The home of Donald Judd's most ambitious work is about to be restored
After dealing with decades of dirt and leaks, the artillery sheds at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas are about to receive a surgical renovation
When Donald Judd purchased an abandoned military base outside Marfa, Texas in the late 1970s, the artist saw beyond the site’s scarred landscape and trash-strewn buildings; he saw a place where art, architecture and the land could exist in perfect balance.
Judd inspecting one of the artillery sheds.
Judd identified a pair of long sheds, originally used to house trucks and artillery, to transform into twin galleries that would house an ambitious site-specific work, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, a meditative installation of gleaming aluminum boxes. Judd encountered a problem, though: the buildings leaked. When standard patches didn’t work, Judd, who also designed furniture and buildings, rectified the issue by capping the historic structures with a secondary arched roof made from corrugated steel.
Forty years on, Judd’s Chinati Foundation is one of the most important sites for 20th-century art in the US, a fact that helped transform the sleepy desert town into a global art mecca. But the artillery shed roofs still leaked.
‘In a massive Texas rainstorm, we will sometimes put out 100 buckets inside of the building,’ says Stephen Martin, the foundation’s director of preservation and planning.
What’s more, sand and dust from the surrounding Chihuahua desert would blow into the building through crevices; and temperatures inside could soar to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, sweltering heat that cooked staff, guests – and even the artworks (conservators discovered that the extreme temperature variances caused the aluminum sculptures to move off of their precise grid formation).
‘I don't want to use the word “crisis,” but when there are large weather events, we're very concerned,’ Martin adds.
Circumstances are about to change for the artillery sheds. Following a capital campaign, the Chinati Foundation has announced that it will be delicately restoring the two buildings to suit Judd’s artistic vision while preserving them for the future.
‘The approach has been first to really understand what are the real issues and concerns with the building,’ explains Caitlin Murray, the foundation’s executive director, ‘but [also] really understanding how we preserve the experience of this work according to Judd's intentions.’
Chinati has enlisted a team of experts to a team, including architect Troy Schaum, whose practice restored another foundation site, The John Chamberlin Building, four years ago.
‘There are two inhabitants that we're designing this space for,’ Schaum notes: the artworks and visitors, 20,000 of which visit the site every year. He underscores the delicacy of the gleaming boxes that make up 100 untitled works in mill aluminum: ‘The aluminum is a 3003 aluminum alloy that was specially-made for this artwork, and it has no finish on it, so it's very delicate and it's irreplaceable in its current state if it gets damaged,’ Schaum says.
His firm’s architectural approach will be similarly delicate: an invisible film will be added to some 10,000 sq ft of windows to block out UVA and UVB rays; the design team will positively pressurise the building to help circulate air and prevent dust and grit from entering the building envelope; and the team, with the expertise of engineering firm TYLin, will be incorporating a new roof structure to address the leaks, improve drainage and even harvest rainwater.
‘It’s like a heist movie or something – we like sneak in, make changes and we leave,’ Schaum says. ‘You're not going to find our fingerprints.’
‘It’s like a heist movie...you're not going to find our fingerprints'
Troy Schaum, architect
Chinati is also using the opportunity to renew the land itself, whose ecosystems had been damaged after years of military use. Landscape experts Maggie Tsang and Jim Martinez will be analysing the site to restore the soil, bring back native plant species, redirect rainwater and thwart grassfires. The design team will also work to improve accessibility to the site by creating wider pathways and incorporating ramps.
The artworks will also receive TLC. For the first time, the installation will be relocated to make way for analysis and conservation helmed by Alfred Lippincott, who originally fabricated the works in the 1980s; the Getty Conservation Institute; and Bogna Skwara, Chinati’s head of conservation.
Preservation works will begin later this year; the team expects the project will take between two and three years to complete. But it will be worth the wait: ‘This is one of the most significant preservation projects for Chinati in a generation,’ says Murray. ‘It's an incredible honour to get to work on this work of art in a really holistic way.’
