When the artist Donald Judd began buying up land in Marfa in the 1970s, he saw the sleepy West Texas town and its sweeping desert vistas as the perfect backdrop for his austere sculptures. In Marfa, as opposed to the Manhattan gallery scene, Judd could conceive his own sprawling utopia.

Though he died in 1994, the 40,000 acres Judd purchased with the help of the Dia Art Foundation have made Marfa into a town-as-museum, including two artillery sheds exhibiting 100 of his untitled works, operated by the Chinati Foundation. Though most people make the pilgrimage to Marfa just to see Judd’s work, some have come and stayed, inventively building or adapting houses that have a unique desert modernism attuned to the light and landscape, mirroring Judd’s work or serving as a precedent to it.