Dia Beacon

Dia Beacon turned a 1929 Nabisco box-printing factory into one of the country's most distinctive contemporary art museums. The building's original bones (broad column spans, 34,000 square feet of skylights) turned out to be ideal for modern art, supplying the natural light that earned it the nickname "daylight museum." Artist Robert Irwin's master plan kept the industrial character intact while creating dedicated galleries for long-term, single-artist installations. Walk through and you'll find Richard Serra's torqued steel ellipses (step inside one and the curve shifts as you move) alongside rooms built around single Dan Flavin fluorescent-light pieces. The collection runs from 1960s minimalism to current practice.