Art: Steve McQueen’s Artistry At Dia Beacon

It’s not just the art that makes a museum worth visiting, it’s the overall experience—something I was reminded of on a recent trip to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen. Bad timing and an unpredictable Scandi summer rain had rendered the revered museum’s seaside sculpture gardens somewhat of a bust, but as I approached Dia Beacon’s earth-toned, unassuming brick facade on a splendid Hudson Valley summer afternoon, I knew I was in for a redemptive treat. 

This year, the Dia Art Foundation is celebrating its 50th year, so finding the Dutchess County museum with a halo glow around it proved most fitting. Manicured grounds filled with chirping birds and a stylish al fresco dining area washed in warm, natural sunlight greeted me. But with just 90 minutes before closing, I couldn’t waste much time basking in it. On this particular day, the mission was to see Steve McQueen’s Bass, a subterranean exhibit that would contrast with the sunny day above ground.

The British artist and filmmaker known for directing the Oscar-winning best picture 12 Years A Slave as well as the acclaimed Michael Fassbender starring vehicle, Shame, hand-selected the lower levels of Dia Beacon for his latest installation during the foundation’s momentous year. “The McQueen project reflects Dia’s ambition and commitment to working with artists and how the artist chooses the space they want to work in,” Donna De Salvo, Dia Beacon’s senior adjunct curator of special projects, says.

Dia was founded just five years after McQueen’s birth in 1974, and Dia Beacon opened in May 2003 as a home for the collection; today, there are 12 locations and sites. Three—Dia Beacon, Dia Bridgehampton and Dia Chelsea—include changing exhibitions while the other nine act as permanent artist sites.

Like with their latest partnership with McQueen, Dia is known for working collaboratively with artists and allowing them to take larger risks, and the foundation also has a history of repurposing industrial buildings. So, it’s fitting when, on closer inspection, I found out that the site of Dia Beacon was originally a Nabisco box-making factory. Derelict for some time, the foundation’s then director Michael Govan—an amateur pilot—spotted the building from a plane flying over the Hudson Valley.

Today, the location features a mixture of permanent and rotating exhibitions—over the years, these have featured the works of artistic giants Robert Irwin, Rita McBride and Bruce Nauman— and maintains the foundation’s ethos of realizing an artist’s vision.

“For us, the artist is at the center of everything we do,” Dia’s Director, Jessica Morgan, says. “When we work with an artist, it signals the start of a relationship that could span decades and include multiple exhibitions, public programs, publications and other collaborations. Dia also allows artists to conceive of work over the time and space they need, but rarely have the opportunity to embrace fully.”

McQueen’s work often deals with heavy and complex themes—identity, time, memory and history—and in my first moments witnessing Bass, I met with many of them. Bass is essentially an empty floor, but for the light and sound filling the space. The  industrial feel of the space mixed with low bass sounds and shifting light from overhead light boxes continuously shifted my mood. The intentional play on light and sound mirrors a film’s structure, with the bass sounds recorded in the space and then played back over a roughly four-hour loop, with lighting rotating around every 40 minutes. It initially slowed me down; I found myself getting lost in time in the exhibit by the subtlest of color changes, which added to these mood shifts through warm neon yellows to Halloween-like oranges and then to purples, warm amber to calming baby blues and candy colors in between all instantly setting their tone.

Set against a backdrop of the foundation’s concrete floors, overhead sprinkler system and exposed PVC piping, like many of the exhibitions at Dia, McQueen’s work invites you to walk around within it. The scale of the space reminded me of a gymnasium, indeed so large that children visiting the museum felt compelled to run around when I was there. Though I’ll admit—it was a little haunting for a playground—a woman within earshot told the docent she found it “scary.” I found it more peaceful in moments, but that’s why the work is so generous and open to interpretation.

De Salvo tells me this is something McQueen has always talked about: what people allow themselves to feel in the space. “Because it’s a very abstract work…It’s really about being in the work and feeling the vibrations that come out of bass music, which is a very low frequency,” De Salvo says. “McQueen was very interested in that idea, how it’s a frequency that’s felt more than heard. First, you feel it; and then you hear it.”

Upstairs from the exhibit, one of my favorite things about Dia Beacon’s Riggio Galleries is that it requires you to peruse, get lost and keep moving throughout it. Starkly different from the lower level, which very much feels like a basement of sorts, the former factory’s past is on full display through its exposed brick, creaky wood floors, large windows and high ceilings with overhead skylights, which juxtapose the contemporary artwork. Like McQueen’s, many of them deal with the abstract. Every gallery, from its longer corridors to tiny closet-sized rooms, has new and exciting discoveries but lacks a congregation of people that generally stagnate around lengthy text panels—something Dia has avoided by placing laminated artist descriptions in discreet boxes. 

The foundation provides free admission to its neighbors in Beacon, Fishkill and Newburgh, as well as free admission to residents of the Hudson Valley on the last Sunday of every month. In certain parts of the museum, I could hear the hum of the Metro-North train pulling into Beacon Station, a quick ten-minute walk away. Its proximity has lured art admirers from the city, region and beyond since its opening, and it promises to continue to do so.

Alongside Richard Serra’s colossal Torqued Ellipses and Andy Warhol’s Shadows, Dia has an ambitious landscape project underway to transform eight additional acres of the campus into publicly accessible outdoor space. In the shadow of McQueen’s exhibition (ending in April 2025) the outdoor space will open to the public sometime next year and undoubtedly, it’ll prove to be Dia Beacon’s next great draw.