Courtesy of Vicky Ho
Feature
Growth and decay Left, the Torres general store stands nearly intact Oct. 11, 2009. Right, the same building on June 26, 2011, is poised to crumble. According to Langtry resident Jack Skiles, the area unexpectedly received 15 inches of rain in four days marked by strong winds from Hurricane Alex. The extreme weather caused the front wall to disintegrate from moisture and the roof to cave in from the weight of the rain.
Marfa and Langtry: Twice-sold tales in West Texas By Vicky Ho 7STOPSmag.com Editor’s note: University of Texas English graduate Vicky Ho wrote about her travels and findings in West Texas for 7STOPS, a monthly online magazine founded in August 2011. Every month, the editors of 7STOPS will focus on a different theme, this month being “Growth and Decay.” here’s nowhere quite so Texan as West Texas. Cowboy boots are utilitarian, not kitschy. Tourists stick out like rental cars at the neighborhood FINA gas station, but locals are rarely less than welcoming. Life moves at a slow, easy pace, as though the Earth were ambling in rotation along its wayward axis just in this pocket of the world where everything is three parts sky, one part civilization. Words ring foreign without a drawl, it seems, and I can only guess at what non-Texans, those distinct others, see when they contemplate this sparsely
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populated region of the Lone Star State. Perhaps they envision border cities like El Paso mirrored by Mexican counterparts that hover scarcely across an invisible divide. Maybe the allure rests in the picturesque isolation of once-booming oil towns constructed in hasty, gleaming expansion, only to experience a prolonged, nearly painful contraction over the span of decades. And some cultural elites might distill this section of the state into the iconic city of Marfa, on whose flaxen prairie its patron saint, minimalist artist Donald Judd, left an indelible impression. You can trace his influence back to 1971, the year of Judd’s first visit. Enchanted, he fell in love with the spare, remote town and settled in by purchasing various properties with help from the Dia Art Foundation. He opened his own nonprofit Chinati Foundation in 1986 at the site of the former Fort D. A. Russell, whose abandoned buildings would house permanent installations and exhibitions by Dan Flavin, John Cham-
berlain, David Rabinowitch, Claes Oldenburg, and others. Before Judd’s arrival, Marfa was best known for the mysterious lights that occasionally flicker just outside the city limits at nighttime; through his influence, it transforms into a mecca for his disciples and a haven away from New York City. After Judd passed away in 1994 a provision in his will established the Judd Foundation, which operates in both Marfa and New York and competes with Chinati on more or less friendly terms. The legacy the sculptor left behind, not the least of which is his kilometer-long installation of concrete boxes (his literal mark on the earth) on a prickly stretch of Chinati’s main property, attracts artists, gallery owners, and chic entrepreneurs to a city whose residents in 1990 numbered 2,424 — less than one-one thousandth of Brooklyn’s population today. Businesses thrive as tourism pumps life into the economy, and Marfa, a magnet for weekend Texans and the art-
world cognoscenti, is rescued from almost certain obsolescence. But this hagiographic narrative omits much of what makes Marfa tick. For example, you’ll rarely hear about how two of its biggest property and stakeholders, the Chinati and Judd foundations, are exempt from paying taxes on multiple lots because of their 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. According to Presidio County tax records, Chinati paid $1,189 in taxes in February on four properties valued at a total of $85,490. Another 14 Chinati properties, and all the Judd Foundation’s 19 properties in the county, are exempt from taxes. Hardly contentious numbers, perhaps, but consider the size of each vaunted nonprofit’s coffers. An independent auditors’ report shows that Chinati’s net assets at the end of 2009 amounted to about $11.6 million, with revenue totaling $3.3 million. Estimates from 2008 place the value of the Judd Foundation’s assets at a whopping $240 million with $3.6 million in income. WWW.LAREDOSNEWS.COM