Just one and a half hour from Manhattan you can visit a fantastic museum of contemporary art that won’t disappoint anyone who visit it. I’m talking about Dia:Beacon, a former cookies company box-printing factory built in 1929 transformed into a museum space by American artist Robert Irwin in 2003.
In Gran Central Station you can buy the train and the museum tickets as a pack that will cost you $36.5. Hudson Line follows Hudson River watercourse and its beatiful natural landscapes that can give you an idea of how Manhattan was before being the metropolis it is nowadays. You can also observe some hard rock formations that are part of the reason of why New York is the city of skyscrapers, erected on a very very solid natural foundation.
Once you reach Beacon station, the museum is 5 minutes by walking. Every artwork is in a specific place of the old factory and they constitute a truly interesting experience made by worldwide famous artists from 1960 to the present, like Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Walter de Maria, Sol LeWitt and many many others.
Don’t forget to visit the basement floor, where there is a light installation by Dan Flavin occupying the whole space. A wall of green tubular lights in the middle of the space that creates an incomprehensible atmosphere when mixed with natural light entering from a side of the room.
The museum closes at 4pm in winter and at 6pm in summer, so if you want to have something to eat or drink you can do it perfectly in the main street of a quiet town 15 minutes by walking from the museum.
This is a perfect plan for one day in the weekend and I can tell you that it’ll make you feel as if you were on vacation!
