Just about every master of large-scale sculpture is well represented in Storm King's permanent collection: Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, Isamu Noguchi, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Kenneth Snelson -- the list goes on and on.

With sculpture, the scale of the surroundings is always tricky: Too much space can dwarf a piece, too little can cramp it. Sculptures of this magnitude truly only find their natural habitat in a setting such as Storm King. It is one of very few sculpture parks of its kind in the world, and we felt privileged to have experienced it.

ON TO BEACON

After powering up the GPS again, getting to Beacon from Storm King was easy. The half-hour ride flew by as we passed through Beacon, a gritty little town with all the markings of a past steeped in industry.

In 2003, Dia opened its contemporary museum at the former factory, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The space is an homage to the artists whose works the foundation has championed since the 1960s and to say it does them justice is an understatement.

Dia is perhaps best known for helping artists create and preserve some of the most demanding, far-out artworks on Earth, including Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Walter De Maria's Lightning Field, both outdoor works where the land is part of the art. It made no exception with Dia:Beacon.

Upon entering the museum, you are greeted by De Maria's Equal Area Series, an installation of flat, stainless-steel circles and squares spanning the floors of two narrow, adjacent galleries -- a rare commitment of square footage. If you weren't aware of how seriously the foundation takes its collection, now you know.

After overcoming the impact of that enormous and visually stunning installation, there's plenty more to see: rooms dedicated to works by Joseph Beuys, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Andy Warhol; walls of drawings by Sol Lewitt; an entire wing for Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses.

For me, though, the cherry on top of all this was another only-at-Dia:Beacon installation: Michael Heizer's North, East, South, West. Dug several feet into the museum floor, these conical and rectangular negative spaces are going nowhere and beg to be seen from as close as Dia will allow.

For all the allure Dia:Beacon and Storm King hold for art lovers worldwide, their distance from the city keeps the throngs comfortably at bay. We were able to stroll and admire the art at our own pace at both venues, sharing a gallery at Dia:Beacon with perhaps one or two people at the same time -- something you'd have to have amazingly good connections to experience at places like Manhattan's Guggenheim or Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Leaving Hudson Valley behind, we felt reinvigorated and committed to seeing more of this level of art and exhibition quality. But we have our work cut out for us; Dia and Storm King set the bar at a height we never imagined. It will take quite some searching to match it.

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