Cinderella on the Hudson: ninety minutes north of Manhattan, the town of Beacon blooms with public art, galleries and projects as a branch of the Dia Art Foundation opens there - Report From Beacon - includes a list of galleries and addresses

Art in America, June, 2003 by Suzaan Boettger

Once upon a time, when Hollywood scouts were seeking a grungy, run-down, postindustrial small town, they settled on Beacon, N.Y. "The trouble was," said mayor Clara Lou Gould recently, "the location scouts called on a Friday afternoon and we were about to begin a Main Street upgrade--new sidewalks, plantings and fixtures--on Monday morning." So the city reached the developer and put off the work for six months, while storefronts were further messed up and Paul Newman came to town to film Nobody's Fool (1994).

That title was prophetic, for of all the struggling towns in the Hudson River Valley with huge vacant factories to spare, it was Beacon that found a Prince Charming in the Dia Art Foundation. And after Dia selected a Nabisco box factory in Beacon for its branch site, an urban and cultural transformation got under way. (1)

By now the story has been widely published of Dia's discovery of the capacious one-story 1929 structure with the unusual features of north-facing saw-tooth skylights that provide crystalline natural illumination for Dia's big collection of big art. The grand opening of the 240,000-square-foot space was held on Sunday, May 18. [Dia's installation will be reviewed in a forthcoming issue.] Those contemplating a trip to Beacon might find it helpful to know what else besides Dia is there.

The "Watershed" Project

Beacon is situated in the lower quarter of what the federal government has designated as the Hudson Valley National Heritage Area. Dia:Beacon is a few blocks south of the train station; between the two is a degraded rectangular peninsula jutting into the Hudson, covered with eroding landfill and scattered dead trees, called Beacon Landing. It once carried train tracks down to a barge that crossed the river. By the end of the year, George Trakas's Beacon Point Project will transform the riverfront wasteland into an accessible sculptured environment consisting of wooden decks, granite stairways and dock areas. Its funding is a collaboration of the City of Beacon, Dia and Scenic Hudson, the last of which owns the land as part of a 23-acre waterfront parcel. Scenic Hudson is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group that at Beacon Landing is acting as a developer. After an elaborate process of public input, Scenic Hudson will erect a 90-room eco-friendly hotel, a conference center, spa, three dining facilities--from tablecloth to take-out--and a "green" harbor and boathouse. The community requested these amenities; for years there has not been a hotel in Beacon.

Trakas's permanent work is one of 10 by international visual and literary artists that will constitute "Watershed: The Hudson Valley Art Project." It is a program of the Manhattan-based nonprofit organization Minetta Brook, which was founded in 1995 by Diane Shamash, a former director of public-art programs in Seattle. The principal funder of "Watershed" is Lee Balter, a local developer who is converting into condominiums an immense Moorish-style hilltop residence dating to 1903 known as "Dick's Castle," which overlooks the hamlet of Garrison south of Beacon and was once owned by Dia and occupied by Dan Flavin.

Another work sponsored by "Watershed" that will be permanent is writer/performance artist Constance De Jong's Speaking of the River at another property owned by Scenic Hudson, Madame Brett Park. (2) At this southern end of Beacon is a rare example of bow-truss construction, the Tioranda Bridge over Fishkill Creek, and the former Tioranda Hat Works, one of the many hat factories for which Beacon was known at the end of the 19th century. At the park, visitors resting on one of the benches installed by De Jong will trigger a sensor to begin playing material she recorded in interviews with former mill workers, longtime Beacon residents and new arrivals. There's no escaping educative stimulation!

Outside Beacon, the Swedish artist Matts Leiderstam has installed "Claude Lorrain glasses"--binoculars fitted with colored lenses--at places on both sides of the river from which one can view specific terrains depicted by the Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole, Frederic E. Church, Asher B. Durand and Jasper F. Cropsey. On the Bard College campus at Annandale-on-Hudson, Swiss artist Christian Philipp Muller has made a 100-foot ramp sectioned into different Hudson Valley soils and plantings that is akin to a graph showing the steady loss of agriculture in the valley. And at Bear Mountain State Park and Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park, picnickers can barbeque their burgers on stylized grills in the shape of frogs, snakes, owls, turtles and squirrels, courtesy of Los Angeles artist Pae White.

On Beacon's crosstown artery, Main Street, "Watershed" will exhibit film installations at two borrowed storefronts through September. At 197 Main, New York City artist Matthew Buckingham's Muhheakantuck--Everything Has a Name examines the Hudson River Valley in legend and history. Next door at 199 Main, Peter Hutton's Two Rivers was inspired both by Henry Hudson's voyage in search of a trade route to the Great China Sea and J.M.W. Turner's 1842 painting Snowstorm--Steamboat Off Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going by the Lead. It continues the Bard College professor's decade-long study of the Hudson River and incorporates his film footage of the Yangtze River in China.