Spend Saturday Inside Hélio Oiticica’s World at Dia Beacon
Wearable art at Dia Beacon, a plant-powered Eco Machine, Sardinian donkeys, Lucinda Williams and a few Hudson Valley finds worth the detour.
September is in that sweet spot.
The days still feel like summer, the evenings are starting to change, and there are plenty of good reasons to leave the house.
This week, there’s a building in Rhinebeck that cleans wastewater with plants, while Dia Beacon is filling Saturday with color, movement and music in celebration of Hélio Oiticica.
Our two destination picks pair contemporary Italian art and Sardinian donkeys with one of Hudson’s most beautiful places to settle in for a drink.
Pick a direction. We’ll bring the soundtrack.
Explore the Hudson Valley
Two places worth the drive: contemporary Italian art with an unexpected four-legged resident, and a Hudson cocktail stop that looks almost too good to be real.
There Are Sardinian Donkeys Living at a Contemporary Art Museum in Cold Spring
From the road, Magazzino looks like a piece of modern architecture dropped into the Hudson Highlands.
Inside, the museum is devoted to postwar and contemporary Italian art, with huge light-filled galleries and an ongoing Arte Povera collection.
Then you walk outside and meet the donkeys.
A herd of miniature Sardinian donkeys lives on the grounds and has become one of Magazzino’s most beloved permanent fixtures.
Why we recommend it: Come for the art and architecture. Stay because apparently one of the Hudson Valley’s best contemporary art museums also comes with donkeys.
This Might Be the Most Beautiful Place to Get a Drink in Hudson
Step through a Warren Street doorway and suddenly you’re surrounded by leather, candlelight, chandeliers, dark wood, vintage furnishings and rooms that feel more European salon than Hudson Valley hotel.
The Maker’s public spaces include its glass-conservatory restaurant, European-inspired café and intimate cocktail lounge inside a converted 19th-century carriage house.
Why we recommend it: Go for coffee, dinner or a cocktail. Stay because almost every corner looks like it was designed to end up on somebody’s camera roll.
This Weekend
Two very different ways to spend Saturday: see how plants can clean wastewater in Rhinebeck, or watch art come off the walls at Dia Beacon.
There’s a Building in Rhinebeck That Cleans Wastewater With Plants
Omega’s Center for Sustainable Living is part green building, part working ecosystem.
Its Eco Machine uses plants, bacteria and microorganisms to treat the campus’s wastewater without chemicals, then returns clean water to the aquifer.
On Saturday, Omega is opening the system for a free public tour of the building and the regenerative design ideas behind it.
Why we recommend it: It looks like a greenhouse. It works like a treatment plant. And it is one of those Hudson Valley places that makes you wonder why you did not know it was here.
Spend Saturday Inside Hélio Oiticica’s World at Dia Beacon
Dia Beacon is devoting Saturday to Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, whose work was built around color, movement and the idea that art should be experienced rather than simply observed.
The day includes hands-on programming, conversation and a Parangolé Parade through Dia’s massive galleries, where visitors can encounter Oiticica’s brightly colored, wearable works in motion.
The procession continues outside into the West Garden with Afro-Brazilian percussion ensemble Batalá New York.
Why we recommend it: Dia is already one of the Hudson Valley’s most striking spaces. Fill it with color, movement, music and art that refuses to stay on the wall, and Saturday starts looking very different.
What We’re Watching
A very unconventional rock documentary for a band that never had much use for convention.
Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt
If any band deserves a documentary made with puppetry, animation and a cast of witnesses that includes Ice-T, Dave Grohl, Flea, Richard Linklater and Henry Rollins, it is probably the Butthole Surfers.
Director Tom Stern dives into the rise of one of the strangest, loudest and most gloriously unhinged bands to come out of the American underground—from the post-punk chaos of the 1980s to the psychedelic wildness that made the Butthole Surfers impossible to confuse with anybody else.
Why we’re watching: Because a conventional rock documentary about the Butthole Surfers would completely miss the point.
Plan Ahead
Two very different reasons to get the first weekend of October on the calendar now.
Lucinda Williams Is Coming Back to Bearsville
Lucinda Williams has spent more than four decades writing songs that blur the lines between rock, country, blues and Americana—including the landmark Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
She comes to Bearsville with her band behind World’s Gone Wrong, her new album of direct, urgent songs written in response to the world around her.
Why we’re circling it: There are not many songwriters with a voice this unmistakable, a catalog this deep and a room this close to home. Her Saturday show is already sold out, so Sunday is the one to grab.
Ballaké Sissoko + Piers Faccini in a Room Small Enough to Hear Everything
Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko and British-Italian singer-songwriter Piers Faccini have spent years finding the places where West African musical traditions and European folk songwriting meet.
Why we’re circling it: This is the kind of show where the room matters. TEMPO is intimate enough that the details in Sissoko’s kora and Faccini’s voice do not have anywhere to hide.
On Our Radar
A new speakeasy-style cocktail lounge hidden behind a bookcase inside a 250-year-old barn, filled with antiques, vintage music machines and New York spirits.
Why it’s on our radar: Because sometimes the best part of going out is finding the door.
174 Hardenburgh Road, Pine Bush · Take a look
Ten artists explore camera obscura and pinhole photography, anchored by a full-scale camera obscura visitors can actually step inside.
Why it’s on our radar: You are not just looking at the image—you are standing inside the way it gets made.
Opens September 12 · 105 Ann Street, Newburgh · Exhibition details
Tomato-shaped sticky notes, colorful tableware, cookbooks, olive oil, pasta and food-inspired gifts fill this new Abeel Street shop.
Why it’s on our radar: You may go in for a gift and leave wondering why your desk does not already have tomato-shaped Post-its.
105 Abeel Street, Kingston · Thursday–Saturday, 11 AM–5 PM · Take a look
Curated each week by the Radio Woodstock team.
This weekend: see something you haven’t seen, take a turn you haven’t taken, and leave a little time between plans to find something of your own.
And if you find yourself somewhere in the Hudson Valley thinking how did I not know about this place?, send it our way.
Those are exactly the places we’re looking for.
We’ll see you next Thursday.