Better to Lose Your Head Than Use It: Working with Ethnographic Fiction and a New Evidential Paradigm at Minimalist Donald Judd’s The Chinati Foundation
{"title":"Better to Lose Your Head Than Use It: Working with Ethnographic Fiction and a New Evidential Paradigm at Minimalist Donald Judd’s The Chinati Foundation","authors":"Emily Verla Bovino","doi":"10.1111/muan.12219","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>Writing through ethnographic fiction, art practice, and art historical research, this essay presents a study of minimalist Donald Judd’s The Chinati Foundation/La Fondacion Chinati (1979–1986), a museum in West Texas designed by the artist. It explores Chinati in relation to its site—the Texas-Mexico borderlands—focusing on three objects of evidence found in and around it: a World War II–era German-language sign inside the former military complex that Judd retrofitted for the museum, and that he dated and autographed; a wall of a derelict adobe building graffitied with a denouncement of Chinati; and a granite gravestone with an Arabic inscription, marking the final resting place of Lebanese peddler Ramon Karam, whose death on the Rio Grande in 1918 was used as evidence in Senate hearings in support of increased U.S. militarization at the border. The essay shows how working with ethnographic fiction toward a new evidential paradigm shifts perspectives on Chinati, Judd’s practice, the borderlands, and the relationship between scholarship and art practice.</p>\n </div>","PeriodicalId":43404,"journal":{"name":"Museum Anthropology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/muan.12219","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Museum Anthropology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/muan.12219","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
Writing through ethnographic fiction, art practice, and art historical research, this essay presents a study of minimalist Donald Judd’s The Chinati Foundation/La Fondacion Chinati (1979–1986), a museum in West Texas designed by the artist. It explores Chinati in relation to its site—the Texas-Mexico borderlands—focusing on three objects of evidence found in and around it: a World War II–era German-language sign inside the former military complex that Judd retrofitted for the museum, and that he dated and autographed; a wall of a derelict adobe building graffitied with a denouncement of Chinati; and a granite gravestone with an Arabic inscription, marking the final resting place of Lebanese peddler Ramon Karam, whose death on the Rio Grande in 1918 was used as evidence in Senate hearings in support of increased U.S. militarization at the border. The essay shows how working with ethnographic fiction toward a new evidential paradigm shifts perspectives on Chinati, Judd’s practice, the borderlands, and the relationship between scholarship and art practice.
期刊介绍:
Museum Anthropology seeks to be a leading voice for scholarly research on the collection, interpretation, and representation of the material world. Through critical articles, provocative commentaries, and thoughtful reviews, this peer-reviewed journal aspires to cultivate vibrant dialogues that reflect the global and transdisciplinary work of museums. Situated at the intersection of practice and theory, Museum Anthropology advances our knowledge of the ways in which material objects are intertwined with living histories of cultural display, economics, socio-politics, law, memory, ethics, colonialism, conservation, and public education.