ABSTRACT
Donald Judd’s anti-museum in Marfa, Texas, is about as far away from the conventional art world as it is possible to get— museologically and spatially. The black liberation movement, feminism, environmentalism and the alternative society movements, the American Avant Garde of the 1970s were such that they provided a continuous and relatively coherent pressure to diversify and produce new cultural institutions and exhibitionary platforms for contemporary art. New York was going to become a hive of new exhibitionary platforms in quirky spaces and places. The modern sculptor Donald Judd would move out of New York to do something revolutionary. Donald Judd’s art practice and strongly expressed opinions were also formed within the twin crises of modern art and modern architecture, and the art museum’s resulting loss of cultural authority among artists. The tour group numbered some 15 people, noticeably a youngish crowd with a few older couples and the odd aging sole parent with older children.
