Claire Oliver Gallery New York 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 Schaecter. “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
www.claireoliver.com
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 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.
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.