Franz Erhard Walther, Work as Action
Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
October 2, 2010–February 2012

This presentation of works by Franz Erhard Walther (German, b. 1937) will feature a selection of Handlungsstücke (Action Pieces) from the 1960s when he first explored physical action as a sculptural principle. The focal point of the installation will be the complete presentation of one such piece, 1. Werksatz (First Work Set), 1963–69, which Dia acquired for its collection in 1978. This work comprises fifty-eight fabric elements, or “instruments,” that are meant to be activated by visitors. A selection will be made available for the public to interact with during the show. 1. Werksatz, which will be shown alongside early pieces, exemplifies the origins of Walther’s five-decade-long investigation into the foundations of action, language, and space.

Walther trained at the Offenbach School of Applied Art and at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in the early 1960s. While at the Kunstakademie, he became acquainted with Joseph Beuys and befriended fellow students Gerhard Richter and Blinky Palermo. Both Beuys and Richter have works on long-term view at Dia:Beacon, and Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977 will be on view from June-October 2010, concurrent with Walther’s installation. Despite the engaged complexity of Walther’s practice and his extensive output of work, he remains largely unknown in the United States. Dia’s exhibition marks Walther’s first solo museum show in this country since 1990.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation.


Cecilia Edefalk, 24-Hour Venus
New Commission for the Web
Launches September 21, 2010

For Dia’s 33rd commission in its series of Artists’ Web Projects, Stockholm-based artist Cecilia Edefalk (Swedish, b. 1954) photographed an outdoor scene at Västeraspa, near Stjärnholm, Sweden, over a full day near the summer solstice. This series of images will be turned into a time-lapse project for visitors to interact with to see how light alters the landscape, giving different dimensions to the scenery. Edefalk’s work has been exhibited extensively in Sweden and a variety of international locations; however, it has rarely been seen in the United States. The launch date for this project was chosen to coincide with the fall equinox.

Curated by Lynne Cooke, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Sara Tucker, Information Technology Director, Dia Art Foundation. This commission is supported in part by The American-Scandinavian Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. Beverages for the launch event complements of Brooklyn Brewery.


Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
October 31, 2010–January 16, 2011

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
February 24–May 15, 2011

Dia:Beacon and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Hudson Valley, NY
June 25–October 31, 2011

Dia Art Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) have organized the first comprehensive North American retrospective of the work of artist Blinky Palermo (German, 1943–1977). While Palermo’s reputation as one of the foremost post-war painters has long been established in Europe, his work is rarely seen in the United States. This encompassing exhibition introduces American audiences to all phases of Palermo’s highly influential career through a selection of approximately sixty works, many of which have never before been shown in the United States. Additionally, the collaboration between Dia and CCS Bard represents the first major institutional partnership between two of the principal museums in New York’s Hudson Valley.

The retrospective will be accompanied by a full-color book that will continue Dia’s tradition of rigorous scholarship, with original essays by Lynne Cooke, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Suzanne Hudson, Susanne Küper, and James Lawrence. It will also include an introduction by Dia Director Philippe Vergne and CCS Bard Director Tom Eccles, and will contain full-color photographs of 150 of the principal works in the show.

Curated by Lynne Cooke, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and organized by Dia and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Publication edited by Cooke, Karen Kelly, and Barbara Schröeder. The national tour is made possible by Gucci. Additional tour support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Brown Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Glenstone. Funding for the publication is provided by Sotheby’s, the Marx Family Advised Fund at Aspen Community Foundation, and The Andrew J. and Christine C. Hall Foundation.


