There are twelve locations and sites which the Dia Art Foundation considers part of its constellation of art museums and long-term installations.[1] Dia breaks its holdings into two distinct categories: locations and sites. "Locations" include museum structures that contain galleries of smaller works either on permanent or temporary display, while "sites" are long-term art installations placed outside of the gallery context that have been either commissioned or acquired by Dia. All three locations are found in New York state, while the nine sites are located in New York, New Mexico, Utah, South Carolina, and Germany.[2] Currently one location, Dia SoHo, is scheduled to be opened in 2022,[3][4] and there are nineteen sites that were once listed by Dia but are no longer listed.
The Dia Art Foundation was established in 1974 in New York City by the not yet married Heiner Friedrich and Schlumberger heiress Philippa de Menil, as well as Helen Winkler. They created the institution to help artists realize ambitious projects whose scale and scope is not feasible within the normal museum and gallery systems.[5][6] With Friedrich and de Menil's combined large fortune, the foundation began supporting minimalist, conceptual, and land artists with, as Vanity Fair describes in an article, "stipends, studios, assistants, and archivists for the individual museums it planned to build for each of them".[6] Beginning with a collection of warehouse spaces in New York and outdoor spaces in the American West, the foundation did not focus on constructing true museums but focused on singular artistic visions.[7] This approach changed slightly in 1987 with the opening of Dia's first rotating exhibition space, the Dia Center for the Arts, now Dia Chelsea, on 22nd Street in New York City.[8] Dia Beacon, a former Nabisco box factory turned into a large-scale museum for the permanent collection, opened in 2003.[8][9]
The foundation began by working with and collecting the work of only twelve artists: Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Imi Knoebel, Blinky Palermo, Fred Sandback, James Turrell, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Robert Whitman, and La Monte Young.[8][9] To this day the foundation owns works by less than 50 artists, but contains a breadth and depth of their work in a way other institutions do not have the resources to maintain.[7] Dia Director Jessica Morgan explains the relationship between Dia and its artists as, "I wouldn't use the word 'family', but these are people we're in communication with almost on a weekly basis, and in some cases we hold the vast majority of their seminal work".[7] Known for its focus on American male minimalist, experimental, and land artists from the 1960s and 1970s, Dia's focus has been changing to include other artists from the era, largely women and Japanese artists, since Morgan became curator in 2015.[9] This gradual refocus is markedly seen in the 2018 acquisition of Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt, Dia's most recent addition to their list of sites.[9]
Locations
Dia maintains three locations all within New York State. These locations present galleries of work, either owned by or loaned to Dia, in temporary or permanent installations.[2] Dia Chelsea, the first Dia location, was known as the Dia Center for the Arts from its opening in 1987 through the opening of Dia Beacon in 2003.[8]
Dia's permanent collection is housed in this former Nabisco box printing factory with each gallery designed for the presentation of a single artist's work.
1979 building purchased by Dia, 1983 Dan Flavin Art Institute established 2020 renamed[a]
Home of the Dan Flavin Art Institute, nine fluorescent light works by the artist on permanent display, the former fire house and church also has a gallery for rotating exhibitions.
Dia lists nine sites in its catalogue. These sites include commissions, land art, long-term art installations not in a gallery context, and site-specific installations. While focused largely in New York City and the American West, there are sites also placed internationally and elsewhere in the United States. The first sites were a trio of acquisitions and commissions by Walter De Maria in 1977 and the most recently collected site is Depreciation by Cameron Rowland, on extended loan since 2023.[2]
A restrictive covenant for 1 acre of land on the site of the former Maxcy Place plantation. The land was purchased at market value in 2018, but is now appraised at $0 due to the covenant. The land is not to be visited, but documentation is on long term display at Dia Chelsea.
Four concrete cylinders, measuring eighteen feet long by nine feet in diameter, sitting in an open cross layout and arranged to line up with the sunset on solstice days.
There are multiple Dia locations, sites, or long term installations, that were once listed in Dia publications or press releases but are no longer categorized as such. These sites were not necessarily removed from view, for instance The Dan Flavin Art Institute became part of Dia Bridgehampton[13] and Dan Flavin's Untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection) was moved from Munich, Germany to Dia Beacon.[26] To be included in this list the location or site either is listed in the "Time Line of Locations and Sites" found in the 2021 book An Introduction to Dia's Locations and Sites edited by Kamilah N. Foreman, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, and Sophia Larigakis, or are mentioned in a Dia press release where the locations and sites of that time are listed.
Dia gave Young and Zazeela a ten-year commission to produce this festival. presented within Dream House environment, the festival presented the American premier of Young's The Well-Tuned Piano as well as performances by the Theatre of Eternal Music and Pandit Pran Nath.The festival moved to a dedicated Dream House space in 1979 considered a different site.
For the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibit 200 years of American Sculpture, Flavin conceived of a long-term fluorescent light installation on a train platform at Grand Central Terminal. The work was beyond the scope of the Whitney exhibition and was instead realized through the support of Dia.
This rendition of Dream House stretched over 6 floors and had more than 20 staff members. Located at the former New York Mercantile Exchange building it closed due to the loss of Dia funding following the 1980s oil glut. Installed in 1979, the installation is not opened to the public until 1981. Dia later helped fund another, smaller, rendition of the work in TriBeCa.
A sufi mosque established by Dia and Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order of Dervishes. In 1982, Dia commissioned, and installed throughout the mosque, a series of untitled light works by Dan Flavin.
Originally opened in 1982 by Dia as a long-term exhibition space for paintings by Barnett Newman, the gallery has been rented as a retail space since 1989. Located at 77 Wooster Street, there were plans in place to reopen the building as a 2,500-square-foot gallery for changing exhibitions. Those plans have not yet been achieved.
Installed for just one summer at Forest Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development, numerous pavilions were built including an exhibition space, a library, a stage, an art workshop, computer terminals, and a restaurant all managed by local residents.
The artists placed Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake), a 1965 fluorescent light sculpture by Dan Flavin, in a cave in the Puerto Rican jungle which can only be accessed by hiking approximately 2 hours to it, and powered it with the use of solar panels.
1981-1991 elements created, 1991 on view as composed whole
2004
located on the roof of the Dia:Chelsea galleries, Graham placed a small urban park containing a pavilion created out of one-way glass, named Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, and a shed for viewing video art.
Disappears from Dia press releases between February 7, 2017[38] and February 24, 2017.[39]
Flavin's last artwork using fluorescent light, this site-specific installation was in the two stairwells of Dia's former headquarters at 548 West 22nd Street and is no longer on view.
Alongside the 12 locations and sites Dia manages, they also maintain relationships with 6 affiliate institutions. Dia collaborated and supported these institutions, either financially or by donating or sharing of artworks, early in each organization's development. One of the affiliates, Roden Crater by James Turrell, while being partially funded and supported by Dia since the 70's, is still not completed.[5]
^Dia switched from calling this the Dan Flavin Art Institute and a site, to calling it Dia Bridgehampton and a location between a November 21, 2019 and a January 29, 2020 press release.[11][12]
^Due to the nature of Depreciation, Dia does not own the work. It is described as being on "extended loan" and Dia claims "stewardship" of the piece.[17]