Beacon NY with Edgardo & Marina
TRIP TO Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries: 12/31/05: They're up and in outer gear when I wake up at 8:15AM, I guess I had oatmeal quickly, and we leave at 8:35AM for the car. I drive over the Brooklyn Bridge, along Chambers, passing West Street engrossed in conversation, and turn around, go up the West Side Highway, and pay $2.25 for the Henry Hudson Bridge. Take the Saw Mill Parkway and routes 9 and 9A, onto unknown side roads through Fishkill and finally finding Beacon about 10:40AM, not having to worry what to do before the museum opens at 11AM. Ask someone on Main Street who tells us how to drive to Dia, no real signs except on the outskirts of town, and into the almost-empty parking lot to get told that the crowd was here yesterday and this is the first year they've stayed open on New Year's Eve (gulp!). Into the shop for a bagel and cream cheese since they don't seem to be eager to stop anywhere for lunch, and get in about 11:05 to the enormous parallelogram of the 240,000 square feet of former box-printing facility built in 1929. Take cursory notes as we go through with the floor plan: Warhol "shadows," Flavin "neon," LeWitt "gray squares," De Maria "circle-square in one direction, big/small; square-circle in other direction, small/big," Ryman "white," LeWitt "three boxes," Kawara "dates," Judd "boxes," Knoebel "room 19," Smithson "mirrors," Sandback "string-mirror illusions," Heizer "four pits," Beuys "felt in batteries," Bourgeois "many and tabletop and Fillette," Nauman "eight pieces downstairs," with few people at start and many at end, better at start. Leave about 2 and back at 4:10, finding a parking space at last on Cranberry Street, and we get ready for New Year's Eve dinner with Ken at Bouley.