Over the weekend, we let ourselves be dragged up the Hudson (by Mr Bingo) to spend the day at Dia:Beacon. I am so glad we went! There's nothing like getting out of town on a glorious Fall day, and enjoying the light and fresh air upstate.

And I love Dia:Beacon. It's on my Top 10 Things You Should Do in NYC list, one of those places I'm always recommending to out of town visitors. The train ride from Grand Central is beautiful, the walk from the train station to the museum is short, the food at the museum's café is better than it ought to be, and the bookstore kicks ass. Notice how I haven't even talked about the art yet?

The art is great especially if you're a fan of what Dia showcases (art since the 1960s.) Even if you're not enamored of Sol LeWitt or Agnes Martin, it's very pleasant to wander through the bright galleries, moving from Donald Judd's austere exercises in plywood to Richard Serra's macho but graceful steel plates to Fred Sandback's delicate spatial delineations in string. The spaces are open, each artist's work somehow self-contained and yet still in dialog with the rest of his or her contemporaries. It's always surprising how affecting a visit can often be -- I invariably return home with some new insight about process, or a new appreciation for an artist whose work I'd previously scorned. This time, I had a revelation about programmatic art thanks to an exhibition by Franz Erhard Walther. He is now one of my new favorites, and I'm going to make it my mission to learn as much about him as possible.