ABOUT
Madison Death STUDIO + bookshop is a community hub where artists, care workers, and grievers practice, ritualize, and imagine life in dialogue with its endings. In a culture that often avoids conversations about dying and grief, many people find themselves navigating life’s most profound transitions in isolation, and without shared language, knowledge, or community support.
We exist to help rebuild that cultural fabric, and to support imaginative new cultural possibilities for death and grief care - rooted in honesty, truth, creativity and remembrance.
We are an ecosystem for grievers, caregivers and creative care workers. Those who support, sustain, and often fill the gaps left by our capitalist systems - offering shared infrastructure, creative nourishment, and collective grounding for people whose labor holds our communities through grief, illness, transition, and change.
By bringing together artists, practitioners, educators, mystics, and community members, we create space to restore folk and communal practices around death and dying, cultivate imagination and ritual, and ensure that those doing this vital work are not carrying it alone.
Ultimately, the MD STUDIO + bookshop is about restoring connection to one another, to the realities of mortality, and the communal care that makes living and dying more humane.
Meet the Founder + Director
Meghan Allynn Johnson (she/her) is an artist, educator, and death worker based in Madison, Wisconsin. Her work explores grief, mortality, ritual, and the role of art in helping people navigate loss, uncertainty, and transformation.
She is the founder and director of Madison Death STUDIO + Bookshop, an artist-run project exploring community-based death care. Through creative practice, teaching, and community organizing, she investigates how art can function as a form of cultural care—creating spaces for meaning-making, ritual, and collective engagement with mortality.
Prior to this work, Johnson served as Director of David Krut Projects in New York, where she curated dozens of exhibitions focused on contemporary African art and printmaking and supported museum exhibitions for artists including William Kentridge and Aida Muluneh. She completed the Nine Keys School of Death Arts Apprenticeship with Narinder Bazen in 2024 and is currently a faculty member with Nine Keys.
Meghan holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Her death work has been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio, The Isthmus, The Cap Times, Madison Magazine, BRAVA, ArtDose, and other publications. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and is featured in Singular/Serial: Contemporary Monotype and Monoprint.
HOURS (FOR NOW)
We’re currently operating with limited hours as we launch the space. Beginning June 2026, we will be open Wednesdays from 4–7pm and select Saturdays. We are also available by appointment — schedule by using the contact form below.
WEDNESDAYS 4:00-7:00 PM
OPEN BY APPOINTMENT
Contact us
Have questions? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. Thank you <3