Dia Beacon (Beacon, NY)
Small. Medium. Large. Extra Large. Dia Beacon. That’s my proposal for a new 5-step museum size classification system. Except the jump from XL to Dia Beacon takes a parabolic leap. It’s not just a big venue, it’s huge. How huge? The pitch at Wembley Stadium — including the entire lower bowl of seats! — would fit inside the footprint.
Opened in 2003 and set inside a former Nabisco box-printing factory, the 160,000 sq ft museum is only slightly larger than London’s National Gallery (140,000 sq ft) and is one of the largest exhibition spaces in the USA for modern and contemporary art. It’s one of a dozen venues from the Dia Art Foundation, a nonprofit that provides support to projects "whose nature or scale would preclude other funding sources." Once you set foot inside you’ll be thankful that such a foundation exists. It’s pretty mind blowing.
Primarily featuring abstract and conceptual art from the 1960s to the present, the Beacon is big enough to display large sculptural works I’m more accustomed to seeing outdoors. There’s a six foot tall cone of salt from Meg Webster. Four twenty-feet deep steel lined holes by Michael Heizer. A giant Richard Serra shaped like the hull of a steam liner and a Louise Bourgeois spider crawling so low you have to duck under its legs get to the other side of a room.
And it’s not just the art that’s giant, either. Donald Judd. Sol LeWitt. Gerhard Richter. Even Andy Warhol makes an appearance, with one ginormous room wallpapered with as many of the 102 variations of Shadows (1978-79) that will fit. It’s a reminder of how boringly repetitive Warhol could be, and it’s helpful that it’s right by the entrance because it’s a good indicator of the experience to come.
One artist new to me was Fred Sandback, who stretches store-bought yarn between floor, ceiling and walls to construct rectilinear outlines, creating the illusion of a pane of glass. It’s one of those brilliantly simple ideas that immediately makes you wonder why no one’s ever done it before. Maybe that’s because there’s not that much variation to be had with the idea. The seven works displayed are from 1969, 1979 and 1996 but after seeing the first few my thought was “Yeah, I get it. Now show me something different.”
That’s a frequent problem with abstracts. By creating a visual language or metaphor that is so distinctly unique, artists sometimes get stuck repeating the same thing over and over again in ways that are often too subtle for a general public to appreciate. Or even this critic! Melvin Edwards’ barbed wire geometrics, Blinky Palermo’s colour studies and stanley brouwn’s “walk X metres in the direction of…” floor tapes all would have been much more powerful had fewer been displayed.
There’s currently 29 artists to explore so if one artist isn’t to your taste you can just see someone else. Eventually. Thanks to the scale of each room and overall size of the venue, when you encounter something that doesn’t engage you, you’ll begin to feel like maybe the space hasn’t been optimised. Then you’ll turn a corner and change your mind all over again.
Each of the nine Dan Flavin light sculptures shows how wide ranging his creative vision was, using nothing more than mass produced fluorescent lights. Senga Nengudi was similarly unlimited in his use of coloured water and plastic bags. And then there’s the basement installation by Steve McQueen, in which acoustic and electric bass instruments provide an abstract audio backdrop to the visitors walking or sitting inside the subterranean dungeon-like space that has been bathed in red light. Like most of the best works in the main gallery above, McQueen has effectively deployed a few simple things to great effect, creating an atmosphere that fundamentally impacts how you feel.
That’s really what the Beacon is about and why it’s a can’t-miss destination. Not high profile artist names or Instagram opportunities, but the chance to experience the psychological and emotional changes that can be triggered by the manipulation of space.
Plan your visit
Dia Beacon is located at 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York
Open Friday - Monday, 10am - 5 pm
Tickets from US$20 adult / children under 5 free / Discounts & student rates available
Visit diaart.org and follow @diaartfoundation on Instagram for more info about the venue & opening days/times.
PLUS…
Check the What’s On page so you don’t miss any other great shows closing soon.
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