June Schneider

June Schneider (née Benjamin; 15 June 1939 – 22 July 2020) was a South African musicologist, composer and lecturer. She is known for her research on Richard Strauss, contributions to electronic music, and her involvement in music therapy and adult education in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. A champion of music and dance, esteemed professor, and critic she obtained her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand at the age of 23—the youngest doctoral candidate in the university's history.

In 1959, she won the Julius Robinson Scholarship, which allowed her to travel overseas in 1961–1962 to conduct research on the composer Richard Strauss. During this time, she met Strauss's son in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and studied many original manuscripts and papers. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 1962, was titled Devices employed by Richard Strauss in his opera Salomé in the service of the poetic idea.

She taught on the music faculties of Emory University and Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. There she developed the exhibition “Sensation” at the High Museum of Art alongside Pamela Bray, for the inauguration of the new building designed by Richard Meier. Framed as a “fun‑filled learning and doing experience,” the show deliberately moved beyond traditional, purely visual displays by inviting visitors to engage all five senses. Its centrepiece installations included a walk‑in eyeball (a camera obscura demonstrating vision), a climb‑on, slide‑down ear sculpture that revealed how sound travels through the eardrum and inner bones, and an oversized model of lips and tongue mapping the four basic taste zones. By emphasising hands‑on, participatory interaction with art, music, science and technology, “Sensation” sought to dissolve the mind/body divide typical of modern museums and foreground the visitor's own sensory experience. Schneider also co‑founded the Children's Museum of Atlanta, and, after relocating to New York, she helped revamp the Children's Museum of Manhattan, curating exhibitions such as a retrospective on the artist Maira Kalman. She was actively involved in establishing the University of the Witwatersrand Fund Inc.; Vice‑Chancellor Adam Habib acknowledged her “enormous contribution to her alma mater.”