On a Wednesday evening in April—winter’s chill still lingering in the night air—a cast-iron SoHo building, 101 Spring Street, was packed. It’s one of the few addresses in the neighborhood left without a brand name on front: next door is Retrofête, a trendy New York based fashion brand known for their sparkly party dresses. Around the corner is the Museum of Ice Cream. And a Sephora. And a Capital One Café—a coffee shop chain by, yes, the Fortune 500 bank.
It’s also likely the only building left that still retains mostly the same interiors as it had in the 1970s, when SoHo was populated with artists rather than the essentially elevated shopping mall it is today. And it’s definitely the only one that, at this particular moment in time, was filled with famous names like Aubrey Plaza, Grace Gummer, and Solange Knowles.
They were all gathered there to mark the legacy of one man: Donald Judd, arguably the most famous of those aforementioned SoHo artists who once lived and worked in the very building they stood in. Thanks to his legacy, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places—a bastion of a neighborhood that once was.
Judd bought it in 1968, back when SoHo real estate was dirt cheap. Inside its walls, he came up with the idea of permanent installation: whereas most art was painted on canvas and transportable between walls, museums, and even owners, Judd made works that, once placed, stayed—making the landscape part of the art itself. Take his most famous project, “100 untitled works in mill aluminum,” where Judd constructed giant silver boxes in his other home, the West Texas town of Marfa. Thousands of people journey to Marfa (a three hour drive from El Paso) each year to see it themselves, like an artistic pilgrimage.
Although one shouldn’t pigeonhole Judd, a true artistic multi-hyphenate: in addition to his installations, he also designed furniture, architecture, and a lot of other things: Recently, Puiforcat partnered with the Judd Foundation to reproduce silverware that the artist designed in the late 1980s.
His children, Flavin and Rainer, host a dinner at his old SoHo loft every year to honor the Judd Foundation, the nonprofit that upholds his legacy and work. This year, the Judds weren’t necessarily looking to push a certain agenda or cause. They just wanted, well, to reflect on their father and hoped others would too. “It helps mark time for people,” Rainer says. “I think that’s all we can hope for—that people walk away and are inspired to be more of themselves in the world.”
The evening, which was co-hosted by the independent fashion brand Khaite, attracted a cultured crowd. In addition to the aforementioned names, Fran Lebowitz and stylist Vanessa Traina attended, as did acclaimed artist Joan Jonas. Andrew Tarlow’s Borgo—one of the most difficult reservations to get in New York—catered. Everyone, from all sorts of creative disciplines, were eager to soak in the visionary coolness the Judd legacy still exudes. At 8 p.m., piano music began playing: an auditory cue that cocktail hour had come to an end and dinner was set to begin. Except it wasn’t just any piano music: “Philip Glass is playing,” one Khaite wearing guest said to another.
