*Shea Butter Irrigation System,* a Rashid Johnson installation at Ballroom Marfa, 2013.

*Top,* Haroon Mirza’s *Stone Circle,* 2018; *above,* Candice Lin’s *On the Back of Syphilis Mountain Candelilla Grows,* 2019.

*Top,* Takashi Murakami’s *Jellyfish Eyes,* *Black,* 2003; *above,* Sigalit Landau’s *DeadSee,* 2005.

*Hello Meth Lab in the Sun,* by Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe, and Alexandre Singh, 2008.

*Top,* Solange Pessoa’s *Untitled (Version Minas-Texas),* 1994–2019; *above,* another view of *Hello Meth Lab in the Sun.*

Video stills from *Weather Center,* by Kelly Nipper, 2009.

*Top,* Patty Chang’s *Invocation for a Wandering Lake: Part 1 & 2,* 2016; *above,* Graham Reynolds’s *The Marfa Triptych: The Desert,* 2014.

*A Retrospective View of the Pathway (Falling Sculpture),* by Roger Hiorns, 2010–15.

*Top,* Elmgreen & Dragset’s *Prada Marfa,* 2005; *above,* Maria Hassabi’s *Gloria,* 2007.

*Top,* a moment from DJ Camp, a children’s summer program spearheaded by JD DiFabbio; *above,* Guadalupe Maravilla’s *Mariposa Relámpago,* 2023.

A Place in the Sun

A new book tells the story of Ballroom Marfa, the West Texas arts center that has brought together creatives such as Takashi Murakami and Agnes Denes for the last 20 years

As summer wound down in 2001, the artist Fairfax Dorn was feeling done with New York City. Then the Twin Towers crumbled, and Dorn set her sights southward to her native Texas. A few months later, she and her collaborator, the writer Virginia Lebermann, settled in Terlingua, a dusty town (population 249) near Big Bend National Park.

In their rental casita, they contended with scorpions and watched travelers arrive for the village’s infamous chili cook-off. Dorn painted the vast Texas horizon. Then one day they headed to the Crowley Theater, two hours away in Marfa, for a reading. Once a bus stop, repair shop, gallery, and dance hall, the building sparked an idea, one in sync with Marfa’s remote-art-world allure, thanks to Donald Judd. The place could be an arts center! In 2003, Ballroom Marfa was born.