Cultured Magazine

Summer 2013

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Donald Judd at his desk, far left, and works by the artist installed at 101 Spring Street. PHOTOS BY PAUL KATZ, JOSHUA WHITE COURTESY OF JUDD FOUNDATION Modernist Temple The live-in studio of the late Donald Judd re-opens its doors at 101 Spring Street. BY JANELLE ZARA The streets of Lower Manhattan have seen their fair share of changes over the past two decades, but at least one sanctuary has managed to weather the influx of money, tourists and department store. It's 101 Spring Street, the SoHo studio where late artist Donald Judd lived and worked from the time he bought it in 1968 to the year he died in 1994. In June, the 19thcentury building's vast, rectangular spaces, not unlike the work Judd sculpted there, opens to public tours as the Judd Foundation. Through the efforts of a dedicated architectural team, with Judd's son Flavin and daughter Rainer, the home now looks virtually unchanged from its 1994 incarnation. Judd's collection of liquor bottles is still kept on the second floor; his jackets hang in his closet. The ephemera of Flavin and Rainer's childhood, including their miniature chairs and desks, remain in their fifth-floor nook. Most important, all of Judd's art—his own sculpture and furniture, as well a David Novros fresco, a John Chamberlain mass of twisted metal and a glowing Dan Flavin installation of fluorescent light bulbs among them—are on view among the artifacts. Project architect Adam Yarinsky, of Architecture Research Office, took on the dif- Through the efforts of a dedicated architectural team and Judd's children, the home now looks virtually unchanged from 1994. 50 CULTURED ficult, but essential task of modernizing the nearly 150-year-old structure to comply with public safety codes. "What we tried to do was preserve the experience of the space, but the process was a Russian doll of little problems inside of problems," he says. Three years and $23 million of renovation later, he and a team of three other firms were able to install EXIT signs, an entire sprinkler system and safety lighting (brilliantly, the Flavin piece is rigged to stay on in the event of an emergency), without modifying the existing architecture. An ebullient Rainer, seen jumping up and down, was certainly excited to invite the world into her childhood home. "It's a shared place for people involved with the Judd Foundation," she says, "and now the community at large."

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