The Chinati Foundation and Rice University School of Architecture are pleased to have hosted Art in Context: Art, Architecture, and the Middle Landscape. The two part symposium took place first in April of 2025 in Marfa, Texas, and later in Houston, Texas, in November of the same year.
Part I explored the relationship between art, architecture, and land at Chinati by focusing on one of the most significant examples of their integration: the former artillery sheds that house Donald Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum. Considering the history of the buildings and their broader influence on museum architecture, the symposium focused on current efforts to restore the structures, preserve Judd’s architectural interventions, protect the art, and care for the surrounding landscape.
Art in Context: Part II gathered more than a dozen artists, architects, and landscape designers in Houston to examine the relationship between the three closely interrelated disciplines. Together, the group considered Donald Judd’s influence on museum architecture and the varied contexts of art and architecture as shaped by place, culture, and history.
The symposium coincided with a related exhibition, Art in Context, presented by Chinati in Marfa, and later as part of Exhibitions at Rice in Hines Family Gallery and the Casbarian-Appel Gallery within William T. Cannady Hall.
Both the symposium and related exhibition were co-organized by Caitlin Murray, Director of the Chinati Foundation; Stephen Martin, Director of Preservation and Planning at the Chinati Foundation; and Troy Schaum, Associate Professor at Rice School of Architecture.
Watch the full program of lectures, panels, and opening and closing remarks from Part I here. Videos from Part II of the symposium will be published in the coming weeks.
Participants
Pat Arnett is the Principal at TYLin and has been a studio consultant for Rice School of Architecture since 2011. He is involved in ongoing structural engineering studies at Chinati, with a particular focus on the Artillery Sheds.
Larry Bell has been a working artist since the late 1950s, making artwork in glass, on canvas and on paper in his Taos, New Mexico and Venice, California studios. In 2014, Chinati presented the exhibition Larry Bell: 6 x 6 An Improvisation.
Tatiana Bilbao founded her eponymous studio in 2004 and holds a recurring teaching position at Yale School of Architecture.
Shantel Blakely is an architect, architectural historian, and an assistant professor at Rice School of Architecture. Her forthcoming book Appartamento Aperto: At Home with Marco Zanuso, published by MIT Press, characterizes the architect’s stance on the human potential of mechanization in industrial designs and buildings.
Tei Carpenter is founder and director of Agency—Agency, an award-winning architectural design studio based in New York.
Ludovico Centis is an assistant professor in Urbanism in the Department of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Trieste, Italy. Centis is an architect, founder of the office The Empire and co-founder and editor of the architecture magazine San Rocco.
Erica Cooke is Curator for the collection of His Excellency Sheikh Jassim Bin Abdulaziz Al-Thani and worked on the curatorial team for Judd at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the 2020 retrospective dedicated to Donald Judd.
Rosetta S. Elkin is the Principal of Practice Landscape, Academic Director of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture Master’s in Landscape Architecture (MLA) program, and an Associate of The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University.
Sofia von Ellrichshausen is an Argentinian architect, artist, and educator. Together with Mauricio Pezo, she founded the art and architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen which is based in a farm at the foot of the Andes Mountains in southern Chile.
Katharina Grosse is an internationally recognized artist known for her site-specific work sprayed directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes. She was an Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in 2005.
Alberto Kalach is an architect working in Mexico City. He is the founder of el Taller de Arquitectura X (TAX) and the architect of the José Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City.
Randy Kennedy is a writer, editor, and curator. He was on the staff of The New York Times for 25 years, more than half of that time writing about the art world. He is currently director of special projects for Hauser & Wirth and Editor in Chief of the gallery’s magazine, Ursula.
Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist. With formal training in visual arts, he has worked both inside and outside of art world institutions by participating in exhibitions and developing community based art projects.
Igor Marjanović is William Ward Watkin Dean and Professor at Rice School of Architecture.
Stephen Martin is the Director of Preservation and Planning at the Chinati Foundation.
Jim Martinez is the co-author of Marfa Garden: A Field Guide to Plants of the Chihuahuan Desert, published in 2024, and serves as the president of the Board of Directors of the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute. As a landscape designer and soil scientist, he supports ongoing land restoration efforts at Chinati.
Caitlin Murray is the Director of the Chinati Foundation.
Kate Newby is an installation artist working with mixed materials born in Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and living and working in San Antonio, Texas.
Erik Olsen is a Managing Partner at Transsolar KlimaEngineering, an international climate engineering firm. He leads the New York team to develop and validate low-energy, architecturally integrated climate and energy concepts for clients, and he is part of the team completing ongoing studies of the Artillery Sheds at Chinati.
Piet Oudolf is a Dutch garden and landscape designer and a leader of the New Perennial movement. Notable projects include Lurie Garden, the High Line in New York City, and temporary installations for the Venice Biennale and the Serpentine Gallery pavilion.
Anne Pontégnie is an independent curator and art critic who lives in Brussels. She has collaborated with Christopher Wool over 25 years and is curator of his most recent See Stop Run exhibition project (NY – Marfa).
Julian Rose is a historian and critic of art and architecture and a former Senior Editor at Artforum. His latest book, Building Culture, explores the architecture of art museums and was released by Princeton Architectural Press in September 2024.
Troy Schaum is an associate professor at Rice School of Architecture and Principal of Schaum Architects. As an architect, he is engaged in ongoing preservation and restoration work at Chinati, including ongoing studies of the Artillery Sheds and the recently completed restoration of the Judd Foundation Architecture Office.
Annabelle Selldorf is Principal of Selldorf Architects, which she founded in 1988. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the Board of the Chinati Foundation.
Richard Shiff is a professor and the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Chinati Foundation’s Board of Trustees. His collection of essays on Donald Judd, published by Marfa Book Co. and Hatje Cantz, appeared in 2020.
Isaac Stein is a landscape architect and architect. He is Co-Founder and Design Principal at Dept., a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in Houston. Dept. is part of the design team completing ongoing studies of the landscape surrounding the Artillery Sheds at Chinati.
Maggie Tsang is a landscape architect, architect, and urbanist. She is Co-Founder and Managing Principal of Dept., a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in Houston, and an assistant professor at Rice School of Architecture. Dept. is part of the design team completing ongoing studies of the landscape surrounding the Artillery Sheds at Chinati.
Jesús Vassallo is a Spanish architect and writer, and currently Associate Professor at Rice University.
Christopher Wool lives and works in New York City and Marfa, Texas. His most recent exhibition, See Stop Run, was on view at 101 Greenwich St in New York, March 14-July 28, 2024.
Generous support was provided by Bob and Nora Ackerley, Lee and Mike Cohn, Lori and Alexandre Chemla, Rice Office of Research – Creative Ventures, and the city of Marfa, Texas
