Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural
October 4, 2025 – February 8, 2026
Centered around Judith Schaechter’s latest project, Super/Natural, this exhibition explores the universality of natural elements, patterns, and ornament as vehicles for meditations on beauty. The central stained glass structure, also titled Super/Natural, is her largest project to date, designed to accommodate a single viewer inside. Created during her residency at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, this piece reflects her study of biophilic design and its impact on human consciousness.
By positioning the viewer within a three-tiered cosmos, Super/Natural invites reflection on both inner space—our neurological and psychological experience of environments—and outer space—how we extend ourselves into the world around us. Inside this secular temple, viewers encounter the “blue marble” of Earth from a more intimate perspective, suggesting that we are not merely observers of nature, but connected to it.
In honor of Schaechter’s prolific oeuvre prior to embarking on this large project, the exhibition will feature additional works which share themes of natural elements, pattern, and ornament. Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural aims to illuminate how Schaechter has shed new light on the traditional medium of stained glass, and to underscore the central structure’s biophilic beauty.
Above Image: Judith Schaechter, Super|Natural (detail), 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ARTIST
Judith Schaechter lives and works in Philadelphia. Her work is collected internationally and is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert in London, and the Hermitage, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and her work was in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. In 2013, Judith was inducted to the College of Fellows of the American Craft Council. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Glass Art Society in 2022 and in 2023, she was named a Smithsonian Visionary Artist. In 2020-21, Judith’s work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition organized by the Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, NY, which traveled to the Toledo Museum and the Des Moines Art Center.