The riverside hamlet of Tivoli, in upstate New York, has long been the cultural heart of the otherwise quiet town of Red Hook. The first thing you see when you pull into town is the corner building with a wrap-around porch—a 19th-century hotel, burned down and rebuilt in 1910, then run as a locals-only bar by the owner’s relatives, where I had early under-age forays into hard liquor until it closed at the turn of the millennium. Coming out of my old apartment across the street, I once tripped over David Bowie and his wife Iman, strolling by with their baby daughter. One never knows who Tivoli will bring. In 2002, it brought artists Brice and Helen Marden, who purchased Rose Hill, a historic 23-acre estate.
In 2013, the Mardens bought the 19th-century hotel, restoring the bar, three dining rooms, and 11 bedrooms while filling it with blue-chip artwork. For Helen Marden, there’s no grand curatorial thesis behind the collection: “It’s not profound. It’s just there because I like it.” She instinctively rearranges the works, often moving them from room to room. In one dining room, a recently acquired Judy Pfaff neon hangs beside a Frank Gehry snake. “It replaced a Stanley Whitney.” Elsewhere, there’s an Alan Saret piece in the hallway, a Shiro Kuramata metal-mesh chair (“wildly uncomfortable”), and a Gaetano Pescesideboard. “Brice gave that to me. Ricky Clifton [John Currin and Rachel Feinstein’s decorator] found it in L.A.” Guests or not, she’s happy when the merely curious wander through. “I don’t care if you only come in for a glass of water.”
