New York, NY, August 31, 2023 – Dia Art Foundation announced today that Matilde Guidelli-Guidi has been promoted to the position of curator and department co-head, alongside Jordan Carter. Previously Dia’s associate curator, Guidelli-Guidi has relaunched the institution’s longstanding Artists on Artists Lecture Series after a pandemic hiatus and organized several important exhibitions, among them the long-term presentations Senga Nengudi (2023– ) and Mario Merz (2020– ), and the celebrated Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Paintings (2022–2023), co-curated with Donna De Salvo, all at Dia Beacon. Assuming her new role in September 2023, Guidelli-Guidi succeeds Alexis Lowry, who is stepping down from her role as curator in October 2023 after eight years at Dia.  

In her new position, Guidelli-Guidi will be the curatorial liaison for Dia Bridgehampton, Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in New Mexico, and all of Dia’s New York sites—Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, inaugurated in 1982 and ongoing), De Maria’s The Broken Kilometer (1979) and The New York Earth Room (1977), and Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977). She will play a leading role in the development of exhibitions and live programs across Dia’s locations and sites, and will continue to be closely involved in Dia’s acquisition program and the development of publications and special projects.

“I am delighted that Matilde Guidelli-Guidi will be taking this next step in her career at Dia. Over the last four years she has been an integral part of our curatorial team and has consistently demonstrated the sensitivity and vision that are key in realizing exhibitions and commissions at our unique institution. As we look to our 50th anniversary in 2024, Matilde will be instrumental in shaping our evolving exhibitions and live programs, and in caring for our collection and constellation of artist sites around the United States and beyond,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director.

“Dia’s defining mission to partner with artists in realizing their vision remains vital in the present moment, as is the institution’s commitment to contemporary culture at large via discursive and live programs alongside exhibitions and collection stewardship. Together with my colleagues, I am excited to reflect upon a 50-year legacy that attests to those timely collaborations while continuing to support artists in articulating critical ideas and dialogues that have yet to find a form or a place to unfold,” said Guidelli-Guidi.

Following her completion of the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship at Dia in 2016, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi joined the curatorial department in the role of assistant curator in 2019 and was promoted to associate curator in 2020, becoming an essential part of collection, exhibition, program, and interdepartmental initiatives. Over the years, she has organized rigorous and impactful exhibitions of work by Leslie Hewitt, Jill Magid, Mario Merz, Senga Nengudi, Fred Sandback, and Jack Whitten. Guidelli-Guidi has made notable contributions to Dia’s public programs, such as co-devising the Charlotte Posenenske Sessions and the Rethinking German Minimalism Symposium; commissioning a growing roster of participants for the Artists on Artists Lecture Series, which included Olga Balema, Aria Dean, Nicolas Guagnini, Duane Linklater, Naeem Mohaiemen, Shahryar Nashat, Precious Okoyomon with Gio Escobar, Marina Rosenfeld with Jessika Kenney, Tiffany Sia, and A.L. Steiner; as well as exhibition-related discursive and music programs around the work of Hewitt, Magid, Merz, Whitten, and others. Working closely with Dia’s publications department, Guidelli-Guidi edited books including An introduction to Dia’s locations and sites (2021); a translation of Carla Lonzi’s Self-portrait (2021); and Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Paintings (2023). Liaising with the archivist, she contributed to studies of Dia’s institutional history and has shepherded several acquisitions, most notably the extended loan agreement that stipulates the terms of stewardship of Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation (2018) as a new Dia site, in collaboration with Jordan Carter.

Prior to joining Dia, Guidelli-Guidi worked at institutions such as the International Center of Photography, New York; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She has taught classes at Hunter College and The City College in New York, as well as at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is pursuing postgraduate studies in art history.

About Dia Art Foundation

Taking its name from the Greek word meaning “through,” Dia was established in 1974 with the mission to serve as a conduit for artists to realize ambitious new projects, unmediated by overt interpretation and uncurbed by the limitations of more traditional museums and galleries. Dia’s programming fosters contemplative and sustained consideration of a single artist’s body of work and its collection is distinguished by the deep and longstanding relationships that the nonprofit has cultivated with artists whose work came to prominence particularly in the 1960s and ’70s. 

In addition to Dia Beacon, Dia Bridgehampton, and Dia Chelsea, Dia maintains and operates a constellation of commissions, long-term installations, and site-specific projects, notably focused on Land art, nationally and internationally. These include: 

• 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, inaugurated in 1982 and ongoing), all located in New York City
• De Maria’s The Lightning Field(1977), in western New Mexico
• Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty(1970), in the Great Salt Lake, Utah
• Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels(1973–76), in the Great Basin Desert, Utah
• De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer(1977), in Kassel, Germany 
• Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation (2018)

For additional information or materials, contact: 

(U.S. press inquiries)
Hannah Gompertz, Dia Art Foundation, hgompertz@diaart.org, +1 212 293 5598
Melissa Parsoff, Parsoff Communications, mparsoff@parsoff-communications.com, +1 516 445 5899

(International press inquiries)
Sam Talbot, sam@sam-talbot.com, +44 (0) 772 5184 630