Judith E. Stein

Who is Judith E. Stein?

Judith E. Stein is a Philadelphia-based art historian and curator. She earned a B.A. Art History from Barnard College, New York City in 1965, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 1967 and 1981, respectively. She studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London from 1967-1968.

The postwar New York artworld has been her longstanding art historical focus, guiding her decision to write a biography of art dealer Richard Bellamy, as well as feature articles regarding many of that era’s burgeoning artists: Jo Baer, Red Grooms, Lester Johnson, Alfred Leslie and Jay Milder.

In 2008, the Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital awarded her an Arts Writers Book Grant. The International Art Critics Association awarded her book I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin Best Exhibition Catalog for 1995. In 1994, she received a Pew Foundation Fellowship in the Arts in literary non-fiction for her art writing and was a scholar in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.

Between 1981 and 1994, Stein served as Contemporary Curator for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, where she organized traveling mid-career surveys for Red Grooms and Horace Pippin, a site-specific installation by Bettye Saar; “The Figurative Fifties: New York Figurative Expressionism,” co-curated with Paul Schimmel; as well as exhibitions for Tom Butter, Louise Fishman, Mike Glier, Lois Lane, Ray Metzker, Pepon Osorio, Judy Pfaff, Jody Pinto, Raymond Saunders, Joyce Scott, Judith Shea and Toshiko Takaezu.