Following the lead of artists challenging the traditional studio, gallery, and museum system, and during a time of broader social change, Dia is conceived as a counter institution with a distinctive ethos and directive that will remain at the center of the institution’s activities. Never associated with a single site or location, nor even solely with New York where it was founded, Dia focuses on individual artists’ visions and the realization of works wherever they may be constituted.

During the foundation’s early years, Dia offers unique patronage to a select group of artists, which include Joseph Beuys, John Chamberlain, 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 and Marian Zazeela. This commitment reflects the co-founders’ interest in artists from the U.S. and Europe (predominantly Germany) who question the status of the art object and install work such that space and site are integral to its effect on the viewer.

Through extensive material support, Dia engages deeply with artists on its roster to realize their commissions and collect their work. In January 1979, having already commissioned and presented several permanent and long-term displays, Dia develops the concept of individual-artist institutes dedicated to the exhibition, production, and preservation of a single artist’s work. The locations chosen reflect the site-responsive nature of each artist’s practice, ranging from sites in the western U.S., to outer Long Island, rural Massachusetts, and coastal Connecticut, as well as several in New York. Understanding the aesthetic potential of industrial architecture, the foundation identifies, for purchase or lease, abandoned or defunct factories or commercial sites for the purpose of artist studios or permanent displays. Their size, sturdiness, and structural simplicity, along with the proclivity to repurpose existing architecture rather than build anew, come to define the characteristics of a Dia location.

The festival opens with a Dream House, Young and Zazeela’s signature sound-and-light environment, which forms the context for 13 performances by Young’s ensemble the Theater of Eternal Music. The second half of the Dream Festival includes the American premiere of Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano (1964–73–81– ), a memorial concert series honoring electronic composer Richard Maxfield; a series of morning, afternoon, and evening ragas performed by Pandit Pran Nath; and performances of electronic music by Terry Riley and Jon Hassell with David Rosenboom; all of which are presented within the visual environment of the exhibition Marian Zazeela: Lights, Drawings (1975).

In late 1977, Dia acquires a custom Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano tuned for Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano, which is celebrated the following year with a series of performances at Heiner Friedrich’s gallery at 393 West Broadway coinciding with the exhibition Marian Zazeela: Light (September 10–24, 1978). Through 1979, Dia continues to sponsor raga performances by Pran Nath, in tribute to the Kirana style of North Indian classical vocal music, at 393 West Broadway and other venues.

In February 1979, Dia purchases for Young and Zazeela a former mercantile-exchange building at 6 Harrison Street in Tribeca, which opens with the first of what will become the annual Raga Cycle series of performances by Pran Nath. Young and Zazeela install another Dream House (1979–85), which includes Zazeela’s light environment The Magenta Lights (1980– ) and is open to the public between 1981 and 1985. In addition to Young, Zazeela, and Pran Nath living and working in the building’s upper floors, the space is used as a rehearsal hall, holds archives for the artists’ work, and is a center for teaching Kirana music. The Dream House continues today at 275 Church Street in New York, operated by the MELA Foundation in collaboration with the artists.

Initially intended for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s bicentennial exhibition 200 Years of American Sculpture (1976), the work, untitled (1976–77), is realized over the course of a year with Dia’s financial and logistical support in partnership with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Arts for Transit program (the first of several collaborations between Dia and the MTA). The first installation, on platform 39–40, opens to the public in 1976, with subsequent installations opening on platforms 18–19 and 41–42 the following year, where they remain until 1986.

Flavin’s relighting of the platforms engages the structural elements of the station, immersing passengers in a soft complimentary continuity of blue, intensified en route by pink and gold. The completed work comprises 152 modular fluorescent units made up of eight- and four-foot-long fixtures, facing downward and outward, respectively. The daylight (blued) whites stream together and the pink and gold spark out on either side as one stands slightly to the right or left of center. The modular units link together into a receding linear procession, introducing an intense perspectival direction into the dark tunnel beyond.

The artist fills the gallery space with 222 cubic yards of earth, to a depth of 22 inches, creating an interior “earth sculpture.” Compelled by how the work’s formal simplicity engenders such a commanding physical presence, Friedrich, Fariha Friedrich (then Philippa de Menil), and Helen Winkler Fosdick, in close consultation with the artist, determine that the work should remain on permanent view as a Dia site. Friedrich donates the gallery space to Dia, after which it is renovated by architect Richard Gluckman, to De Maria’s specifications, to support the permanent display of the work. The exhibition of The New York Earth Room reopens at 141 Wooster Street on New Year’s Day 1980 and remains on view to this day.

