By Laura LaVelle, Wonder Shuffle Culture Editor:

A Day at Dia Beacon

This museum is a most excellent place to visit. If you're coming from NYC (or points in between on the Hudson line) you can catch a Metro North train to the Beacon station, and from there it's an eight to ten minute walk. (It's actually quite a lovely trip by train, with stunning river views if you snag a window seat.) Or, if you've a car, you can drive directly there, and find ample free parking.

The place is huge and there's a lot to see--it's a former Nabisco box-printing factory. It has fortunately been transformed into an absolutely lovely spot for Dia Art Foundation's collection, as well as for special exhibitions and programs.

I absolutely loved the floor plan I picked up at the front desk, which included several warning notices (art can be dangerous!), including "Gallery contains barbed wire; children must be accompanied by an adult," and "Exhibition includes strobing lights; viewer discretion is advised." Thus advised, we went exploring.

My party particularly enjoyed Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses series--the catelogue claimed that the work would elaborate concerns with orientation and movement, destabilizing our experience of space as we attempt to comprehend each sculptural volume. Fair enough! The works did feel a bit otherworldly, and in any event, extremely appealing.

Another highlight was Louise Bourgeois' Crouching Spider, which is enormous, and haunting, and unsettling, and yet somehow also appealing, and a bit fascinating (in a good way).

Meg Webster's work wasn't unsettling or destabilizing--her sculptures instead felt like a beautiful melding of art and nature. The artist's use of natural materials seemed to create ecosystems in and of themselves. Salt! Beeswax! Moss! A nest I wanted to climb into. ("Please maintain a safe distance and do not touch the artwork," insisted the floor plan, annoyingly.)

I think my favorite exhibit was The Equator Has Moved by Renée Green. Her work is very literary, very referential, very discursive, very creative, and very smart--all while critiquing our cultural heritage and our society's racism and colonialism. Her work contains both affection for the tradiitional artistic cannon, and an acerbic, satiric edge.

I particularly liked her Elsewhere? [Wall version] a mural which chronicles imaginary places in literature (as well as a few real ones...including India and Indiana)--a speculative geography in a rainbow of colors, endlessly absorbing.

When you've worked up an appetite, I recommend Cafe Amaracord on Main Street nearby. There you'll find fresh pasta, vintage posters, attentive and kind service, and a space quiet enough for conversation about art, or anything else.

Address: 3 Beekman Street, Beacon NY

Telephone: 845-440-0100

Hours: Friday through Monday 10am through 5pm (subject to change seasonally)

Website: https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit-our-locations-sites/dia-beacon-beacon-united-states

Admission:

$25 Adults

$18 Seniors 65+

$12 Students

$12 Visitors with disabilities

$5 Children 5–11

About Me

Laura LaVelle is Wonder Shuffle's Culture Editor. A fan of the great indoors, you can find her in her native NYC, her home in Connecticut, or at a concert, play, library, bookstore, or museum just about anywhere in the world.