Upcoming Event

Lara Shipley – The Naked Truth
Artist Conversation and Book Signing
Saturday, November 7, 2026, 11:30 a.m.
4892 Grand River (Behind Periodicals)

During the Great Depression, a former magician and radio personality transformed a hotel in the Ozarks into a fraudulent cancer hospital, luring desperate patients with treatments that offered no cure.

That story is the subject of The Naked Truth, a new photobook by photographer Lara Shipley and artist Antone Dolezal. Using archival materials, staged performances, and digital manipulation, the artists revisit a historical deception whose echoes still resonate in today’s world of medical misinformation and political spectacle.

Shipley, a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, joins Amani Olu, Founder and Curatorial Director of Season Fair, for a conversation about the making of The Naked Truth, photography’s relationship to historical storytelling, and what a nearly century-old medical scam reveals about our willingness to believe.

The conversation will be followed by a book signing. Copies of The Naked Truth will be available for purchase.

Free and open to the public. Registration required.