faith Ringgold, Chuck Close, and Purchase College alumnus Fred Wilson.

Introductions

• Helaine Posner, Chief Curator, Neuberger Museum of Art

Panelists

• John Shearer, American photographer
• Hugh Price, U.S. activist and former President of the National Urban League