Dia Art Foundation - Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries

Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries

Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries in Beacon, New York is located in a former printing plant built in 1929 by Nabisco. When it opened in 2003 with 240,000 square feet (22,000 m2) of exhibition space, it became one of the largest museums to open in the United States since the Museum of Modern Art opened in the late 1930s.

The museum is sited on 31 acres (13 ha) on the banks of the Hudson River, and is adjacent to 90 acres (36 ha) of riverfront parkland. It is 60 miles (97 km) north of New York City.

Each gallery was designed specifically for the art it contains. The space is limited to the works of 25 artists, including:

• Andy Warhol’s 1978–79 multipart work Shadows, which wraps around the walls of a single big room;
• selections from Dan Flavin’s series of fluorescent light monuments to V. Tatlin (1964–81), displayed in a room the size of a football field;
• Richard Serra’s monumental steel sculptures Torqued Ellipses; and
• Michael Heizer’s North, East, South, West (1967/2002).

The museum's galleries of paintings by On Kawara, Agnes Martin, Blinky Palermo, and Robert Ryman receive reflected north light from more than 34,000 square feet (3,200 m2) of skylights.

Dia collaborated with Robert Irwin and architect OpenOffice to formulate the plan for the museum building and its exterior setting. The grounds include an entrance court, and parking lot with a grove of flowering fruit trees and a formal garden, both of which were designed by Irwin.

According to The New York Times, it cost $50 million to build, with Leonard Riggio contributing at least $35 million of that amount; the remainder of the construction funds came from the Lannan Foundation ($10 million), Ann Tenenbaum and her husband Thomas H. Lee ($2.5 million), among others. As of 2007, its annual operating costs are about $3 million/year.