Not so far apart in the arts
Westphalia meets West Texas: Marfa's Chinati Foundation selects German director
Thomas Kellein, Germany's Kunsthalle Bielefeld director, to succeed MarianneStockebrand in January, 2011Photo by Martin Brockhoff
Marianne Stockebrand
Donald Judd, "100 untitled works in mill aluminum," 1982-86, The ChinatiFoundationPhoto by Monica Danna
Dan Flavin, "Untiled, (Marfa Project,)" 1996, The Chinati FoundationPhoto by Monica Danna
John Chamberlain, various works, The Chinati Foundation
When the Chinati Foundation, the Marfa art organization birthed by reductive artist Donald Judd, announced the selection of Thomas Kellein as its next director, the geographic divide seemed insurmountable. Located on 340 acres of West Texas land on the site of former Fort D.A. Russell, the museum is physically distant from Kellein's home in Germany, but in regards to artistic and intellectual vision, the two locations are intimately close.
Chinati was founded in 1979 under the guidance of Judd himself, originally with assistance from the Dia Art Foundation, which was founded by Philippa de Menil (daughter of Menil Collection founder and Schlumberger heiress Dominique de Menil). Perhaps it is the highly-articulated aesthetic or disparity of the high Chihuahuan desert that allows German scholars to connect with the Chinati campus' tightly-curated collection and its environs — retiring director Marianne Stockebrand also claims a Westphalian heritage and earned her curatorial pedigree while at the region's Kunstmuseen Krefeld.
"If you look at Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Richard Tuttle, a huge part of their careers happened in Europe," Stockebrand says of the connection. "We all knew them and began exhibiting their work since the late '60s."
The attentiveness to American art currents was a product of the rapid Americanization of the Federal Republic of Germany after the second World War. More than ever before, West German scholars were eager to identify with the increasingly cerebral school of art in the United States.
Stockebrand mounted the first exhibition on Judd's architectural work in 1989 and has served as Chinati's first director since 1994. During her 16 year tenure, 25 creative minds of German descent have sojourned to Marfa to participate in the artist-in-residence program, representing an intriguingly disproportionate number of artists who join the primarily American group.
This intrinsic affinity for the installations by such artists as John Chamberlain, Carl Andre and Claes Oldenburg is what drove the selection committee to pinpoint Kellein as the premier candidate for the position of director. Throughout the rigorous, six-month international search under the direction of William B. Jordan, Kellein was consistently on the committee's mind due to his frequent visits to Chinati since he was first invited to visit by Judd in 1991. Kellein has lectured at the museum on several occasions, most recently at the 2008 symposium The Writings of Donald Judd.
Like Stockebrand, Kellein's resume includes curatorial collaborations with Judd himself, having worked with the artist on a proposed architectural project in Switzerland in 1990, which was realized posthumously.
In 2002, the Menil Collection featured a show he curated titled Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955-1968, which highlighted a previously unexplored portion of the artist's body of work leading up to his breakthrough of overcoming the accepted picture frame as a format for fine art. ArtForum noted the exhibition for explaining "why, when he later decided to take the matter of 'framing' his work into his own hands, he chose such an indomitable fortress as Marfa."
Kellein's background as a combined art historian of Judd and museum administrator made him an ideal candidate, but the next director's other exhibitions evince an uncanny understanding of similar turning points in 20th-century art. At the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, where he has served as director since 1996, he recently mounted the exhibition 1968: The Great Innocent, about that pivotal year in world culture, and in March 2010 he reassessed a generation of undervalued painters with The 80s Revisited.
Before his tenure at Bielefeld, Kellein organized exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel on Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Andy Warhol and the intermedia Fluxus movement.
"The job search was of course very specific in that there had to be quite a bit of knowledge included," Fredericka Hunter, director of Houston's Texas Gallery, says. Hunter has been a member of Chinati's board since 1995 and served as board president for over seven years.
"We were able to get a scholar who basically has the same unending enthusiasm for Judd's achievement in Marfa and what it means to the whole wide world," she tells CultureMap. Hunter met Judd in 1972 and went on to host five shows featuring his work at Texas Gallery. "I admire him tremendously for his vision," she says.
Despite his clear credentials, Kellein maintains an admirable disposition. "He's charming and comes with a lot of wit," Hunter says. "He has a great presence."
She has faith that once Kellein assumes his new position in January, he will make it his "personal mission" to take on preservation and conservation, fundraising, expanding audiences, and perhaps encouraging a Judd retrospective at a Houston museum that can compete with the most recent one at London's Tate Modern.
Indeed, Kellein's arrival represents a sea change for the institution, which still holds much of its original staff (many of whom also share personal links to Judd). His leadership at Chinati will define the museum's second generation.
Judd and his intrepid contemporaries were originally drawn from New York to Marfa for the quality of light, availability of spacious studios and inexpensive resources. For a generation of artists quickly burning out on an increasingly business-oriented Manhattan art world, Marfa provided a simplicity that was attuned to their works' minimalist compositions. But it wasn't long before the group's German enthusiasts followed.
"The Germans just love the notion of the far West," Hunter says, "and seem to find it hospitable and stimulating."
Hunter points out that Judd and Co. were first celebrated and placed in context by German art historians.
Before she bids Chinati adieu, Stockebrand will be publishing the foundation's first comprehensive catalog this October in conjunction with Yale University Press.
Travel is in her future, but as she squarely tells CultureMap in her content tone, "I will remain in Marfa and live here," adding, "I am still very intrigued by Donald Judd and his generation."
