GREAT MUSEUMS:Dia Art Foundation Collection

Dia Art Foundation was established in 1974 as the Lone Star Foundatio by Philippa de Menil,  Heiner Friedrich and Helen Winkler,] Dia wanted to support projects “whose nature or scale would preclude other funding sources”. The name “Dia”, taken from the Greek word meaning “through”, was chosen to suggest the institution’s role in enabling artistic projects that might not otherwise be realized.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Dia Art Foundation Archive

Over Dia’s first 10 years, its founders assembled a collection of a select group of artists. Among those whose work was commissioned and collected at that time are Joseph Beuys, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Imi Knoebel, Blinky Palermo, Fred Sandback, Cy Twombly, Robert Whitman, and La Monte Young. In 1979 acquired “Shadows” (1978-79), the monumental painting installation by Andy Warhol consisting of 102 canvases, as a single entity from the artist during its inaugural exhibition at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in New York. Dia additionally maintains long-term site-specific projects in the western United States, New York City, and on Long Island. Dia’s permanent collection holdings include artworks by artists who came to prominence during the ‘60s and ‘70s, including Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, and Andy Warhol. The art of this period represented a radical departure in artistic practice and is often large in scale; it is occasionally ephemeral or site-specific. Dia commissioned and maintains The Lightning Field, completed by Walter De Maria in 1977 near Quemado, New Mexico. Additionally, De Maria’s installations “The New York Earth Room” (1977) and “The Broken Kilometer” (1979) in New York City and “The Vertical Earth Kilometer” (1977) in Kassel, Germany. In 1983, Dia inaugurated the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, in 1999, Dia acquired Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” (1970), in Great Salt Lake, as a gift from the estate of the artist. Dia also maintains several other long-term, site-specific projects in New York City, including Max Neuhaus’s “Times Square” (1977), Joseph Beuys’s “7000 Eichen”, inaugurated at Documenta in 1982, and Dan Flavin’s “Untitled” (1996).