It may sit on a hill, only a five-minute walk from the station. Then again, at Dia:Beacon, one sees none of that. As if to complete a portrait of late twentieth-century America, the former Nabisco box-printing plant could stand for its vanished workers. ( Hint: grab a left-hand window seat at Grand Central Station.) A slightly older crowd drives over from the nearby suburbs. One has almost an hour and a half to study them, too, as the train follows the Hudson. On a damp spring day, clouds clung to the mountaintops, the mist dropping from the summits in wisps. On a hot summer afternoon, the hazy sunlight and gently rounded hills around Beacon look straight out of Sanford Robinson Gifford. Church built his private castle, as a quirky monument to the Hudson River School. On the way up from New York, one passes not far from the Storm King Arts Center, with its breathtaking view of the Hudson Valley some distance past Hudson Valley MOCA, and its sculpture from such heirs of Abstract Expressionism as David Smith and Mark di Suvero. The Beacon site alone declares America's greatness in a broader world of art. Thankfully, return of Dia:Chelsea will return in 2021. It helps visitors, too, regain the courage to talk back. Fortunately, the art in Beacon often as not refuses to cooperate with its own deification. With Minimalism, the art object always crosses the boundary between the work and the world.ĭia's manifesto, then, makes for a thrilling collection, but also for some serious special pleading. When Minimalism goes on display, those two terms get scrambled yet again. Whenever a private collection becomes a museum, one expects a loaded mix of public and private. It looks great even in the hands of me as photographer, in an accompanying visual tour.īut was Minimalism ever that grand or that pure? Besides, collectors and museum institutions can hardly help making art's purity look suspect. Call it Minimalism, if one dares, but do not call it minimal, provincial, or small. It still matters, Dia says, and no one who sees it can turn away. This art, Dia declares, has lasted half a century. Above all, however, it serves as a manifesto. Here art too extravagant even for New York can at last find a home. Dia:Beacon serves as a private foundation, a fabulous museum entirely for late Modernism, a day trip along the very source of American art, and an enclave.
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