Judy Hecker

Judy Hecker is a writer, educator, curator, and leader whose work focuses on the field of printmaking and its place within broader cultural and interdisciplinary contexts. She brings three decades of experience at The Museum of Modern Art and Print Center New York to independent projects, public engagements, university teaching, and relevant writing across academic, specialist, and generalist audiences. Judy combines expertise in modern and contemporary prints, dedication to supporting artists and printers, and experience in varied parts of printmaking’s creative ecosystem. 

Judy was Executive Director of Print Center New York during its decade of transformational growth (2016–26), which included a revamped exhibition program and a move to new, expanded space. Print Center’s annual open call program, New Voices, launched in 2022 to provide focused opportunities for a cohort of emerging artists working in print. In 2023, she co-curated Print Center New York’s first monographic show, Nicole Eisenman: Prince. 

Prior to Print Center New York, Judy was an assistant curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997–2015), where she worked on more than 15 exhibitions and publications exploring the breadth of prints, such as Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now and Repicturing the Past/Picturing the Present. Judy’s work at MoMA also encompassed collection acquisitions, public programming, and education. 

At RISD, Judy is co-teaching the elective Performance and Print (fall 2026), which sprang from her 2025 guest lecture at the School of Visual Arts. In 2025 she also led the project Visual Arts Curating and the Non-Profit Framework for Brown’s Career Exploration class. For MoMA Courses, she co-taught Curatorial Perspectives: Artistic Mediums in Dialogue. 

Recent and forthcoming projects include writing for Derrick Adams’ first print monograph; an article and panel on the affinities of William Kentridge’s printmaking and performances; a forthcoming essay Craft, Collaboration, and Community and lecture for the Queen Sonja Print Award; and the forthcoming CAA conference panel More Than One: Collaborative Ventures in Print Publishing Across Time and Space. Judy holds an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in Art History from Wellesley College. She is on the Board of the Lower East Side Printshop and is a member of Print Council of America and the Association of Print Scholars.