Koo Jeong A, Constellation Congress
Dia at the Hispanic Society
November 5, 2010–June 26, 2011

Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
November 5, 2010–June 26, 2011

The Dan Flavin Art Institute
November 5, 2010–September 4, 2011

Koo Jeong A’s exhibition for Dia will unfold in three locations: the Hispanic Society of America, in Washington Heights; Dia:Beacon, in Beacon, New York, and The Dan Flavin Art Institute, in Bridgehampton, Long Island . Though she has exhibited internationally since 1994, Dia’s commission will be the artist’s first major institutional project in New York. For the Hispanic Society, Koo Jeong A (Korean, b. 1967) will create an immersive installation of newly commissioned works. At Dia:Beacon, she will present A Reality Upgrade & End Alone (2009), an outdoor sculpture. For The Dan Flavin Art Insitute, the artist will present a series of works on paper. Derived from her interest in natural phenomena and the intricacies of perception and memory, Koo Jeong A’s art of interventions and displacements draws attention to the physical and social nature of objects, images, and sensations.

The exhibition will be accompanied by public and education programs, as well as an original publication conceived in collaboration with the artist. The latter will offer a text by exhibition curator Yasmil Raymond and several commissioned essays.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation. Special thanks to the Hispanic Society of America. This exhibition is supported by Jill and Peter Kraus, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Councilmember Robert Jackson. Additional support is provided by Etant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art (a program of FACE) and the Korean Cultural Service.


Robert Whitman: Passport
Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
April 16–17, 2011

Passport, by Robert Whitman (American, b. 1935), will be an innovative, non-narrative, imagistic theater piece that includes live performance, video projections, sound, and props in original environments fashioned by the artist. Co-commissioned by Dia and Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ) this ambitious new work will be performed simultaneously in two places: outside on the banks of the Hudson River near Dia:Beacon, and indoors at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University in New Jersey. During the performance, images generated at each site will be transmitted to, and projected at, the other site.

Co-commissioned with Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ)


Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978–79
Chicago Arts Club, Chicago
April–July 2011

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
October–January 2011

Acquired by Dia as a single group, this monumental series of 102 rare abstract paintings is the culmination of Andy Warhol’s interest in shadows, a focus of his work throughout the 1970s. First shown in 1979 at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery, 393 West Broadway, in Soho, the paintings were hung edge to edge and close to the floor in an environmental installation that Warhol referred to as “disco décor.” The Shadows, which range in color from DayGlo acid green to purple and turquoise, have been on view at Dia:Beacon since the museum opened in 2003. This tour will enable a broad national audience to see the historic series, while also creating an occasion to consider the impact of Warhol’s approach to chance in the installation of the series according to the different architectural contexts.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation.


Shannon Ebner
New Commission for the Web
Launches May 2011

For its 34th Artists’ Web Project, Dia has invited Los Angeles-based artist Shannon Ebner (American, b. 1971) to develop an original project that will be hosted on Dia’s website. Ebner is most frequently identified with photography-based works that mine the meaning and form of language, and Dia’s commission offers her an opportunity to explore her practice through an unfamiliar medium.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, and Sara Tucker, Information Technology Director, Dia Art Foundation.


Jean-Luc Moulène
Dia at the Hispanic Society
October 2011–June 2012

Dia’s exhibition of work by Jean-Luc Moulène (French, b. 1955), on view at the Hispanic Society, will be the artist’s first solo show in the United States. Moulène attempts to unfold the thought process behind the creation of objects, revealing what gives them form. This focused presentation will include an array of works made in the last decade, including photographs, collages, and sculpture. It will be accompanied by a publication with critical texts, essays, and selected reprints.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation.


Carl Andre Retrospective
Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
May–December 2013

Subsequent Venues To Be Announced

Dia Art Foundation will organize the first North American retrospective of the work of Carl Andre (American, b. 1935) who is credited with redefining the parameters of abstract sculpture. The exhibition will mark the most comprehensive presentation of Andre’s work in the United States since 1970.

The retrospective will comprise a broad range of sculpture made over the past fifty years, including the artist’s emblematic floor and corner pieces, highlighting Andre’s radical use of standardized units of industrial material such as timber planks, concrete blocks, and metal plates, among others. It will also feature a vast selection of Andre’s poems, which echo and extend his geometric accumulations beyond the three-dimensional realm. The retrospective will be accompanied by a full-color publication, with original essays by the exhibition curators, art historians, and critics.

