Alex Marks; Donald Judd, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-86. Permanent collection, The Chinati Foundation, Marta, Texas. Donald Judd Art © 2026 Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The town’s always been accepting of newcomers, from Judd to his fellow artists. Robert Irwin—who went on to install his own permanent installation at Chinati in the late 2010s—was passing through West Texas in the 1970s on a cross-country road trip when he stopped at a gas station in Marfa to get a Coke. There he spotted his fellow New Yorker Judd on the side of the road and joined him.
Just as there’s a permanent wormhole that connects West Texas to the galleries of West Chelsea, there’s a Marfa connection to Hollywood, dating back further than when No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood were shooting in town at the same time. Decades before Judd arrived, Giant filmed in Marfa in 1955, and James Dean stayed at the Hotel Paisano, which is currently getting renovated. (There was once a James Dean suite, a Rock Hudson suite, and an Elizabeth Taylor suite.) Tommy Lee Jones previously served on the board of Chinati. More recently, Matthew McConaughey has been known to stop in from time to time. I heard last weekend that Shia LaBeouf has been around, popping into the art studios and scouting out the place ahead of shooting a new movie with Uma Thurman. Alia Shawkat, the Arrested Development actor who’s long been an exhibiting artist, had artwork up at a local gallery, and was there while Red Gap played out of the speakers at Marfa Public Radio—along with a dozen people at midnight sitting at the picnic tables outside the station’s refurbished gas station HQ.
One of the more intriguing Marfa residents is Barry Tubb, the actor who starred as Wolfman in Top Gun and did a few seasons on Friday Night Lights. After Sharon Van Etten gave a free performance for Chinati Weekend, Tubb delivered an unforgettable 10-minute monologue to me, Boone, Kennedy, and the artist Maxwell Sykes. There was an extremely Texas-coded joke relayed from Terry Allen, the musician, a legendary cosmic Texas spectral presence and visual artist whom Bob Dylan calls his favorite artist. There were stories about taking Jennifer Coolidge to meet Bruce Nauman at his studio in New Mexico. There was an anecdote about getting invited backstage at an Eagles concert by Marfa old-timer Boyd Elder, the most famous artist you’ve never heard of, and then watching as Boyd emerged arm in arm with Joni Mitchell.
And then Tubb walked off toward the train tracks. It wasn’t entirely clear when he’d appear again. Kennedy told me Tubb lives between Marfa and Paris.