Judy Tedford Deaton, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections, has been curating exhibitions and overseeing the art and history collections at The Grace Museum since 2006. She is responsible for concept development, installation and interpretation of twelve art exhibitions annually. Before joining The Grace staff, Deaton was an associate professor of art history and gallery director at McMurry University (1995-2006). She earned a BA from the University of Texas Austin and an MFA in art history from Southern Methodist University where she was a recipient of the SMU Meadows Artistic Scholarship Graduate Award in Art History.

She is an author, art historian, frequent guest speaker, art consultant, art juror and panelist at museums and conferences including the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Texas Association of Museums (TAM), Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas (CADD), Mountain Plains Museum Association (MPMA), and the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art (CASETA). Deaton is currently a member for the CASETA board of directors and served on the 2015 Arts Create Grant Panel for the Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) and was recently featured in the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities publication article on the exhibition Spanish Texas, Legend & Legacy curated in 2016. She is also the recipient of CASETA awards for outstanding publications and exhibitions in 2014, 2015 and 2016 and the MPMA 2009 award for art exhibition publications. Monographs and solo exhibitions on Seymour Fogel, Loren Mozley, Kelly Fearing, Janet Turner and Michael Frary are among recent early Texas art projects.