Ironically, it is hard to find one of those large, white-window art museums with a tiny art piece in the middle of it all. It is the image I have of a modern art museum, but many contemporary and modern art museums feel cramped. It seems like everyone is hoarding too much art, and there is never enough space to show them all. This all changed when J and I arrived at Dia:Beacon. This was only added to the itinerary last minute since J is not too much of an art person – we only planned for Storm King for the views, but I became adamant about visiting the area because of the legendary Storm King Art Center. It was going to be an extremely hot, and rainy day – so an indoor art museum was the way to go!
We got there early, just as they opened. The large ceiling and huge space were a converted Nabisco plant, which now made sense to us. It opened in 2003 and is supposed to have inspired a much more similar-looking museum, but I’ve yet to see any of them in person. We paid for our tickets and walked through the main lobby, and I loved the huge empty spaces with sculptures in the middle of the room. I am not sure if we would appreciate art better if we had less to focus on, but I feel that space is an important aspect of modern art. Neither am I an art critic, so I will not be talking about individual pieces down below. Instead, I will mention how I interacted with the huge art museum.
I started down the middle of the museum, all the way to the back. The first piece was a DIY stadium kit, and we were wondering if it was art or if it was an amphitheater, which really hammers in the slim line between art pieces and real designs. Then, there were strings hung from the ceiling to create space, and huge glasses and bright colors to create even more feeling of space. Then, my favorite piece of art – a circular void that we could not see the bottom in the middle of the room.
Switching gears, art pieces made from everyday objects, and even a huge rock just sit in the middle of a wall. Even those objects were deconstructed into tiny components, like a pile of “trash” that we would not have noticed if it was on the side of the street. Being in a modern art museum means we cannot escape the art pieces of lines drawn across in assortment of colors, or dates written on a square background. However, in this case, it was much more captivating, as we are seeing multiple copies in a single room, which brings attention to them. Otherwise, in any other museum, I would have just stared at something else right next to it.
There were some outdoor exhibits as well, but the weather was murky so I stayed as long as I could. In the courtyard, there was a recording of bird noises, except it was a sound made by the artist, invoking the last name of the male artist in her day. The lawn is beautiful, and I would have loved to sip a glass of coffee, which we did in the real cafe, but indoors.
Most of the art is on the main floor, but there is a smaller third floor with a lot of sculptures, similar to how other museums would cramp art, and I was losing interest. On the other hand, there were a few huge metallic structures downstairs, where we could walk into the spiral art piece, and very entertaining. We went into the basement, where the light slowly changed and so did the sound. It was a surreal experience, like an indie concert that nobody was invited to. And of course, they have a room of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art (or maybe not. I’m not sure), where they were all duplicates of a scene but colored slightly differently.
We spent around 2 hours, and I loved the experience so much. It is one of the better museums I have been in a while, possibly the best in 2024! I still want to emphasize that feeling, of using a large amount of space to display just a few artists. In this age where we all spam photographs, shorts, and memes, it is so hard to distill our best works into a few pieces and show them to the rest of the world. That feels like something art museums struggled with, to keep the attention of the visitors, and DIA:Beacon did such an amazing job. Oh, a few more cool things. They have a dozen more art pieces around the world. I knew of DIA because of The Lightning Field in Western New Mexico, where you can stay for a night; and the fake sounds of metro in New York City. (I know right, what?!) Some stuff is so absurd here that I am utterly impressed, which is why, I love it.
Ranked: ***** Bo’s Best of the Best.
Issue 91. Volume 14. Chapter 4.
Visited: July 13, 2024 at 10:00am.
Address: 3 Beekman St, Beacon, NY
Website: https://www.diaart.org/