A one-kilometer-long, polished-brass rod is buried vertically at the intersection of two footpaths crossing at Friedrichsplatz Park, an 18th-century public square, leaving only the flat circumference of one end visible within a square sandstone plate at ground level, which renders abstract any sense of distance or depth. It takes 79 days to drill the shaft, which passes through six geological layers. Supported by the city of Kassel, the work is ultimately designated as a permanent installation. In 1979, De Maria creates The Broken Kilometer—also a permanent installation commissioned by Dia—as a companion piece to The Vertical Earth Kilometer.

The artist first used the material in the mid-1960s in a series of small, geometric sculptures, and highly polished metals will be subsequently featured in several of his most recognizable works. At The Lightning Field, the vertical poles vary in height to compensate for the earth’s undulating surface, creating a level plane that could support a plate of glass. The Lightning Field juxtaposes imperial and metric standards against the vast expanse of the American desert. Within this context, the hard edges of these empirical systems of observation dissolve against the seemingly boundless, wide-open space. Moreover, The Lightning Field requires both movement and time to be fully experienced. In addition to the physical terrain that the project occupies, the work is animated by changing light conditions, which cause the poles to come in and out of focus throughout the day. 

De Maria determines that visitors need a full 24 hours at the site, and he arranges for the refurbishment of a historic homestead cabin where up to six people at a time can spend the night. Throughout this enormous undertaking Dia co-founder Helen Winkler Fosdick and her husband, artist Robert Fosdick, relocate to New Mexico for several years to help oversee the logistics of moving and renovating the cabin and installing the poles according to De Maria’s precise instructions. Following their departure, a dedicated team of local caretakers led by foreman Robert Weathers continues to keep De Maria’s vision for the site alive.

As “one painting,” Shadows’ equally sized canvases hang edge to edge and low to the ground. While Shadows is fixed by these physical terms, the number of visible panels and their arrangement vary according to the size of an exhibition space; the work in total contracts, expands, and recalibrates each time it is installed. Shadows is one of Warhol’s most abstract works, with its repetitive screenprints offset and inflected by the loose, gestural mopping of paint onto each monochromatic canvas. As Warhol dryly explained, the paintings are mostly the same except for their colors—that is, in Shadows, color assumes the position of the work’s subject. Despite Warhol’s self-effacing dismissal of the works as “disco décor,” these paintings substantiate a genuine interest in composition, method, and style, indeed the practice of painting itself. 

In the following years, Shadows is reinstalled at various Dia locations and fellow institutions in a variety of sequences. Its current presentation at Dia Beacon (December 2023– ) returns Shadows to the sequence from its original exhibition in 1979.

Formalized in 1978–79, the commission delineates the monumental scale of the project, with Dia acquiring multiple properties selected by Judd and underwriting the artist’s design, fabrication, and installation of interior and exterior sculptures realized specifically for these architectural spaces and the surrounding landscape, most notably the sculptures that constitute Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum (1982–86). The project also encompasses an exhibition space for the presentation of works by John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, and other artists of Judd’s choosing, as well as administrative and curatorial staff to realize the project and facilitate public access. A destination envisioned by Judd from beginning to end, it is also indicative of Dia’s support for works made following an artist’s deep engagement with a particular site or location such as the western U.S. In 1986, the Chinati Foundation is established as an independent nonprofit to administer and preserve the site. Dia grants Chinati all of its Marfa property and related artwork holdings, along with funding for the first four years of its operations. The site remains open to this day.

Collectively weighing 18 ¾ tons and measuring one kilometer when laid end to end, the work mirrors De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), a companion piece permanently installed in Kassel, Germany, consisting of a brass rod of identical diameter, total length, and weight, inserted vertically into the earth.

De Maria deploys numerical sequencing as a compositional principle to achieve a semblance of regularity. The appearance of a rational grid is thus an optical illusion created by the slightly increasing intervals between the brass rods as they recede from the viewer. Working with architect Richard Gluckman and engineer Michael Kellough on the installation design and renovations to the space, De Maria devises this arrangement and the halide stadium lighting such that each rod is rendered visible into the far reaches of the gallery space. Initially exhibited from April 14 to June 30, 1979, as part of a series of single-artist presentations at 393 West Broadway, The Broken Kilometer draws 5,225 attendees in its first month on view. On October 20, 1979, The Broken Kilometer reopens as a permanent Dia site and has remained on long-term view to the public since then. 

