Judith Schaechter, Super/Natural, 2025, Stained glass panels and steel and wood frame. Photography by Christian Giannelli, courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery
New York City Premiere of Celebrated Monumental Stained-Glass Geodesic Dome
On View March 20 – May 23, 2026
Claire Oliver Gallery presents Super/Natural, an exhibition by Philadelphia-based artist Judith Schaechter, on view March 20 – May 23, 2026. Anchoring the exhibition is the monumental work of the same name, Super/Natural. Nearly two years in the making, the eight-foot-tall stained glass dome is designed for a single viewer to sit inside and experience the transcendental work in a 360 degree immersion. The work depicts a three-tiered cosmos that explores biophilia, the innate human tendency to seek connection with the natural world. The exhibition also debuts three new lightboxes, expanding Schaechter’s distinctive stained glass practice.
“The vernacular of stained glass is one of worship and mythology,” states Schaechter. “Super/Natural turns this a bit on its head, creating a secular sanctuary for contemplating beauty, nature and our relationship to it.”
Schaechter produced Super/Natural as the artist-in-residence at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. The artist attended lab meetings with a pioneering team of researchers and scientists who study the neural and biological basis of aesthetic experiences, which greatly influenced her thinking on the great importance of speaking to the influence of art in our daily lives. The scientists’ research and Schaechter’s recent work explore relationships between art, beauty, morality, and the brain.
Super/Natural is composed of 65 panels that are filled with a riot of imagined insects, flora, plants, and birds, encouraging visitors to imagine themselves subsumed in the natural world, with all its beauty, violence, decay, and growth. The central stained glass structure, reminiscent of a vaulted apse of a cathedral, creates a sublime sanctuary space for the secular.
Alongside the monumental installation, the artist will debut three new lightbox works. Among them is Reynardine, a stained-glass lightbox diptych developed through an experimental process of layered glass. The artwork’s title, which alludes to Fairport’s Convention song “Reynardine” and the English folk ballad on which it is based, emerged late in the artist’s process rather than as a point of departure. The floral arch framing the figure gradually took on the form of a scythe, introducing a visual and symbolic register associated with aging, mortality, and endurance. By reimagining the ballad’s narrative, allowing the female protagonist to survive into old age, Reynardine shifts from an initial meditation on isolation during the pandemic, to a broader feminist inquiry into sexuality, survival, and death, themes that are central to Schaechter’s practice.
Schaechter’s work can be found in many prestigious museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Victoria and Albert Museum of Art in London, and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, to name but a few. Among many other honors, Schaechter was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the USA Artists, Rockefeller Fellowship in Crafts, and was the recipient of the Smithsonian Visionary Award in 2024.
Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural
March 20 – May 23, 2026
Claire Oliver Gallery
2288 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard
New York, NY 10030
Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6 pm
ABOUT JUDITH SCHAECHTER
Judith Schaechter has lived and worked in Philadelphia since graduating in 1983 with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design Glass Program. She has exhibited widely, including in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, The Hague and Vaxjo Sweden. She is the recipient of many grants, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Award, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a Leeway Foundation grant. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hermitage in Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and numerous other public and private collections. Judith’s work is noted in two survey-type history textbooks, “Women Artists” by Nancy Heller, and “Makers” by Bruce Metcalf and Janet Koplos. Judith has taught workshops at numerous venues, including the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, the Penland School of Crafts, Toyama Institute of Glass (Toyama, Japan), Australia National University in Canberra Australia. She has taught courses at Rhode Island School of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy, the New York Academy of Art and at The University of the Arts, where she is ranked as an Adjunct Professor. Judith’s work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2012 and she is a 2008 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow. In 2013 Judith was inducted to the American Craft Council College of Fellows.
ABOUT CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY
Claire Oliver Gallery is located in Central Harlem in a four-story brownstone. For nearly 25 years, Claire Oliver Gallery has showcased and celebrated artwork, with a focus on work by women and people of color, which transcends and challenges the traditional art historical canon. Our forward-thinking program and exclusive commitment to the primary market allows for an intensive focus that has nurtured and grown the careers of our artists. Many of the gallery’s artists have been included in The Venice Biennale, The Whitney Biennial, and biennales in Sydney, Pittsburgh, and Lyon and have exhibited works in major international museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Center Georges Pompidou, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art amongst others. Claire Oliver Gallery artists are included in the permanent collections of many important museums worldwide including The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Tate Britain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The State Hermitage Museum, MoMA, and the Museum of Arts and Design amongst many others. Claire Oliver Gallery held the first American exhibition for the Russian collaborative AES+F, whose work went on to twice represent Russia in the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Gallery artists have received prestigious fellowships including Fulbright, Guggenheim, USArtist and National Endowment for the Arts.
Discover more from City Life Org
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You must be logged in to post a comment.