The Dia Center has announced that it will open a contemporary art museum sixty miles up the Hudson River in Beacon, New York. Scheduled to be completed by 2001, the museum will be converted from a disused 292,000 square-foot box-printing factory and the twenty-six acres surrounding it, both donated by one of New York State’s largest private landowners, International Paper. The new site will be a boost for the Dia, which has works in its permanent collection which are too large to display in its main Chelsea location, including Andy Warhol’s “Shadows”, a single installation of 102 paintings which requires over 450 running feet of wall space. While the Dia museum will bolster the artistic attractions of the area—its landscapes are the subject of Hudson River School painters and the Storm King sculpture centre is a short drive away—it will also have an economic benefit for the immediate area of Beacon. The Dia’s new site is expected to attract 50,000-60,000 visitors a year while also creating jobs in this economically depressed industrial town. Of the projected $20 million needed to renovate the factory, $2.8 million will come from State and local sources, with the rest to be raised by the Dia.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'A new upstate factory for Warhol’s art'