Judith Schaechter, Super/Natural (detail), 2025. Stained glass panels and wood frame, 96 x 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery, NYC, with support from the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. Photo by Judith Schaechter.
The James A. Michener Art Museum is pleased to present Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural on view in our Beans Gallery from April 12, 2025 – September 14, 2025. This will be the first public exhibition of glass artist Judith Schaechter’s newest, monumental work: an immersive stained glass dome, also titled Super/Natural, that explores the idea of biophilia, the human tendency to connect with nature. Schaechter is creating this piece as an Artist in Residence at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, where a pioneering team of researchers and scientists explore the neural and biological basis of aesthetic experiences. Their research, and Schaechter’s recent work, explores relationships between art, beauty, morality, and the brain.
Filled with a riot of imagined insects, rodents, flora, plants, and birds, the Super/Natural dome will encourage visitors to imagine themselves subsumed in the natural world, with all its beauty, violence, decay, and growth. The dome, reminiscent of a church, creates a sublime sanctuary space for the secular. To complement Super/Natural and provide a context for this new work, Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural will feature nine additional stained-glass pieces by Schaechter that similarly explore the cultural construction of nature along with a series of drawings and sketches related to the Super/Natural dome.
Hours for interior viewing of the Super/Natural dome are 11 a.m.–3 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Step inside and immerse yourself in the beauty of Judith Schaechter’s breathtaking stained-glass masterpiece during these museum hours.
Schaechter is a renowned glass artist who 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, Philadelphia, the Hague, and Växjö 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 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. Schaechter was inducted to the American Craft Council of College Fellows in 2013, and, in 2024, she was the recipient of the Smithsonian Visionary Award.
Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural is supported by the Gorsky Family and Rago/Wright, with additional support from Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, M&T Charitable Foundation, and an anonymous donor.