Dia:Beacon is a place for good, clean fun.

The art is almost exclusively minimalist and there’s nothing in the old box printing factory but architecture and art. So it’s as visually clean as a Norweigian design magazine. But Dia and the then governor of New York “persuaded” the factory’s former owner to donate the building in exchange for a million dollar environmental clean up, so the museum is also like a 240,000 square foot nature mop.

Just because it’s clean doesn’t mean it didn’t come with a tabloid’s worth of drama. The guy that founded Barnes & Noble basically funded the entire thing, including a bunch of the art, and anybody spending that kind of money is gonna get a little cranky. After the museum was finished, Dia’s director and the Barnes & Noble guy both quit the board in a kind of friend breakup. The donor was quoted as saying, “I have a vacuum in my life as far as art is concerned.” NO LENNY! ART IS WHAT’S SUPPOSED TO FIX THAT VACUUM!!

Wounds heal though and the art didn’t go away. Dia:Beacon is “fetishistically minimalist.” It’s lit entirely by skylights and windows, which means it gets dark at night *wink wink* and they lock the doors *cocked eyebrows* because they close the museum before sunset and kick everybody out *mood killer.* Despite the puritan hours you can get plenty of intimacy with all kinds of art giants. Agnes Martin did a piece specifically for the space and the art will never know about your affairs with other pieces because each artist has their own room. So you can two-time Richard Serra for Dan Flavin all day and no one will be the wiser.

One problem with the museum is—with its diffuse light, maple floors, cavernous space—you sometimes can’t tell what’s art and what is discarded industrial structure. Which is kind of the point of minimalist art, but also like, there are plenty of messy and abandoned warehouses that don’t charge you $15 at the door.

Still, it’s obsessively attractive and proposes a trade in which you give them some money and they both induce and then rescue you from an existential crisis; which isn’t a bad deal. This pastoral art-dreamland is a shorter train ride from Grand Central than your favorite barista’s apartment in Bushwick so it’s easy to get to and has way more trees.