Dia intends for the space to be a site for the study and exhibition of the foundation’s collection of Flavin’s work, as well as the artist’s archives and printshop, and hires Flavin to design the exhibition environment. One wing is to display Dia’s collection of landscape drawings, watercolors, and oil sketches from the Hudson River School, a group of 19th-century artists whose works were created in the vicinity of Garrison and retain a historical affinity to the area. The project ultimately proves too vast a challenge to realize and, by 1985, the Dan Flavin Art Institute operates solely out of its Bridgehampton location. The Castle is sold in 1987. 

In 1979, Dia deepens its patronage with the purchase of a three-story building on West 19th Street in Chelsea, known as Whitman Projects, as a venue and archives for the production, presentation, and documentation of the artist’s work. The earliest performances at Whitman Projects are held in December of 1980, presenting revivals of Prune Flat (1965) and Light Touch. In 1982, Whitman premieres Raincover, an extravagant production comprising multiple film projections, set pieces, and choreographed movements unfolding over an hour on a 30-foot-long proscenium stage. Between 1983 and 1984, Dia funds the Whitman Projects performances of the artist’s Eclipse (1983) and his wife Sylvia Palacios’s Irregulars (1983). 

During this time, Dia also supports Whitman’s interest in radical site-specificity, beginning in 1979 with a commission to create an environmental installation at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. Inhabiting built and natural environments on either side of the Hudson River, Palisade comprises a multimedia installation of projections within the museum gallery and an outdoor installation at the base of the New Jersey Palisades on the opposing riverbanks. In 1980, Dia presents Whitman’s Stound, an outdoor performance combining film, found objects, and neighboring ponds, open fields, and woods at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island. Then, in 1981, Whitman returns to the Undercliff section of the Palisades State Park with A Walk in the Park, a nocturnal performance with film elements that unfolds along the park’s byways.

Dia’s relationship with Whitman continues in 2003 when Robert Whitman: Playback, the first major retrospective of the artist’s work, goes on view at Dia’s Chelsea galleries. The exhibition, which includes revivals of Prune Flat and Light Touch, goes on to tour internationally. Much later, in 2011, Whitman renews his earlier interest in theatrical works transmitted across man-made and natural environments with Passport, co-commissioned by Dia and performed simultaneously at the Kasser Theater in Montclair, New Jersey, and on the Hudson River waterfront, as well as MoonRain, staged in a fog environment filling the lower-level galleries of Dia Beacon.

The Fred Sandback Museum opens to the public in June 1981 with installations of three-dimensional constructions on the first two floors, and an exhibition of nearly 50 drawings and graphic works in the basement gallery, which also includes an archive reading room. In 1988–89, Dia complements the presentations at Sandback’s studio and museum with a yearlong exhibition of his recent sculptures at 155 Mercer Street in SoHo, New York. In 1996–97, the artist reinstalls his works from the collection alongside newer pieces at Dia’s Chelsea space. In 2003, Sandback is included in the inaugural exhibitions of Dia Beacon. The configurations, which address the vast scale of the renovated factory space, are some of the last to be installed by the artist during his lifetime. Sandback’s sculptures remain on long-term view at Dia Beacon today.

In 1981, Masjid al-Farah opens at 155 Mercer Street as a permanent venue for hosting Sufi ceremonies. An “avant garde Sufi lodge for the ages,” the interior ultimately features Dan Flavin’s untitled (1982), comprising four installations of the same name with a different sculpture installed on each floor, as well as bathrooms renovated for ritual washing and Persian carpets throughout. Here, Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak Ashki al-Jerrahi, leader of the Halveti-Jerrahi Order of Dervishes of Istanbul, holds dhikr, a weekly ceremony of ritual dance and Sufi teachings, followed by a generous feast.

In February 1985, the Sheikh passes away unexpectedly at the age of 69, coinciding with major changes to Dia’s organizational structure. Soon after, Masjid al-Farah moves to a smaller building in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood and Dia’s staff relocate to the second floor of 155 Mercer Street, where administrator Joan Duddy later develops the Salon Project performance series with dancer-choreographer Susan Osberg.

