From the time he went to work for his family’s stage lighting company at the age of 17 in 1935 until the night of his death when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a photography gallery lighted by his newest miniature fixtures, Mr. Price was in the forefront of the lighting industry.
Along the way he was credited with inventing everything from glare-free recessed fixtures to the ubiquitous track lighting systems and became an indispensable ally to the greatest architects of his day. For Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he designed and built the small lights that wash the walls of the lobby of the Seagram Building with gentle light. For Philip Johnson he provided the recessed fixtures that bathe the Four Seasons restaurant in light.
During most of his career Mr. Price ran Edison Price Lighting, an East 60th Street company that became famous as one of the last manufacturing operations on the Upper East Side. He operated Nulux Lighting in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.
Mr. Price’s designs were so advanced and in such demand that his lighting fixtures illuminate paintings and other art in more than 200 museums around the world, among them the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Kimball Museum in Ft. Worth and the Louvre in Paris.
In memory of Edison Price, The Nuckolls Fund established the Edison Price Fellowship Grant first given in 1999.