About Finding Judy

Finding Judy is an evolving archival and narrative project devoted to documenting Judith Shahn’s life and preserving her art and archive. Judith was a prolific yet often overlooked twentieth-century American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and longtime contributor to The New Yorker. Her decades-long creative practice was rooted primarily in Greenwich Village and Truro, Massachusetts.

Judith and her brother, Ezra Shahn, were the children of Tillie Goldstein Shahn and artist Ben Shahn. Her family also included her stepmother, artist and writer Bernarda Bryson Shahn, and three half-siblings: Susanna Shahn Watts; artist and sculptor Jonathan Shahn; and painter Abby Shahn. She was married to Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Alan Dugan. These relationships are an important part of her biography, but the project places Judith’s own creative voice and achievements at the center.

In 2018, during one of her many summers on the Outer Cape, writer Lisa Mecham encountered Judith’s art for the first time at Cove Gallery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Gallery co-owner Liane Biron told her that Judith had lived and worked in nearby Truro until her death in 2009. “Someone should write about her,” Biron said.

In 2023, Mecham did just that. She began Finding Judy and recovered photographs, letters, and personal papers from Judith’s Truro home. Still in its early stages, the project is taking shape through the cataloging and digitization of these materials, archival research, and interviews with family members, friends, and collectors.

Over time, Finding Judy will take three connected forms: a digital archive of Judith’s life and work; The Judy Journal, piecing together her story as the research unfolds; and a book about finding Judy at a time when Mecham needed to believe in art again. Moving between Judy’s world and her own, the book will explore how discovering an overlooked artist can alter the course of another person’s life.

Judy’s career spanned an era of extraordinary change in American art and culture, yet much of what she made never reached a wide audience. By preserving her archive, sharing her art, and carrying her legacy forward, Finding Judy hopes to change that.

Honoring Judith Shahn

One way to honor Judith Shahn’s legacy is to support the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, home of the endowed Alan Dugan/Judith Shahn Fellowship in Creative Writing/Visual Arts.

Founded in 1968, the Work Center has become a leading residency program for emerging artists and writers. Each year, 20 visual artists and writers receive seven-month fellowships that include housing, studio space for visual artists, and a stipend. The program gives Fellows sustained time to pursue their practice within a supportive community of peers.

Judith Shahn and Alan Dugan were among the artists and writers who founded the Work Center and guided it through decades of growth. Over the years, Judith served on the Board of Trustees and the Visual Arts Committee, stepped in as Acting President, and helped make Fellows feel at home through the meals she prepared and shared.

Supporting the Work Center sustains the fellowship program at its heart and carries forward Judith and Alan’s commitment to emerging artists and writers.