Dia:Beacon Museum Shows Minimalism in a Whole New Light

If aliens came down to earth and happened to land on the font steps of Dia:Beacon, they would develop quite a twisted conception of our planet.

The extraterrestrials would gather that humans place florescent lights not on the ceiling, but rather in minimalist configurations along their walls. Our visitors would discover car parts not in their familiar, functional form, but instead crumpled and molded into grand towers. At Dia, glass isn’t for windows—it instead lies useless in a massive pile of shards on the floor.

It is this impracticality that is the essence of Dia:Beacon, the Dia Art Foundation’s museum for its breathtaking collection of art from the 1960s to the present. Located in Beacon, NY, a town about an hour outside the city on Metro North, Dia is a venue unlike any available on the island.

The museum houses art that is simply too large to fit inside most Manhattan spaces. While city venues work under severe space constraints, Dia is comfortably housed in an enormous converted box printing factory and spills out into the grassy gardens surrounding the warehouse.

From Richard Serra’s monumental steel sculptures to Sol LeWitt’s complex wall drawings, the works of art at Dia resemble works by artists also featured in MoMA. But there are two very notable differences: at Dia, there are about twice as many, and they’re about twice as large.

Walking inside the enormous warehouse, visitors step into an airy hallway approximately the length of a bowling alley. Walter De Maria’s irregularly shaped monochromatic canvases line the walls. Immediately, the virtues of a space like Dia begin to quell the crankiness one might have developed on the long train ride over.

Each canvas hangs at least five feet apart from the next. The vast amount of white wall exposed is a luxury rare in urban venues, and it gives each work of art the opportunity not only to stand alone, but also, it seems, to breathe. The space is so large that it seems physically impossible for it to ever be crowded—it isn’t unusual to find oneself alone with the art in a gallery.

Dia’s large scale certainly serves to enhance the collection—but at times, it can also undermine it. Because the artworks are so huge, the curators have chosen to display the work of each artist individually.

But Dan Flavin’s modest light sculptures are swallowed up by the big white space, and they feel less like fine art and more like plain old florescent lights when shown en masse. Similarly, John Chamberlain’s massive constructions, made out of painted and crumpled car parts, recall a junkyard more than they do a museum when thrown into a gallery together. Had they been shown next to massive abstract expressionist paintings, the complexity of their sinuous shapes would have been more evident.

Most of the time, however, the art dominates the space, rather than the other way around. The basement galleries capitalize on the absence of natural light to display works of art that either play with light effects or are just particularly creepy. (Take Bruce Nauman’s video of his studio at night, project it against a wall in a dark basement, and the result is chilling.)

But it is a temporary installation by Tacita Dean that closes this week, entitled Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33? with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007, that gets to the heart of what Dia:Beacon has to offer.

The installation captures on six screens footage of legendary dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham sitting in a chair in his studio. The screens are located at various places throughout the cavernous room, which is dark except for the light emanating from the screens. In each, a life-size Cunningham sits and looks at you, fidgeting in his chair or shifting his glance every so often. To place this icon in a chair and render him silent is unnerving, but it also makes you hyper-attuned to every minute movement he makes.

And this is emblematic of what Dia:Beacon can do—it provides an environment for viewing art that is entirely different from the urban setting we’re used to, which gives us the opportunity to experience the same artists’ work in new ways. Dia gives not only artists, but also visitors, an opportunity to shut up, slow down, and stretch out.

Dia:Beacon is located at 3 Beekman St. in Beacon, NY. Admission is $7 for students.