Visiting Dia Beacon

Dia Beacon has been on my list of places to visit forever, but it finally got a chance to visit it on the last day of 2022 as I made my way up to Ghent in Hudson Valley, which is in Upstate New York, for New Year’s Eve. While it is accessible by train from Grand Central station, for some reason I have been holding out for a chance to drive to it. In retrospect it would make a great day trip as they have a cafe in the museum to plan a meal around as well, we did have lunch there and the food was very good.

I think of Dia Beacon often as it manages a secret sound art installation by Max Neuhaus in Times Square that I cross often. Titled Times Square, it is hidden below a subway grate in plain sight since the 1970s, and emits a sound that is easily mistaken for traffic or a subway train while walking past it.

Experiencing Richard Serra

Dia Beacon has a lot of great body of art that I have been reading about forever, and it has been on my must visit list as they have a vast collection of art by Richard Serra, which I have been looking forward to seeing. I mean, here are just a few of the pieces below –

After seeing these pieces indoors, I realized that all the Richard Serra pieces I have seen so far have all been outdoors, and I actually prefer them out in the open. The last one I saw was titled Sequence at Stanford University in California over Thanksgiving weekend –

It was really fun to walk through Sequence –

A couple of months ago, I got to see one titled Seven in Doha standing up tall against the skyline, though I did not get a chance to go up close to this one –

Experiencing Sol LeWitt

The one artist I had not realized I would run into was Sol LeWitt, who has three wall drawings at the Dia Beacon Museum.

I am used to running into Sol LeWitt’s art without needing to visit a museum, it is just a subway ride away at the Columbus Circle subway station in Manhattan where he has two installations. This one is called Whirls and Twirls.

And this is circular floor work by Sol LeWitt at the other end of the 59th Street station –

Experiencing Dan Flavin

I also discovered an artist whose work I was not familiar with, Dan Flavin. His fluorescent installations were amazingly minimalistic and eye catching –

The green one dates back to 1973, and took up an entire wall. It was just stunning.

The scale of the installations at Dia Beacon is just breathtaking, and I to make it on my beaten path in the future. The tickets were just $20 each, and timed so the museum is not overrun with too many people getting in the way of the art.

#gottalovenewyork