Chinati weekend goes online virtual, October 9, 2020. “Dan Flavin, untitled (Marfa project), 1996.” Photo by Alex Marks.
Marfa’s Chinati Weekend 2020 is going to be solely online this year, and you can tune in here. Offerings include music, archival tours and footage of Chinati foundation works-in-progress, and a 1978 interview with Donald Judd by Marfa elementary school students. While virtual, attendees are invited to “bring a drink” to the story-telling bonfire, and there will be special presentations by Marfa musicians and Marfa Public Radio. The events kick off Friday, October 9 with an introduction by Chinati curator Ingrid Schaffner, and will wrap up Sunday, October 11 with bagpipes by Drums of El Paso’s Mahrla Manning.
While a creative solution to the difficulties presented by COVID-19, the online format certainly deviates from the usual crowds of Chinati Weekend. As Glasstire’s Christopher Blay wrote of the 2019 lineup:
“Chinati Weekend, the three-day art block party in the middle of the West Texas desert…. attracts artists, musicians, and Hollywood types alike to the public and permanent large-scale installations of its select artists. Works by those artists include Donald Judd’s 15 outdoor pieces in concrete and 100 works in mill aluminum located in two converted artillery sheds; Dan Flavin’s installations of colored fluorescent light in six former barrack buildings; and John Chamberlain’s 25 sculptures in a renovated wool warehouse in downtown Marfa.”
For a complete Chinati Weekend 2020 lineup, please go here.
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The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum in Marfa, Texas based upon the ideas of its founder, Donald Judd. The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a select group of artists. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding land are inextricably linked. In 1978, with financial support from the Dia Art Foundation, Judd began repairs and renovations to the fort’s historic buildings, followed by the fabrication and installation of artwork. Chinati opened to the public in 1987 as an independent, nonprofit museum.
