From Words Without Borders: “Prada Marfa, with its designer shoes and handbags displayed on the empty highway, might make for interesting art, but it makes for poor history. The installation is art because it does not belong, because it creates a juxtaposition between frivolous consumerism and the town of Valentine, which is a sad, shuttered, and nearly jobless place not so different from the town Marfa could have been. If we treat Marfa as little more than an exotic playground for art geniuses, we recreate the ethos of Prada Marfa within ourselves. And we risk that lifelong residents will say, as Rousseau quoted Seneca, “Ever since the Learned have begun to appear among us, good Men have been in eclipse.” Those of us not born in West Texas can try to make the memories, of those who were, our own. Then the place might become ours, too.”