Dia Chelsea, New York. Photo: Elizabeth Felicella. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation,
New York.
For major museums and galleries, a renovation is a statement. The announcements usually look the same: X starchitect will lead Y’s redesign that cost Z millions of dollars. Z is always a big number.
But the Dia Art Foundation has opted to tweak the traditional formula instead of going big, it has opted to go subtle. The Minimalism-focused organization opens its renovated 20,000-square-foot home in West Chelsea, New York, on Friday after a two-year renovation.
In 2018, when Dia first announced a fundraising campaign to upgrade its campuses, including a redesign of its three contiguous industrial buildings in Chelsea, it said the goal was to raise $90 million. That’s a big number, to be sure. But only $20 million an uncharacteristically small figure for such a prominent project was put toward the renovation in Chelsea. The rest was put back into the organization’s endowment for futur
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Once upon a time, you could stand on the roof of 548 West 22nd Street, up among the water towers of Manhattan, with views out over the Hudson to New Jersey, and watch the city shimmer and reflect on the surfaces of one of Dan Graham’s glass pavilions. It was a New York moment. You could go downstairs, following the blue and green glow of a Dan Flavin light sculpture lining the stairwell, and see shows by leaders in contemporary European and American art reaching back to the 1960s. The galleries here, at Dia Center for the Arts, were some of the first to display Richard Serra’s
Re-emerging as a force in Chelsea
after a two-year, $20m renovation, the Dia Art Foundation’s space there will reopen on Friday (16 April) with a renewed purpose: to champion under-recognised artists and to serve as an information hub for all 11 of Dia’s long-term art sites.
The foundation’s Chelsea renovation unites its three contiguous buildings on West 22nd Street and underlines its gritty history of inventively revitalising existing structures. The 32,500 sq. ft project, which includes 20,000 sq. ft for exhibitions and other programming, embraces the neighbourhood’s traditional character and architectural vernacular, with wide-open industrial-style spaces, exposed brick, wooden ceiling beams and rehabilitated skylights that allow natural light to pour in and illuminate the art. It also reasserts the foundation’s importance in championing long-term art installations that flood the senses.
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Among the flurry of British headlines that greeted Oprah Winfreyâs TV interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex last month, one stood out:
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE? It was splashed across the front of the Daily Mail, the tabloid newspaper of choice for middle England, and had the air of Nanny, standing hands on hips surveying a mess of broken toys in the nursery. Meanwhile, the child whoâd wreaked havoc in a fit of temper had run away to hide, appalled and feeling sick.
Winfreyâs incendiary interview with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, was a âbombshellâ that had blown up the British royal family, according to the story. But what about Prince Harry, accomplice bomb thrower, so recently the nationâs favourite royal? The headline might just as easily have read:
Yomi Adegoke, Nadine White and other Black Brits honoured on Forbes 30 under 30 list voice-online.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from voice-online.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.