Five Architectural Case Studies of the Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati

This curatorial research brings together nineteen artists/architectural workers, exhibiting architectural models and drawings of five architectural case studies for the first time at Chinati in Marfa, Texas. The research advances and extends understandings of these case studies, their contribution to art-architecture relationships, and alternative architectural approaches to displaying art. The five case studies include (1) Donald Judd’s Artillery Sheds (1980-4) & 100 untitled works in mill aluminum (1982-6), (2) Dan Flavin’s ‘untitled (Marfa Project)’ (1996), (3) Robert Irwin’s ‘untitled (dawn to dusk)’ (2016), (4) Carl Andre’s ‘Chinati Thirteener’ (2010), and (5) John Chamberlain’s various works (1968-83) and the John Chamberlain Building (1983). The curatorial research contribution is primarily two-fold. Firstly, the curatorial framework extracts and represents the lesser-known contributions of these five case studies to museum architecture. The exhibition is one of only a few focused on Chinati’s architectural contributions and one of only the few architectural exhibitions at Chinati in its history. Secondly, the curatorial framework develops new case-specific analytical methods for engaging with architectural case studies and their embodied knowledge. All exhibited architectural case study drawings and architectural case study models were produced for the exhibition over an extended period, initiated in 2023 and guided by the curatorial framework. Each case study drawing or model followed a specific set of architectural decisions made within the work. The specific architectural decisions that were followed then co-determined the material, scale, scope, finish, colour and extent of each model and drawing and its arrangement within the exhibition, creating multiple, distinct representations of the five cases studies that focus on their specific, embodied knowledges in-depth, not a scaled, consistent, summative representation of their whole. This case-specific method was also developed through the curatorial approach to the display, which followed and reinforced the architectural decisions Donald Judd made for the gallery space from 1980 to 1987. These case-specific methods to analysis and display work to extract and disseminate Chinati’s contribution within discourses on architecture and the museum, emphasising their material, spatial, tectonic, and contextual contributions, putting sometimes unproductive disciplinary boundaries aside.