Young-Mallin Archive

Judith Young-Mallin was an accomplished art collector, cultural historian, archivist, interviewer, author, and cook. First and foremost, however, she was an expert on Surrealism in New York. Noting that she too had a “slanted perspective on things,” Young-Mallin felt a kinship with these artists and the way they “kept their eyes open and looked at things differently.” Over the years, she made a point of meeting many of them, including luminaries such as Carol Janeway, Leonora Carrington, Noma Copley, Juliet Man Ray, and Dorothea Tanning. Along the way there were innumerable conversations, interviews, exhibition openings, art acquisitions, parties, and memorable meals at her West Village apartment—a work of art in itself.

Judith Young-Mallin was born on August 10, 1937, in Mount Vernon, New York, the daughter of Milton and Marion Ethel (Peterfreund) Young. She was exposed to Surrealism at an early age through children’s art classes at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She later attended Syracuse University and New York University. Young-Mallin began collecting art while still a student, but it wasn’t until 1985, after a long marriage and raising a family, that she embarked on her Surrealist adventure in earnest. The following year, she helped create the Surreal Eye television series for WNET-TV in New York, which traced the history of the movement through documentaries and iconic films. She has also served as an independent lecturer and consultant, lending her expertise to many institutions and projects, including the American Craft Museum, New York (1986); PBS’s American Masters series (1991); the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (1991); the Art Institute of Chicago (1992); the School of Visual Arts, New York (1992); the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1997); the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (1998); the Isamu Noguchi Museum, Queens, New York (2005–6); and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (2005–6). She has also written about Eileen Agar, Edward James, Juliet Man Ray, M. F. K. Fisher, Virgil Thomson, Surrealism and women, and the avant-garde journal View.

As a gourmet cook, Young-Mallin was a professional member of the James Beard Society and a close personal friend of M. F. K. Fisher. As a designer of unique spaces, she worked with the architect Stephen Alton to create her wild and wonderful apartment in the West Village, home to legendary gatherings of her ever-growing circle of friends. She also curated a fanciful artists’ dollhouse, which became a microcosm of this world. Modeled after a traditional Nantucket clapboard house, the three-story structure contains original works of art and contributions by many leading Surrealist figures, including Man Ray, Janeway, Thomson, Carrington, Noma Copley, William Copley, Elsa Schiaparelli, Florine Stettheimer, and Julien Levy. Young-Mallin collaborated with artist friends to populate it with dolls modeled after Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Man Ray, and other artists, all posed in a Surrealistic tableau. Their outrageous escapades are chronicled in Judith’s limited-edition book, The Night the Lobster Telephone Rang (2011). The dollhouse itself is now a centerpiece of the Young-Mallin materials at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Young-Mallin passed away on September 4, 2020 in New York City.