This Old House

An art icon's private world opens to the public

January 26, 2007—Sky-high rents and tourists looking for H&M have notoriously erased SoHo's avant-garde street cred, but today's opening of an iconic sculptor's former home proves there's some art in this New York neighborhood yet. The icon in question: Donald Judd, the minimalist trailblazer who moved into a five-story cast-iron building at 101 Spring Street in 1968 and began filling it with permanent installations of his geometric, often brightly colored work. "Don was known for saying that the placement of a piece of art was almost as important as its creation," says Barbara Hunt-McLanahan, the executive director of the Judd Foundation, which has preserved the place since the artist's death in 1994 and had previously only shown the interior to select publications and VIPs. "This space has Don's work installed by Don, and you see it as the artist truly intended." The 500-piece treasure trove, much of which has never been exhibited, spans all five floors and includes not only his signature galvanized aluminum and Plexiglas wall progressions but his stunning private collection of modern art from the likes of Claes Oldenburg, Marcel Duchamp, and Frank Stella. "So many people have come by our windows and peeked in," Hunt-McLanahan says. "But now anyone can get inside." Let's just hope they don't start asking where they can find the cheap sweaters.

101 Spring Street, open every Friday at 11 a.m. by appointment only, $30 per person, (212) 219-2747, www.juddfoundation.org.