How Steve McQueen Became Hollywood’s Favorite Artist

In May, the Dia Art Foundation hosted a 600-person lunch at its museum in the Hudson Valley hamlet of Beacon, New York. There are a number of permanent installations at the site, a sprawling former Nabisco packaging factory—Richard Serra’s massive steel whorls, Donald Judd’s plywood boxes, Andy Warhol’s 100-plus canvas masterwork Shadows. The lunch was the vernissage for newly installed exhibitions of artists inducted into the exclusive coterie. The largest new commission, which took over the 160,000-square-foot space’s basement, is by Steve McQueen, the British artist and film director’s first collaboration with the arts organization. Minutes before guests were to arrive, McQueen stood in the middle of his massive installation, titled Bass.