In June, Donald Judd’s five-story home and studio, in a historic cast-iron building at the corner of Spring and Mercer Streets in New York’s Soho, will re-open to the public after a three-year restoration.
Judd bought the building in 1968 (for $68,000), and in the process helped usher in the transformation of Soho from a derelict industrial area to a vibrant artistic community. Placing his studio on the street level, he arranged the upper floors as family living quarters. After a time, he moved his studio to the third floor; the ground floor continued to be a place for meetings, gatherings, exhibitions, and performances. Throughout the building he installed works by other artists and his own pieces, as well as antiques and other objects he collected — all part of his artistic exploration of the placement of works of art in space, and the concept of permanent installation.
The house has been restored to the period of 1994, when Judd died. Very little is meant to appear changed. The kitchen is still in place, with a little marionette puppet stage that Judd built in one corner. The original elevator is still in use, which holds only four or five people at any given time. But now the floors have been reinforced, the windows covered with UV filters, and the ground-level lights that were originally designed to provide daylight to the basement areas, and which were covered with plywood and according to Judd’s son only let in water back in Judd’s day, have now been beautifully restored.
In an unusual move, the Judd Foundation has chosen to train twenty artists to serve as the guides for the house. Each tour will include a maximum of eight visitors. I spoke with Michele Saliola, Director of Programs, about the artist guide training.
How did you come to choose artists for docents?
When the building was open previously, we had interns giving tours, and I found that those who were artists often spoke better. They shared their feelings about the materials and about studio practice. We were not looking to provide an art historical or contextualized tour, heavy on interpretation. We want the talks to be more straightforward and direct.
Also, artists need employment! It’s super exciting for visitors to be able to come into this building and have a very small, intimate experience of this space. And what better way for the artists to experience Judd’s work than to be here working, guiding people through.
When did the training start?
This past winter we began a pretty intensive training. We recorded each session, so that they will be available for the guides to review in the future. Once a month they meet for a forum to discuss various topics. The guides, twenty in all, were all paid for the training. We really wanted to invest in them and have them stay for a long while with the Foundation.
We have in effect created a Soho artist work force. Many of the guides are also teaching and are taking Judd’s philosophy and work back into their practices and communities.
What did the training involve?
We brought in a variety of people. We’ve had talks from art historians, people who knew Judd, his children Rainer and Flavin (who grew up in this building and as co-presidents and founding trustees of Judd Foundation have guided the restoration), and others. Most importantly, artists went straight to the source: reading Judd’s writings and debating the concepts he espoused. They watched oral history interviews with Judd fabricators, studio assistants, fellow artists and friends, all to get as rich a perspective on Judd as possible.
The hardest part for the guides now will be carrying all of this knowledge with them and not bombarding visitors with it! The guided visit is all about the visitors having silence, time to take in the spaces and then pose questions to the guides that fit their interests. Rather than an art history lecture, the visits are about experiencing the space first and foremost, and about information and interpretation second. For the visitors who are obsessed with absorbing facts and figures, we are making a fantastic iPhone App that will include information about objects in the house, as well as clips from our oral history interviews over the past eight years.
What kinds of support or guidance have you found as you plan for the reopening?
Earlier this month I presented news on our restoration and new programs at a National Trust conference in Santa Fe for the Historic Artists Homes and Studios program. It’s the best kept secret in the art world: three dozen of the most unique and inspiring artists homes and studios across the country working together to keep the creative spirit of the artist alive, to keep from being a typical house museum. Wherever you travel to, there’s an artist’s home to visit and each one is more of a gem than the next.
What are some of the challenges you face?
A big issue is capacity. Each group visit can only be eight people, but it does provide a very intimate experience, one more common in Europe perhaps. We also have a variety of distinct audiences: the architecture and design world, the walking tour aficionados, and others. And of course artists and students.
What are some of the ways that you will evaluate how the program is going once the house opens?
We’ll be relying heavily on our first visitors to share feedback on their experience. Everything from the online booking tool on our website, to the guided visit and App, the waitlist process, and beyond. Of course we hope we can continue to grow the public visit schedule so that people won’t have to wait too long to visit. But one of my favorite quotes from Judd reads, “The quality of a work cannot be changed by the conditions of its exhibition or by the number of people seeing it.“ We always knew we weren’t about numbers or serving huge crowds. The whole point of the restoration was so that we’d be around forever, so there’s plenty of time for everyone to visit!