dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
In May
2003, Dia opened dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries,
a museum to house its renowned but rarely seen permanent
collection comprised of major works of art from the
1960s to the present. Located on the Hudson River in
Beacon, New York, dia:Beacon occupies a nearly 300,000-square-foot
historic printing factory. The museum is named in honor
of Louise and Leonard Riggio for their extraordinary
generosity, which has made possible the realization
of this museum dedicated to Dia's collection.
Since its founding in 1974, Dia has
been dedicated to supporting individual artists and
to providing long-term, in-depth presentations of their
art. The Beacon museum’s expansive galleries have
been specifically designed for the display of the artworks
to which Dia is committed, many of which, because of
their character or scale, could not be easily accommodated
by more conventional museums.
Works installed at the museum range
from Andy Warhol's 1978 Shadows (a single work comprising
multiple canvases); to three of Richard Serra's monumental
sculptures in the Torqued Ellipses; Walter De Maria's
"monuments" for V. Tatlin, a series of fluorescent
light works by Dan Flavin; several mixed-media installations
by Joseph Beuys and Agnes Martin’s 1999 paintings
Innocent Love, among others. Each artist’s work
is displayed in a dedicated gallery or galleries: in
many cases these presentations were created in collaboration
with the artists themselves.
Dia collaborated with American artist
Robert Irwin and architect OpenOffice to formulate the
plan for the museum building and its exterior setting.
Irwin's masterplan includes gardens for the exterior
and a parking lot with a grove of flowering fruit trees.
Built in 1929 by Nabisco (National
Biscuit Company), the historic steel, concrete, and
glass factory building, designed by Nabisco’s
staff architect Louis N. Wirshing, Jr., is a model of
early-twentieth-century industrial architecture. Its
most recent owner, International Paper, donated the
building to Dia in 1999. The design elements that advanced
the work of the factory also create an outstanding environment
for viewing works of contemporary art. These elements
include broad spans between supporting columns and more
than 34,000 square feet of skylights, which introduce
exceptional amounts of reflected north light. At Dia’s
instigation, the building has been listed on the National
Register of Historic Places.
dia:Beacon is sited on thirty-one
acres on the banks of the Hudson River. Dia is working
with state and local government officials and Scenic
Hudson, a nonprofit environmental organization, on a
master plan to connect Dia’s facility with the
ninety acres of adjacent riverfront land.
The museum is a five-minute walk from
the Metro-North Hudson Line train station in Beacon,
sixty miles (eighty minutes travel time) north of New
York City.
Assembled largely during the 1970s
and early 1980s by Dia’s founders, Philippa de
Menil and Heiner Friedrich, the original collection
included works by some of the most important artists
of the 1960s and 1970s, including Joseph Beuys, John
Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd,
Imi Knoebel, Blinky Palermo, Fred Sandback, Cy Twombly,
Andy Warhol, and Robert Whitman.
Anticipating the creation of the Beacon
museum, this collection has been significantly augmented
with works by artists of the same generation as those
Dia historically supported. These include Bernd and
Hilla Becher, Louise Bourgeois, Michael Heizer, Robert
Irwin, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman,
Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Robert
Smithson, and Lawrence Weiner. To further develop the
presentation, Dia is extending its holdings of works
by artists already represented in its collection.
Winter hours: late November thru mid April - 11 am to 4 pm Friday
- Monday, closed Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday
Summer hours: mid April thru mid October - 11 am to 6 pm Thursday
- Monday, closed Tuesday/Wednesday
dia:Beacon closes for Thanksgiving
Day, Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's
Day. The museum’s café and bookshop open
at 10:30 am year-round.
Admission::
dia:Beacon Guided Tours: dia:Beacon provides guided tours every Saturday at 1
pm. Tours are free with admission.
Getting to
dia:Beacon:
By Train: dia:Beacon is located adjacent
to the Beacon train station, which is served by Metro-North
Railroad trains from Grand Central Terminal and Poughkeepsie.
Trains run hourly in either direction during museum
operating hours. For train information, visit www.mta.info
or call 212.532.4900 or 800.METRO.INFO. For train travel
from north of Poughkeepsie, take an Amtrak train to
Poughkeepsie and transfer to a Metro-North train. Beacon
is the second stop. To walk to dia:Beacon from the train
station, exit the rear of the platform on the river
(west) side. Turn left on Red Flynn Drive and follow
it over the railroad tracks to Beekman Street. Turn
right at Beekman Street and continue to dia:Beacon which
is the next driveway on the right.
By Car from NYC: Take Upper Level
of George Washington Bridge New Jersey bound. Take first
right off Bridge to Palisades Parkway North. Take Palisades
Parkway North to end. At rotary, take 6 East/202 across
Bear Mountain Bridge. Take the first left onto Route
9D North. Continue 16.5 miles north on 9D into the city
of Beacon. At the fourth traffic light in Beacon (just
past Beacon City Hall), make a left turn onto Beekman
Street. Continue on Beekman Street .5 miles. dia:Beacon's
entrance is on the right, marked by a gray sign.(Travel
time: approximately 80 minutes.) |
