PHOTO BY MARY NOBLE OURS
The Dia Art Foundation announced today that it has hired James Meyer, an associate curator at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., who is an expert in Minimalism, to be its new deputy director and chief curator. Charged with working on “the institution’s curatorial, education, and publications departments, including its public programs,” according to a news release, he is set to begin at the New York–based institution in January.
Meyer has been with the NGA since 2010 and is at work on one of the most hotly anticipated postwar-art shows in recent memory, “From Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery, 1959–71,” which will take a look at Virginia Dwan’s storied career as an art dealer. The result of a gift from Dwan to the museum, it will open next year and run into 2017.
Before joining the NGA, Meyer was an associate professor of art history at Emory University in Atlanta between 2002 and 2010. His writings about Minimalism have been widely read in the field.
News of Meyer’s appointment comes just a few days after Dia’s new director, Jessica Morgan, said in an interview with The Art Newspaper that she is nixing plans advanced by her predecessor, Philippe Vergne, to construct a new building in Chelsea, and instead focusing on the institution’s existing real-estate holdings throughout the area and elsewhere.
Yasmil Raymond had held the position of curator at Dia from 2009 until earlier this year, when she joined the Museum of Modern Art in New York as associate curator in its department of painting and sculpture.
“My own scholarship strongly relates to Dia’s collection and curatorial program,” Meyer said in a statement released to press. “I look forward to working with the Dia staff to develop its collections and exhibitions, its publications, and its discussions in contemporary culture and politics, which could not be more timely or welcome than now.”