DRIVE-IN
We would appreciate your feedback about the Drive-In: download our Drive-In survey and return via mail to Melissa McDonnell, Ballroom Marfa, PO Box 1661, Marfa, TX 79843.
Ballroom Marfa brings contemporary art and culture to a diverse and growing community. The scope of our programs encompasses visual arts exhibitions, music events, film screenings, dance, and theater performances that extend locally as well as internationally. 2011 is a benchmark year for Ballroom Marfa, marking both our eighth year as a cultural arts foundation and the commencement of construction of the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In.
Designed by acclaimed architects MOS, the Drive-In will be a sculptural reconfiguration of classic outdoor drive-in theater architecture. We hope the several acres of scenic desert on the northeastern edge of Marfa, known as Vizcaino Park, will serve as a permanent home for our Drive-In theater. The gleaming curvilinear structure, a combination of screen and band shell, will be a striking new presence in the West Texas landscape, reflecting Marfa’s reputation as a cultural destination and the town’s historical interplay between architecture and sculpture.
The concept for the Drive-In grew out of discussions about the future of the Ballroom Marfa’s film program between Virginia Lebermann, Fairfax Dorn, Vance Knowles, and Josh Siegel, a film curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The concept for this project is to resurrect a virtually extinct type of venue and rekindle the spirit of community that existed around the original drive-in theaters. The drive-in is a disappearing architectural and cultural phenomenon, with their numbers decreasing from more than 5000 at their peak in the 1950s to less than 400 today. Ballroom Marfa aims not only to restore this unique venue to the landscape, but also to redefine the drive-in experience for a new audience.
The creation of the Drive-In is also a catalyst for the expansion of Ballroom Marfa’s film program. Inaugural event curatorship from Josh Siegel will provide the foundation from which Ballroom Marfa will expand our film programming in directions both innovative and community-oriented during the annual season. Consistent with our founding mission and commitment to interdisciplinary programming, the Drive-In will be home to film screenings, as well as music, dance, and theater performances. Ballroom Marfa will make film screenings and performances at the Drive-In free and open to the public.
The Ballroom Marfa Drive-In will not only be the first art-house drive-in in America, but also the first created by a non-profit organization. With a cutting-edge design and exceptional programming, it will be an internationally significant architectural, cultural, and civic project that epitomizes Ballroom Marfa’s ambitious pursuit of community engagement and artistic expression.
STATEMENT FROM MOS
Naturally, as an unconventional arts institution, Ballroom Marfa wanted to create an unconventional drive-in theater. Acknowledging the significance and purpose of the drive-in as a place for cultural events, the design is not a reproduction of a golden age past utopia. Rather, it is a forward-looking plan for an alternate exhibition space that inhabits a combination of a gallery, cinema house, music hall, theater, and park. The design recognizes that the most spectacular aspect of Marfa is the landscape.
This boundless environment for the creation and display of artistic expression allows innovative relationships to emerge, while keeping the concept of performance central to the design. Every surface performs and interacts with the event and the landscape around it. The design for the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In is a small park with modular steel structures, which include a screen, band shell, concession stand, and projection booth.
The focal point of the design represents a new type of performance space for artists, somewhere between a drive-in theater screen and a band shell. The modular screen will be both a flat projection surface and a coffered acoustic band shell, allowing it to function as a site for both film and music performances. The screen, concession stand, and projection booth structures employ a prefabricated panelized system. The landscape will be subtly angled into arches of berms, providing ideal viewing angles for both parked cars and pedestrian seating as well as creating a sense of enclosure.
The Ballroom Marfa Drive-In will be a place that encourages the production of new narratives and continued exploration of the connections between art and landscape. Creating a place where intimately bound settings and infinitely receding vistas constantly expand and contract on a scale that does not exist anywhere else.
–Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, MOS, 2011
Michael Meredith, an Associate Professor at Harvard University, and Hilary Sample, an Associate Professor at Yale University, are the principals of architecture office MOS. Their projects have been showcased in numerous publications, including Architectural Record, Architect, A+U, Wallpaper, Surface, Space Korea, Mark, AV Proyectos, and The New York Times, and exhibited at the Venice Biennale, SMOCA, MoMA, and the Arts Institute in Chicago. They’ve received numerous awards, recently a Design Award from Progressive Architecture for the Ballroom Marfa Arts Archipelago, New York City Architectural League Emerging Voices, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
PROGRAM STATEMENT
Ballroom Marfa is committed to programs that are socially relevant and widely accessible to 21st century audiences. Throughout our history, we have delivered creative and stimulating programming on the most democratic terms to an audience that includes artists, area residents, cultural tourists, academics, and those new to art.
The construction of the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In in 2011 advances our growing film program. It also embodies our dedication to significant, innovative, and accessible contemporary art, which is the core of our founding mission. Perhaps the most important component of Ballroom Marfa’s mission is our progressive philosophy towards artist- and curator-producing projects that would be impossible to realize in a traditional gallery or museum setting.
