The Return of Dia?

Michael Heizer, "North, East, South, West," Dia Art Foundation, gift of Lannan Foundation. Photo: Tom Vinetz

Carol Vogel has the scoop in tomorrow's NY Times: The Dia Art Foundation has at last appointed a new director---Jeffrey Weiss, head of the department of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery, Washington, and curator of its current Jasper Johns show. His predecessor at Dia, Michael Govan, is now director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The best news is that Weiss' first order of business will be "to find a site in New York and to develop our program there," Nathalie de Gunzburg, the Dia's board chairwoman, told Vogel. The Dia opened a new facility in Beacon, NY, almost four years ago and subsequently shut down its Manhattan space.

This welcome development may even mollify Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice, who last month lambasted the Dia's desertion of its former hometown as "criminal--instead of renovating its tremendous 22nd Street Chelsea headquarters, establishing another building, or just opening a temporary New York space, the Dia Center for the Arts abandoned Manhattan by shutting down all of its rotating exhibition spaces in the city. It is mind-boggling and heartbreaking that not one of the trustees or the ex-director...resigned over or openly protested this irresponsible action."

Now, if they could just hire enough guards so that one of Dia:Beacon's most important (and definitely its most vertiginous) attractions, Michael Heizer's "North, East, South, West" (above), can be available for public viewing at more times than one 10:30 a.m. "guided tour" each day, for which advance reservations are required. This supervision is necessary to make sure that no careless or reckless art lovers fall into its deep wells.

Even the 10:30 tour will soon be temporarily suspended: The Heizer installation is scheduled to be "closed for conservation," Feb. 26 to Mar 10.