On the banks of the Hudson in Tivoli, New York, Helen Marden runs a hotel filled with blue-chip art from the collection she built with her late husband, Brice Marden

By Janet Marcel

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. READ ON