The Drive-In will launch with an opening event organized by Josh Siegel, a film curator at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Siegel has curated or co-curated more than 90 film and video exhibitions at MoMA, as well as the gallery installation Projects 84: Josiah McElheny (2007). Together with Kirk Varnedoe and Paola Antonelli, Mr. Siegel led the curatorial team responsible for the major reinstallation of the Museum, Open Ends, as part of MoMA2000, and co-edited the accompanying catalogue, Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA Since 1980. He has lectured at Yale University, Columbia University, USC, Pixar, and the University of Warsaw; has served on grant panels for the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and The Penny McCall Foundation; and has been a jury member of the Vancouver Film Festival.
Siegel’s program will draw on some of Marfa’s distinct characteristics: its landscape, with a screening of a silent melodrama filmed in West Texas; its railroad and Wild West legacy, with a screening of a classic Western; its nighttime skies and “Mystery Lights,” with a screening of a science-fiction film; and its people, with screenings of a film about Texas oil barons and ranching families, as well as a Spanish-language film.
Following the inaugural event, annual programming will feature a series of six curated one-night programs, four curated weekend-long programs, and two curated week-long programs. Noted film directors, writers, curators, musicians, and artists will be invited to curate film programs. We will also collaborate with an international roster of art institutions whose artist-oriented priorities are consistent with our own.
The Ballroom Marfa Drive-In will draw from the entire history of cinema including contemporary independent films, silent films with live musical accompaniment, Westerns, film noir, melodrama, science fiction, horror, and international features past and present. In the spirit of classic drive-in theaters, cartoons, newsreels, experimental films, and other shorts will precede feature presentations.
Programs will be rigorously curated and expanded into different media, their artistic and civic scope assuming new depth and definition with lectures by film directors, writers, curators, musicians, and artists. The Ballroom Marfa Drive-In will deliver eclectic, historical, and educational programs.
EDUCATION AND OUTREACH PROGRAM
The construction of the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In advances our growing film and education programs. It also embodies our dedication to significant, innovative, and accessible contemporary art. Ballroom Marfa is greatly expanding our current efforts in the areas of education and youth outreach. The cornerstone of our program is Making Art Work, a program of in-class and off-campus live performances, demonstrations, and lectures for students by artists participating in Ballroom Marfa visual arts, music, and film programming. We will present the work of artists, musicians, and filmmakers in conjunction with the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In –- providing direct student access to visiting art professionals. All of the public programs, music performances, and film screenings are free and open to the community.
Ballroom Marfa and the Marfa Independent School District have developed a program designed to meet the specific needs of the children in rural, low-income families. At present, all 250 students in the Junior/Senior High School share one art teacher and one band director/music teacher. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) is a standardized test used in Texas primary and secondary schools to assess students’ attainment of reading, writing, math, science, and social studies skills required under Texas education standards. Recent low TAKS test scores currently threaten the potential for internal expansion of art and music courses — with some grade levels reporting 60% of the students failing to meet the minimum requirements.
For more information please email Melissa McDonnell, Drive-In Project Manager or call 432-729-3600.
Join us for a Drive-In presentation and question & answer session at the Crowley Theater, Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 7pm. Refreshments will be served. The Ballroom Marfa Arts Archipelago (Ballroom Marfa Drive-In) expands beyond a drive-In theater and envisions a multi-scale county park improvement plan. We would appreciate your feedback prior to the meeting and for those unable to attend — download our Drive-In survey and return via mail to Melissa McDonnell, Ballroom Marfa, PO Box 1661, Marfa, TX 79843. Ballroom Marfa Drive-In
Watch a video about the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In created by Ballroom Marfa with Richie Gelles
Listen to the Marfa Public Radio interview with Director of Developement, JD DiFabbio, and Drive-In Project Manager, Melissa McDonnell, discussing the future of the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In on 21 April 2011.
Creators Project interview with Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of MOS, designers of the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In. Video courtesy of the Creators Project.
Read the Big Bend Sentinel article about our most recent partnership with Presidio County. This partnership allows Ballroom Marfa to construct the Drive-In at Vizcaino Park on the northwest edge of Marfa.
Ballroom Marfa and the Drive-in project is featured in the 2011 Number 2 edition of the NEA Arts Magazine, the quarterly magazine of the National Endowment of the Arts.
Much gratitude for the generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston, TX; Nancy B Negley; Lisa Dorn; Jeff Fort; Allison Sarofim; Charles Mallory; Tim Crowley; Donna Karan, Inc., New York, NY; Holbrook Dorn; Louisa Sarofim; Gorden Veneklasen; Free City, Malibu, CA; Molly Kemp; Jim Jard; Anschutz Foundation, Denver, CO: Credit Suisse, New York, NY; Mary Stinchcomb; Marisa Wayne; Harry and Shelly Hudson; Pablo Alvarado; Peder Bonnier; Cynthia Toles; Rosina Yue & Bert Lies; Libby Tilley; Chris Carson; Jane Rushton; Laura Shell; and Diane Trevino.
Special thanks to Presidio County Judge Paul Hunt; Felipe Cordero and all of the Presidio County Commissioners; the City of Marfa; Vicente Celis; and Joe Cabezuela of the Blackwell School Association.
Buy Beginnings: MOS, a documentation of the 2009 Martell Lecture given by Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith, founders of MOS Architects, and featuring the Ballroom Marfa Drive-In.
Support the Drive-In! We are still fundraising for the development and construction of the Drive-In.
For more information please email JD DiFabbio, Director of Development or call 432-729-3600.
