Skip to content Skip to footer links

Courtney J. Martin to Join Dia’s Curatorial Department as Deputy Director and Chief Curator

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 24, 2017

Courtney J. Martin to Join Dia’s Curatorial Department as Deputy Director and Chief Curator

New York – Dia Art Foundation announced today that Courtney J. Martin will join its curatorial department as Deputy Director and Chief Curator. She is currently an assistant professor in the history of art and architecture department at Brown University in Providence. In 2015–16 Martin curated an exhibition of the American painter Robert Ryman at Dia:Chelsea. Her appointment at Dia will begin in September 2017. 

As Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Martin will serve as a member of Dia’s senior management team. She will lead the curatorial department and oversee the collections and exhibitions—including the research, care, and display of artworks and the acquisition of new works. Martin joins Dia’s curatorial team at a time of increasing activity across its sites. As a continued presence, James Meyer who was formerly Deputy Director and Chief Curator at Dia has returned to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, as Curator in the Department of Modern Art, and will also serve as Dia’s Curatorial and Academic Advisor.

“Courtney is an accomplished scholar and curator,” said Jessica Morgan, Director, Dia Art Foundation. “While working closely with her on the Robert Ryman exhibition, I was continually impressed by her rigorous curatorial approach and innovative thinking. We are thrilled to welcome her to Dia. I am confident that Courtney’s leadership will bring new insights and energy to the institution.”

“It is with great enthusiasm that I join Dia—an institution that I encountered upon moving to New York in the 1990s. It has an unparalleled collection of art and a deep history of helping artists develop their practice and realize ambitious projects,” said Courtney J. Martin. “Working on the Robert Ryman exhibition in 2015–16 was a memorable experience. I am excited to begin working with Jessica and the team to guide Dia’s strategic approach to exhibitions, collections, and public programs and help the institution continue to fulfill its mission.” 

Martin has been an assistant professor in the history of art and architecture department at Brown University since 2013. As an art historian of the modern and contemporary fields, her scholarship is invested in the ways in which the post-1968 period altered art and artists internationally. She received a doctorate from Yale University, New Haven, in 2009 for her research on twentieth-century British art and is the author of critical essays on the work of many modern and contemporary artists, including Rasheed Araeen, Kader Attia, Rina Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Lara Favaretto, Leslie Hewitt, Asger Jorn, Wangechi Mutu, Ed Ruscha, and Yinka Shonibare. Martin is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and is also the coeditor of Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty Publications, 2015), which won a Historians of British Art book award, and the editor of Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2016). 

Prior to Brown, Martin was an assistant professor in the history of art department at Vanderbilt University, Nashville (2010–13), Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (2009–10), a fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2008–09), and a research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2007). She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York on an international arts portfolio that funded major arts projects. After leaving Ford, she served as a consultant for the foundation’s Gulf Coast Transformation Initiative (2006) and the Integrating the Arts and Education Initiative (2004–07).

In 2012–13 Martin curated Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip . . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings 1973–8 at Tate Britain, London. In 2014 she co-organized the group show Minimal Baroque: Post-Minimalism and Contemporary Art at Rønnebæksholm, Næstved, Denmark. In 2015–16 Martin curated an exhibition of the American painter, Robert Ryman, at Dia Art Foundation, which will be presented at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, from March 4 to April 30, 2017. 

Dia Art Foundation

Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is committed to initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 in Beacon, New York. Dia also maintains several long-term sites, including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), and Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; and De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany.

Dia presents temporary exhibitions and installations, performances, lectures, and readings on West 22nd Street in New York City. 

* * * 

For additional information or materials contact: Press Department, Dia Art Foundation, press@diaart.org or 212 293 5518.

Get Dia News

Receive Dia News and be the first to hear about events and exhibitions happening at our locations and sites.