History
Founded in 1974 as the Dia Art Foundation, it first patronized a group of artists that included Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela. They got stipends, studios, and archivists in anticipation of one-man museums that Dia planned for several of them. Philippa’s husband, Francesco Pellizzi, was on the original six-member board, and Dominique and Christophe de Menil were on the advisory council. Starting in 1979, the foundation hired architect Richard Gluckman and started looking for reinforced-concrete structures suitable for showing art. Gluckman helped locate Dia’s present Chelsea building on West 23rd Street for a planned Cy Twombly museum, a performance space for Robert Whitman on West 19th Street, and the Mercantile Exchange on Harrison Street for Young and Zazeela. In 1980, Dia opened the Masjid Al-Fara, a Sufi mosque replete with Flavin light works and living quarters for Muzaffer Ozak, in a former firehouse at 155 Mercer Street.
The financial difficulties during the 1980s reduced Dia's annual expenditures from $5 million in 1984 to 1.2 million in 1987, accompanied by Heiner Friedrich's departure and the end of Philippa de Menil's financial support (though she continued to hold a position on Dia's board. Philippa de Menil's mother, Dominique de Menil, stepped in, ousted Friedrich and installed Ashton Hawkins, an executive vice president at the Metropolitan Museum, as Dia's chairman. Along with Hawkins, the new board members included Lois de Menil, John C. Evans, future United States Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, Margaret Douglas-Hamilton, and Herbert Brownell. The board then hired as director Charles Wright and curator Gary Garrels. The mosque was removed from 155 Mercer Street. La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela had to leave the Harrison Street building, which was then sold for $5.5 million. By the end of 1987, real-estate and art sales had brought in about $17 million to pay the debt and start an endowment. The foundation was renamed the Dia Center for the Arts and a program of poetry readings, performances, lectures and publications was begun.
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