Calvin Tomkins’ piece, “The Mission,” in last week’s New Yorker, was a juicy look into the personalities behind the Dia Foundation. It was a soap opera of wild ambitions, quirks, marriages and divorces (figurative and literal). And it was a lesson about the austere, conceptual art that Dia has been collecting.
The piece was part of the onslought of press about Dia related to the opening early this week of Dia:Beacon, Dia’s new (additional) space a bit up the Hudson in Beacon, N.Y., for the long-term display of the Dia Foundation’s artwork, which includes pieces from names like Donald Judd, Joseph Beuys and Dan Flavin (he of the neon to the right).
Then I read Michael Kimmelman’s piece in the New York Times. It was a pedestrian listing of the successes or failures of the installations at Dia:Beacon. Where’s the beef? I wondered. Then I went to sleep.