The gallery opens in 1982 with an exhibition of Barnett Newman’s paintings spanning his career from 1946 to 1968. Newman’s first solo presentation in New York in a decade, this rotating exhibition remains on view through March 1985. From 1985 to 1986, Dia presents an exhibition of Cy Twombly’s paintings and drawings, featuring the first public viewing of Twombly’s Treatise on the Veil (Second Version) (1970), which, at nearly 32 feet in length, was one of the artist’s largest canvases to date.

In 1986, Dia presents three consecutive exhibitions by Andy Warhol, drawing heavily from the foundation’s in-depth collection his work. The series begins with the first New York presentation of the artist's Disaster paintings from 1963, followed by an exhibition of early hand-painted images dating from 1960 to 1962 which include never-before-seen works from Warhol’s own collection. The third of these exhibitions, Andy Warhol: Skulls 1976, brings together a range of media, including variously sized canvases, drawings, and collages, all featuring the iconic image of an isolated human skull. Warhol works on the installation, which is meant to include an unrealized wallpaper based on one of the Skulls drawings, in the months before his death.

Starting in 1987, coinciding with the opening of Dia’s expansive exhibition space in Chelsea, 77 Wooster Street becomes a space for artists’ projects using experimental formats to critically address political issues. The collective Group Material organizes a four-part exhibition and public forum around the theme of Democracy, after which Martha Rosler’s 1989 project If You Lived Here . . . responds to the political and economic issues of urban housing, gentrification, and houselessness in New York.

The presentation at 67 Vestry Street in Tribeca is primarily comprised of works dating from 1975 to 1980, when Chamberlain was actively working in the studio, and their installation in the space is undertaken with the artist’s direction. The Chamberlain Gardens in Essex, sited on 10 acres of intercoastal lands adjoining the artist’s former outdoor studio along the Connecticut River, presents 23 monumental crushed-steel sculptures commissioned by the foundation and placed by the artist in both landscaped and natural environments, complemented by a number of smaller sculptures and works on paper from the artist’s personal collection. The project echoes Dia’s earlier exhibition of Chamberlain’s Texas Pieces on the grounds of the Manhattan Psychiatric Center at Ward’s Island, New York, in 1977–78, which also provided public access to the artist’s work in an outdoor setting.

Working closely with architect Richard Gluckman and Dia’s director of operations James Schaeufele, Flavin oversees the building’s renovation between 1981 and 1983, making key decisions to best accommodate his work and preserve the property’s multiple legacies. To memorialize the building’s former life as a volunteer fire department, the barn-style double doors from the firehouse entrance are refurbished and the newel post in the vestibule is painted fire-engine red. The church doors and frosted-glass windows are moved to the back room of the second floor, which hosts a display of memorabilia from the First Baptist Church, including a neon cross. In keeping with his practice of acknowledging friends, relatives, curators, or historical personages in the titles of his work, Flavin dedicates the building to Schaeufele. 

Selected and arranged by the artist, nine sculptures in fluorescent light (1963–81) offers an inventory of the possibilities for readymade colored light in relation to architecture. Composed of circular fluorescent fixtures in three temperatures of white (cool, daylight, and warm), untitled (to Jim Schaeufele) 1, 2, and 3 (all 1972) punctuate the ascent up the vestibule’s staircase. These works remain on view at the Dan Flavin Art Institute to this day. 

Starting in 1987, independent curator Henry Geldzahler advises Dia on a series of monographic exhibitions featuring artists with ties to the East End of Long Island such as Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. The foundation continues to present yearly exhibitions of artists primarily residing or working on Long Island and in 2020 renames the location Dia Bridgehampton. Still containing within it the Dan Flavin Art Institute, the location remains a testament to the compelling experience generated by a concentration of the artist’s light works in a carefully calibrated setting. The building is a lasting example of Dia and Flavin’s collaborative vision and shared preoccupation with site-specificity. 

Under reduced financial circumstances, Dia’s programs are dramatically restructured and many of its real estate holdings are sold or donated. In 1986, the Chinati Foundation is established to independently operate Donald Judd’s projects in Marfa, Texas. With this reduced footprint, Dia’s programming reorients to support rotating single-artist exhibitions and projects, and the initiation of new programs supporting dance, poetry, and lectures on contemporary culture. 

