During my two months in residence at the Center, I worked on two related projects, both concerned with the yard as a site of artmaking, reception, and history. The first project was the completion of my book, “Marfa, Marfa: Rasquachismo and Minimalism in Far West Texas.” This book is an update of my dissertation and will be published by Duke University Press with support from a Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant. The most significant update was a new concluding chapter in which I reexamine the Chinati Foundation, the Marfa-sited museum of artist Donald Judd (1928–1994), as one more site among a network of West Texas yards, including those of my Marfa-born grandfather and yard artist Hipolito Hernandez (1935–2015). My grandfather, like many Mexican Americans of his generation active in the region, took to his yard as a site of artistic production and environmental creativity. Reassessing Judd’s activities among these sites offers a new vision of his and their projects. Regular access and time to explore the National Gallery’s special collections led to a number of revelations that enriched my project. Notable among these is the discovery of a photograph of my grandfather’s childhood home included in westexaspsychosculpture, a book by photographer Christopher Wool (b. 1955). The manuscript of “Marfa, Marfa,” updated with this chapter, was submitted to Duke University Press during the last week of my fellowship.

The second project that progressed significantly thanks to my fellowship is a yard art reader I am compiling in partnership with Lived Places Publishing. This project is inspired by an exhibition I presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia as Sachs Guest Curator in 2024. The exhibition’s title is the name of my research project at the Center and the eventual reader: Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard. While at the Center, I wrote and presented a first draft of the critical introduction that will open the book. Working in the context of the National Gallery, including its proximity to the National Mall and the United States Capitol, resulted in a framework wherein the yard becomes a site of thinking critically about public and semipublic space and nation-building. Yard art demonstrates a persistent impulse across diverse spaces, makers, media, and audiences toward world-building. This field of everyday artmaking encompasses a wide range of styles and purposes: aesthetics range from intricate to utilitarian; prefabricated materials are as prevalent as handmade objects; and inspiration can be drawn from familial connections and spiritual experiences as well as popular culture. Not always named or considered as an object of contemplation in itself, artmaking that has thrived in the yard counters an assumption that artistic production and interpretation are bound to the studio, the academy, the museum, or the gallery. During my fellowship, I continued research begun during the 2024 exhibition. At the National Gallery, I further encountered many rich publications on the topic of yard-based practices that built on topics I had already been exploring through specific artworks: histories of the swept yard tradition among enslaved folks that evolved into contemporary “yard shows”; efforts to create better literacy around rasquache yards of East Los Angeles; analyses of the unique evolution of yard-based aesthetics in the postwar, rapidly suburbanizing United States of America; interviews with artists; and more. This new publication will serve as an anthology comprising many of these existing writings, with the goal of providing teachers, students, and the curious a resource for entering this wonder-filled area of artmaking and scholarship. Among the books I consulted in the National Gallery’s library were: Symbols and Images by Gregg N. Blasdel, The American Lawn by Georges Teyssot, The Lawn by Virginia Scott Jenkins, Standing Still by Robert Adams, Yard Sale Photographs by Adam Bartos, YARD by Christopher Wool, and American Yard Sale by Don Michael Sampson. During my time at the Center, I also consulted prints and drawings related to the topic of yard art, which significantly expanded the historical time frame of the project. Thanks to my residency, the full proposal for the publisher will be completed later in 2025.

College Park, MD
Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow, January–February 2025

Upon completion of the final yard-focused chapter, Josh T Franco submitted his manuscript for “Marfa, Marfa: Rasquachismo and Minimalism in Far West Texas” to Duke University Press. During his fellowship, he learned that the related exhibition, also titled Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard, will travel to the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center at Colorado College in 2026. This second iteration will inform the yard art reader he began formulating during his fellowship.