The Path to Paradise

From her start in the 1980s, Judith Schaechter (b. 1961) has stretched the medium of stained glass into an incisive art form for the twenty-first century, boldly paving her path in the diverse arena of contemporary art. With deep respect for history, a provocative rebelliousness, and a feminist sensibility, Schaechter has aptly been called a "post-punk stained-glass sorceress." This catalog accompanies The Path to Paradise: Judith Schaechter's Stained-Glass Art, the first survey and major scholarly assessment of this groundbreaking artist's 37-year career. This catalog explores the range of critical registers Schaechter's work spans, illuminating and contextualizing the artist's unique contributions to the contemporary canon.

Judith Schaechter's work is represented in over a dozen museums including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Corning Museum of Glass, Mint Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Speed Art Museum, and Toledo Museum of Art, and in major exhibitions around the world. In addition, through her extensive teaching, she has had a sizable impact upon her peers and the next generations of artists. Her awards include two NEA Visual Artists' Fellowships, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an American Craft Council College of Fellows Award.


Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer, and historian who works at the intersection of craft and contemporary art, and currently Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art.

Jessica Marten is Curator in Charge/Curator of American Art at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. In her curatorial practice, Marten is particularly interested in exploring historically marginalized artists and lesser-known histories.

Virginia Chieffo Raguin, PhD, Yale University, is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the College of the Holy Cross. She has published widely on religion, stained glass, and architecture.

Diane C. Wright is the Senior Curator of Glass and Decorative Arts at the Toledo Museum of Art, where she explores the infinite world of glass within the context of Toledo's encyclopedic art collection.