Judd Foundation is pleased to announce the opening of Donald Judd’s Ranch Office on Saturday, April 25, after the restoration and stabilization of the historic building. The Ranch Office will open to the public with a day of free programs, including open hours and a talk centered on the archaeological sites and ancient inhabitants of the region.
The Ranch Office will open to the public for the first time as one of eight buildings open as part of the Judd Foundation guided visit program in Marfa. Following the integration of art and architecture in his living and working spaces throughout Marfa, Judd installed ten works of art—eight reliefs and two floor works—in the Ranch Office, alongside maps and ranching equipment.
The space will provide direct experience with Judd’s interest in the land as it relates to his art and architecture: “My work,” Judd wrote in 1983, “has the appearance it has, wrongly called ‘objective’ and ‘impersonal,’ because my first and largest interest is in my relation to the natural world, all of it, all the way out.”
Judd installed the Ranch Office with two types of works: wall reliefs and floor boxes. All of the works are made in common Douglas fir plywood, both painted and unpainted, and illustrate his concern with enclosed space through proportionally determined voids or embedded found objects that emphasize three-dimensionality. They reference works made early in Judd’s practice: the floor boxes of this type were first made in 1963 and 1964; and the first wall relief with a centrally placed embedded object was made in 1961, followed by a square relief with embedded object in 1962.
Judd purchased the former grocery store located on Highland Avenue in downtown Marfa in 1991, one of the last buildings he acquired in town for his work spanning art, architecture, and furniture design. He renovated the ground floor of the turn-of-the-century building to manage activities associated with his 33,000-acre ranch, Ayala de Chinati, in the nearby Chinati Mountains. On the façade, he added the brand for his ranch and the number 76, a reference to 1976, the year he purchased the first six sections of Ayala de Chinati.