Prestigious Dia museum on track to open in Beacon next month

By Ray Fashona
Poughkeepsie Journal

 

Bill Jacobson Andy Warhol's installation "Shadows" (1978) is a series of canvases that fills an entire room at Dia:Beacon, the museum slated to open next month.

BEACON -- Dia:Beacon, a 240,000-square-foot museum operated by a world-renown art foundation based in Manhattan, will open its doors to the public May 18.

The facility, which occupies the former Nabisco factory on the Beacon waterfront, will house major works of contemporary art by the likes of Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin, Agnes Martin and many others.

Many of the works are monumental in size, such as Richard Serra's massive steel sculptures that invite visitors to walk around and inside the works.

Dia is currently in the process of completing installation of the works for next month's opening.

The former factory, built in 1929 and made of steel, concrete and glass, provides an interesting environment for art, with its high ceilings, large spaces between supporting columns and more than 34,000 square feet of skylights.

Impressive building

From the outside, the building is an impressive piece of of early-20th-century industrial architecture. But it is only after entering the structure and walking through the various galleries that a visitor can truly appreciate its enormity and character.

The Dia project, hailed as a cornerstone in the current arts boom in Beacon, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area.

On May 16, the Poughkeepsie Journal will publish a special section on this important project. Besides focusing on the artwork and the Dia Art Foundation, stories will look at the museum's effect on Beacon and its burgeoning art and tourism industry.

For more information on the project, visit www.diabeacon.org.