Over April 4-5, 2025, The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati and Rice School of Architecture hosted part I of Art in Context: Art, Architecture, and the Middle Landscape. 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 will focus on current efforts to restore the structures, preserve Judd’s architectural interventions, protect the art, and care for the surrounding landscape.
The symposium was 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.
Participants in Part I
Caitlin Murray is the Director of the Chinati Foundation.
Carme Pigem is a member of the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural firm RCR Arquitectes, together with Ramón Vilalta and Rafael Aranda. Since 2008 they have organized and directed an international workshop about architecture and landscape in the Barberí Space, where they work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tatiana Bilbao founded her eponymous studio in 2004 and holds a recurring teaching position at Yale School of Architecture.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stephen Martin is the Director of Preservation and Planning at the Chinati Foundation.
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 John Chamberlain Building.
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.
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).
Igor Marjanović is William Ward Watkin Dean and Professor at Rice School of Architecture.
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.
Part II (Houston, November 14–15, 2025) will expand these conversations to address urgent challenges in contemporary art and architectural practice. Through panels and discussions, participants will examine the tensions between environmental conservation and the preservation of cultural artifacts, proposing future strategies for sites of ecological vulnerability and historical significance. Part II of the symposium will coincide with an exhibition, presented as part of Exhibitions at Rice, on view in the Hines Family Gallery and the Casbarian-Appel Gallery within William T. Cannady Hall at the Rice School of Architecture from September 4 through December 2, 2025.
Generous support has been provided by Lee and Mike Cohn and Lori and Alexandre Chemla, and the City of Marfa.
