These projects are open to the public and continue to be maintained by Dia today.ĭia commissioned and maintains The Lightning Field, completed by Walter De Maria in 1977 near Quemado, New Mexico. Many of Dia’s early, major projects are sited outside the museum or gallery. Today, Dia is a constellation of sites, from the iconic permanent, site-specific artworks and installations in New York, the American West and Germany to an exhibition program that has commissioned dozens of breakthrough projects to the vast galleries of Dia:Beacon and finally the programs of education and public engagement.įrom the beginning, Dia demonstrated a willingness to follow and support artists’ ideas. To suggest the institution’s role in enabling such ambitions, they selected the name “Dia,” taken from the Greek word meaning “through.” Dia fulfills its mission by commissioning single artist projects, organizing exhibitions, realizing site-specific installations, and collecting in-depth the work of a focused group of artists of the 1960s and 1970s.ĭia was founded in New York City in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler to help artists achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realized because of scale or scope.
Dia Art Foundation is committed to advancing, realizing, and preserving the vision of artists.
