Party 101: The Prequel

The northeast corner of Spring and Mercer Street was bubbling with excitement last Thursday night when Rainer Judd, President of the Judd Foundation (and daughter of Don Judd) announced to a room full of Judd family, friends and followers that this day, June 3, her father’s birthday, begins the public phase of a capital campaign developed to help fully restore Donald Judd’s historic home at 101 Spring Street, a major landmark in preserving Judd’s legacy.  The space will be closed during the estimated 3-year restoration period but the Foundation will remain active through various programs, events and projects including work on developing the Judd catalogue raisonné. 

Rainer Judd wearing a black column dress by award-winning fashion designer, Yeohlee Teng aside ‘Untitled,’ 1978 a classic Donald Judd stack piece. 101 Spring Street, New York City, June 3, 2010.The ground floor of the building was transformed into a summer picnic area complete with Judd-designed tables and benches made from unfinished modest pine with a buffet of rare steak, fries, arugula, and prosciutto served by Giorgio Deluca, one of the founders of the pioneering SoHo gourmet food emporium Dean & Deluca.  Rainer Judd took center stage and kicked off the campaign with a tribute to her parents: “101 Spring Street has been called the ‘jewel of SoHo’ because it glows at night with a Dan Flavin sculpture made especially for the 5th floor, and because an artist named Don Judd and his wife Julie took a stand, along with a small renegade community of artists, against Robert Moses’ plans to raze the entire neighborhood to build the Broome Street Expressway – and won!  If there’s any surviving building in SoHo that captures the vision of a single artist, the spirit of loft-living, and the art of a generation, it is 101 Spring Street.”  It would be undeniably worthy if the new guard of SoHo, major brands like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Chanel, J Crew, etc., stepped up to the plate and contributed to the restoration of this visionary building where one artist had the brilliant idea to merge art, architecture and life and in so doing rescued what is now the world-famous cobbled grid SOuth of Houston, SoHo.  Donate to the Judd Foundation at: http://www.juddfoundation.org/donate.htm

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/people/barone/barone9-10-04.asp