Because who doesn’t wonder what Donald Judd read (or didn’t read), the Judd Foundation has launched a cool online toy: An accounting of the 13,004 books in Donald Judd’s Marfa library (10,718 of them unique with the rest being duplicates). A Judd Foundation press release says that the project took 3,500 hours to complete. (The library is part of ‘The Block’ in downtown Marfa.)
The site is fun to click around — at least if you use Google Chrome (I couldn’t get it to work in Firefox 3.6). A map provides the visitor with a way to click on individual shelving units (at right, with a Judd in the background). You can then zoom in on single shelves, each of which features a little red tab that tells you what the books are about. For example: The top shelf on the right features books about Asia. When I clicked on it I discovered that one of the books is titled “Erotic Arts of Asia” and that its shelved (or is it “installed?”) next to “Oriental Architecture.”
