Hudson River Valley Trip Part 2

After visiting Peekskill and seeing my great grandparents home, we travelled up the Hudson River to the sweet little town of Beacon for a very different experience.

In New York City in 1974, the Dia foundation was established to promote contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. There are now a total of 12 Dia locations and sites.

The Dia Beacon museum is located in an old Nabisco box factory. It’s huge.

Huge!

A perfect place for the Dia foundation’s collection of art.

For example, this room held massive works by Meg Webster.

What is it about a piece of art that’s your size or bigger, with a simple, understandable shape that causes you to focus on the small variations. The sheer size makes you stop in your tracks and as you look and spend time with it, you notice all the different textures, colors and subtle changes.

A cylinder of concrete and behind a curved wall of beeswax. [beeswax!]

So cool.

A clean, smooth and very carefully shaped pile of a gold colored gravel.

A spiral shaped sculpture of branches and twigs.

Looking past the twigs and branches, the sand/gravel pile, the wall of beeswax and other pieces.

In another room, a series of geometric pits in the floor by Michael Heizer.

These quiet spaces with their huge intensional forms, it was spellbinding.

Heizer’s enormous 20 foot rock, titled ‘Negative Megalith #5,’ sitting regally, perfectly, in an opening in the wall.

The quiet certitude.

Did I mention this entire complex is huge??? It went on and on. So many amazing and breathtaking things to see. If you ever have a chance, Go.

On to a very different place, not too far from Beacon.

Hyde Park, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home, now a museum.

I think I’ve mentioned,… I am a history nerd. This was right up my alley.

His living room. They said he would sit at the desk, on the upper left side in this photo, and work on his stamp collection.

Do you see his wheelchair? A regular wooden chair with wheels added.

For a impressive mansion it had a cozy feel.

His bedroom.

Roosevelt had decided that after he died, he wanted his home to become a museum. Everything would be left exactly as it was when he lived there. He had even chosen the clothes that he wanted to be left out and on view. The wheel chair is just to the left of this photo, but you can see a crutch leaning against the wall.

Eleanor’s room was smaller and simpler. The will stated that after Roosevelt’s death, Eleanor could live at the house as long as she wanted. Because this house had really been Eleanor’s mother-in-law’s home, Eleanor never really felt that it was hers. Two weeks after Franklin died, she packed up and moved to the nearby Val Kill, a smaller home that she and Franklin had built in 1924. She lived there and in an apartment in New York City for the rest of here life.

A bench in the garden. Originally there was a view to the Hudson River but Franklin had planted over 100 trees along the hillside. Over the years they had grown tall and hid the river.

I get it, I would not cut any tree that had been planted by Roosevelt, view or no view.

Up the road, a very different kind of a house, a Vanderbilt mansion. Small by their standards, but still pretty over the top.

The drawing room.

If some is good then more must be better.

A room for the ladies.

I am beyond grateful that I do not have to live with this kind of splendor. It’s way too much to try and keep up with! There would be no schlumping around in sweatpants and bedroom slippers.

And this was one of their smaller, more intimate homes!

The back stairs for the servants.

Our tour guide explained that the Vanderbilt servants were well taken care of. Paying their servants better than others so that they were able to live comfortably was a good way to keep the very best in their employ.

The kitchen.

A view to the Hudson.

The family would travel from New York City by yacht, their preferred method because they could bring more supplies, people and luggage. Or, they could also come up in their private rail car. Because, well, they owned the railroad.

Then after all that glitz and gilding, back to the river, the forest and mother nature.

Back through the northern part of the state.

Where in the week since we’d been there, the trees had changed enough to see a difference.

More reds and orange.

Such a beautiful part of the country. We only just scratched the surface! So much more to see and do.

Next time!