Co-curated by Philippe Vergne, Director, and Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation, in close collaboration with the artist.


CURRENT AND ONGOING EXHIBITIONS AND INSTALLATIONS

Drawing American Light: Dan Flavin and the Hudson River School
The Dan Flavin Art Institute, Bridgehampton, NY
Through October 17, 2010

This exhibition includes drawings of the Hudson River and the Long Island shoreline made by Dan Flavin (American, 1933–1996) during the 1960s and 1970s, shown alongside a group of late nineteenth-century drawings by Hudson River School artists. The earlier drawings, by artists including John Frederick Kensett, Aaron Draper Shattuck, and Robert Havell, Jr., were originally collected by Flavin for Dia. Drawing American Light is on view in the first-floor gallery of The Dan Flavin Art Institute, which Dia established in 1983 as a permanent site for Flavin’s work.

Originally built as a firehouse in 1908, The Dan Flavin Art Institute building operated as a church from 1924 to the mid-1970s, and was renovated under the direction of the artist to evoke its former uses: a newel post in the entrance hall is painted red in memory of the building’s years as a firehouse, and the original church doors have been moved to the entrance of a small exhibition space on the second floor which contains memorabilia. The upstairs and the stairwells of the building house an ongoing installation, planned by Flavin, of nine works in fluorescent light that he created between 1963 and 1981.

Curated by Kristin Poor, Assistant Curator, Dia Art Foundation. Support for The Dan Flavin Art Institute is provided in part by Heiner Friedrich and David Zwirner.


Recent Installation Changes at Dia:Beacon
Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries
Ongoing

Between January and April 2010, several galleries at Dia:Beacon were reinstalled. These significant changes mark the first major shift in Dia’s presentation of its collection since the museum opened in 2003. In January, Robert Ryman collaborated with Dia Curator Yasmil Raymond to re-site and reconfigure the spaces dedicated to his work. Now installed in four discrete galleries, the presentation includes paintings spanning forty years of Ryman’s career. In February, an installation of Agnes Martin paintings from Dia’s collection opened in a newly configured suite of galleries. Comprising twenty paintings, the presentation focuses on early works from 1957 to 1960 and late works from 1999 to 2002, including the Innocent Love series of 1999.

Next, the galleries dedicated to John Chamberlain’s sculpture reopened in March with a new installation, featuring pieces dating from 1967 to 1988, some never before shown at Dia:Beacon. The most recent reinstallations were Imi Knoebel’s 24 Colors?for Blinky, 1977, which consists of 21 shaped paintings, and Walter De Maria’s Silver Meters, 1976, and Gold Meters, 1976–77, each of which comprises sixteen square-meter plates made of polished stainless-steel into the surface of which one troy ounce of silver or gold has been inserted. These two monumental series are on view in adjacent, parallel galleries that are immediately visible upon entering Dia:Beacon.

Curated by Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation.


DIA ART FOUNDATION
A nonprofit institution founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is internationally renowned for enabling artists’ visions by initiating, supporting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia presents public and education programs, exhibitions, and its collection of works from the 1960s through the present at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries in New York’s Hudson Valley. Dia introduces commissions and projects by contemporary artists and parallel education programs at The Hispanic Society of America in Washington Heights. The Hispanic Society partnership provides an interim venue for Dia’s New York City-based programs while Dia develops a new site for these initiatives in Manhattan. Additionally, Dia maintains long-term, site-specific projects. These include Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) (1988), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), in Manhattan; The Dan Flavin Art Institute, in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), in Kassel, Germany; and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) and De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977), in the Western United States. For additional public information, visit www.diaart.org.

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For additional information or materials contact:
Ashley Tickle, Dia Art Foundation, New York City, 212.293.5518 or atickle @ diaart.org.