On a quiet corner in SoHo, one grey, single-use cast-iron building stands out: 101 Spring Street. What initially looks like a gallery is indeed the former home of artist Donald Judd, now stewarded by the Judd Foundation run by his children, Rainer and Flavin. Unfolding like a quiet manifesto, the foundation continues Judd’s way of thinking: that art, design, architecture, and life are not siloed disciplines but part of the same spatial rhythm. 

Maintaining and preserving Judd’s permanently installed living and working spaces, libraries, and archives in New York and Marfa, Texas, the Judd Foundation continues the legacy left by the American artist, persevering with his mission as explained through the vast repertoire of work he created across borders. His philosophy was simple: art, architecture, and life are not separate pursuits, but deeply interconnected. 

Donald Judd resisted categories in his art. Not interested in movements, Judd let his artworks in their spaces speak for themselves. “The space surrounding my work is crucial to it,” wrote Donald Judd in the 1977 essay which first outlined the principles of Judd Foundation. “As much thought has gone into the installation as into a piece itself.” Rainer and Flavin honour and continue this understanding of their father’s work, carefully continuing his way of thinking.

By preserving and showcasing his works – both objects and spaces – to the public, Flavin and Rainer enable new ideas and thoughts to occur in the view of those that experience them. Is that not the purpose of good art? To evoke emotion and thought, through visual and physical experiences in any timeframe. To think – to feel – to move.

Now, the Judd Foundation preserves the artists work decades on.

From Judd’s beginnings explode as an art critic in New York in the 1950 and 1960s, it led him to produce work which was radically original and in addition, uncompromising in his belief that “every individual had the right to pursue their own distinct vision and set of values, generating new ideas and practices as part of a flourishing society” (as explained by the Foundation). Holding onto his convictions was fundamental to his output, resulting in permanent installations to relay this all.

In 1968, Judd purchased a five-story cast iron building at 101 Spring Street in SoHo New York, the first of his spaces that would go on to relay his vision in physical iteration.

Shaping the relationship between each of his artworks and the surrounding space, he meticulously placed them with intention in the building together with artworks he collected from friends, installing works by artists such as Dan Flavin, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain amongst his own including curios – such as furniture, traditional textiles, and artefacts – that he was personally drawn to. Weaved into the space intentionally over 5 floors, each level presents a different purpose – sleeping, eating or working – and the relationship between the works emerges through the continuously changing light throughout the day.

Walking through 101 Spring Street feels more like entering someone’s mind than their home. Light pours through enormous windows (Judd disliked curtains, keeping the building without decorations or distractions toward the architecture and art) and it’s one of the few places in New York where you can feel time slow down. Here, the space design carries the same weight as a sculpture. It’s an incredibly rare building in SoHo, now the last single-use cast iron building, due to the preservation of the Judd Foundation.

In Marfa, Texas—where Judd moved in the 1970s seeking silence and scale—the Foundation’s work becomes something else entirely. The desert becomes both canvas and collaborator through its every changing seasons: light, temperature, feeling all change per visit. Here, Judd restored industrial buildings into spaces of radical calm with a feeling in Marfa that cannot be replicated: concrete floors, natural light, long shadows, open air. Works are permanently installed and intentionally unmoved, staying true to Judd’s original vision.

Through careful stewardship of Judd’s writings, architecture, furniture and visual works, the Judd Foundation reminds us what integrity looks like in a world of fast transactions and surface-level expression. Judd didn’t just make things; he built systems and for him, art was a form of responsibility—to space, to material and to thought.

More than a preservation project, the Judd Foundation is a family-led project which continues an integrity toward shared ethics. That sometimes, the most powerful gesture is simply to protect space—for thinking, for making, for being.

New York-based Australian photographer Alex Johnstone travelled to each of the Judd Foundation sites to capture their essence firsthand, sharing his journey exclusively for Champ Magazine. From golden hues made by the sun to the raw textures evident in each building, natural materials create honest beauty where purity of intention is laid bare. A living framework.

Judd Foundation
Book a visit to either the Marfa locations or 101 Spring Street New York, here

Photography: Alex Johnstone for Champ Magazine© 
Interview and text: Editorial Director Monique Kawecki