Within one year’s time, the building becomes a pillar of the downtown dance scene, fostering a community of artists. In 1986, Susan Osberg, artistic director of the Workwith Dancers Company, initiates the Salon Project, an annual fall event that features new work by choreographers. Co-curated by Osberg and Duddy, the project runs until 1995, presenting over 90 choreographers in all stages of their careers, including Arthur Aviles, Molissa Fenley, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, David Parker, Lucio Pozzi, Sara Rudner, Anna Sokolow, and Muna Tseng. While the majority of the building’s spaces are used on a short-term basis by emerging artists, others, such as Laura Dean, schedule regular rehearsals, becoming fixtures within the community. As Duddy observed, Dean was an excellent fit for Dia’s space, “as a signature element of her choreographic technique took inspiration from the Sufi whirling technique,” harkening to the building’s earlier incarnation.

With abundant natural light filtering in from windows around the perimeter, each 9,000-square-foot level has an open plan with columns plotted on a grid. The building opens to the public on October 9, 1987, with an inaugural exhibition of Joseph Beuys, Imi Knoebel, and Blinky Palermo spanning three floors, each dedicated to an individual artist. 

In the following years, Dia expands this model of devoting each floor to a long-term, single-artist presentation to include large-scale, site-responsive commissions of emerging artists; focused solo exhibitions developed in collaboration with established artists; and displays from the collection. With many of these presentations remaining on view for at least one year, Dia’s artist-centric model provides an unprecedented platform for artists to develop projects that invite repeated viewings. 

Between 1991 and 2004, Dia’s presence in Chelsea, under the new name Dia Center for the Arts, gradually expands alongside its exhibition program. With the purchase of buildings on the north side of West 22nd Street and the move of the administrative offices, all four floors of 548 are devoted to large-scale, single-artist projects. In 1997, Dia Center for the Arts inaugurates a second exhibition space across the street at 545 West 22nd Street with the debut of Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses (1996–97). From 1995 to 2000, Dia commissions artists to create billboards affixed to the rail bridge over West 22nd Street (now the High Line).

The last exhibition season of Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea ends in 2004, following the opening of Dia Beacon and a subsequent shift of programming to take advantage of the museum’s vast space and natural setting. During the intervening years, Dia continues to hold artist talks and lectures at 535 and, in 2010, resumes monthly poetry readings. After a long hiatus, 541 temporarily reopens as an artist-project space in 2012, setting the stage for a renewed presence and commissioning program as Dia Chelsea in 2015.

After a brief break, Readings in Contemporary Poetry restarts in the fall of 2010 under the leadership of Vincent Katz, until 2021 when the program is reimagined.

Today, the program series titled Poetry & pairs a poet with an artist working in a different field to create a unique art experience. Curated by Kamilah Foreman, Dia’s director of publications, and José Olivarez, the interdisciplinary series manifests the vitality of one of the oldest art forms in full-fledged interactive, performative events in Dia’s galleries and event spaces as well as out in the streets.

Located on the same block as Dia Chelsea and the institution’s administrative offices, this portion of 7000 Oaks consists of 38 living trees, each paired with a columnar basalt marker measuring four feet tall. Per Beuys’s original instructions, the basalt is imported from the same quarry that had supplied the Kassel manifestation.

In preparation for Documenta, Beuys arranged in early 1982 for basalt to be brought into Kassel from a quarry outside the city, which was then amassed on the front lawn of the Fridericianum, Documenta’s primary exhibition building. Beuys himself planted the first tree with its accompanying stele. Trees and stones were arranged according to site proposals submitted by residents, neighborhood councils, schools, local associations, and other groups. While the majority of the trees were oaks, 15 other species were incorporated. At the opening of Documenta 8 in June 1987, some 18 months after Beuys had died, the artist’s son, Wenzel, and widow, Eva, planted the last tree in Kassel, matching the nominal 7,000.

Around each of these issues, Group Material organizes a roundtable discussion (with guest speakers from various interest groups), an exhibition at 77 Wooster Street, and a town meeting at 155 Mercer Street. With its emphasis on collaborative production and public participation, the project takes democracy not only as its subject, but also as a working process and an exhibition model.

Adopting the moniker “Printed Matter Bookstore at Dia,” the organization retains its artistic autonomy and ultimately becomes the distributor for Dia’s nascent publications program in addition to curating a selection of artists’ books for the bookshop at Dia’s Chelsea exhibition space. In addition to sharing a location, the two organizations co-host a daylong symposium on developments in artists’ books and publishing. The symposium’s panelists include, among others, Barbara Bloom, AA Bronson, Bice Curiger, Raymond Foye, Dan Graham, Kathy Halbreich, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley, Richard Prince, and Lawrence Weiner, moderated by Clive Phillpot, director of the library at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.