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Dia Art Foundation Expands Board Leadership with the Appointment of Four New Members

George Condo, George Economou, RaHee Hong Lee, and Irene Panagopoulos Are Named Trustees

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2015

Dia Art Foundation Expands Board Leadership with the Appointment of Four New Members

George Condo, George Economou, RaHee Hong Lee, and Irene Panagopoulos Are Named Trustees


New York, NY – Dia Art Foundation announced today the expansion of its Board of Trustees. With the appointment of four new members, the expanded Board will provide Dia with an increasingly international leadership and a wide support base as it strengthens and activates all parts of its program, including its pioneering Western land projects, site-specific commissions, collections and programs at Dia:Beacon, and its artistic and intellectual presence in New York City. These are the first appointments under the leadership of Jessica Morgan, who became the Director of Dia Art Foundation in January 2015. The four new members are George Condo, George Economou, RaHee Hong Lee, and Irene Panagopoulos. Condo was elected as an artist trustee to replace Brice Marden, who was named Trustee Emeritus.

“These appointments come at a transformative time for Dia, which has just embarked on a new era under the leadership of Jessica Morgan,” said Nathalie de Gunzburg, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Dia Art Foundation. “The new Trustees bring diverse skills, knowledge, and experience that will complement the outstanding talents of our current members. We also express sincere thanks to Brice Marden. In recognition of his remarkable service to the Board and the guidance he will continue to provide, we are honored to elect him Trustee Emeritus.”

“I am thrilled to welcome to the Board four incredible individuals who are devoted to contemporary art and share Dia’s deep commitment to artists,” said Morgan. “Dia has a strong global presence and as our program expands, it will be a great strength to have an international mix among our Trustees. I am confident that that the collective wisdom and support of our Board will help lead Dia into its next period of unique development.”

George Condo
George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire, and studied Art History and Music Theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London, and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among many others. In 1999 Condo received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2005 he received the Francis J. Greenberger Award; and in 2013 Condo was honored by the New York Studio School. In 2011 the New Museum, New York, presented Mental States, a retrospective that traveled to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hayward Gallery, London; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.

George Economou
George Economou was born in Athens and is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career in shipping, expanded in offshore drilling and real estate, and has shared a passion for art throughout his career. His collecting activity began evolving in the 1990s with a focus on early twentieth-century European art and has grown to include an important holding of postwar and contemporary art. In 2012 he opened the George Economou Collection, an exhibition space in the suburbs of Athens where he organizes several exhibitions per year and collaborates regularly with international institutions and curators. Economou is also a member of the Tate Foundation Board of Trustees.

RaHee Hong Lee
RaHee Hong Lee, as the Director General of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, is responsible for operating three museums: Leeum and PLATEAU in Seoul and Ho-Am Art Museum in Yongin, which are all run by the Samsung Foundation of Culture. Building on the existing private collection of the late Ho-Am Byung-chull Lee, her father-in-law and the founder of Samsung, she continues his legacy of philanthropic activities with her husband, Kun-Hee Lee, Chairman of Samsung. Together they have expanded the collection to also include modern and contemporary art, contributing to the development of art both at home and abroad. She has especially committed herself to museum management, focusing on acquisition, conservation, education, and exhibition programs. Encompassing South Korean and international art, Leeum houses a permanent collection of approximately fifteen thousand works, ranging from prehistoric artifacts to Korean traditional art to early twentieth-century works by international modern masters to contemporary art. Leeum has organized several major exhibitions including retrospectives of Matthew Barney, Alexander Calder, Anish Kapoor, Christian Marclay, Do-Ho Suh, Andy Warhol, and, more recently, Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Irene Panagopoulos
Irene Panagopoulos was born in London and grew up in Greece. She currently serves as the Managing Director of Magna Marine in Athens. She is a collector of contemporary art with a focus on the Mediterranean. She serves on the International Council of Tate Modern, the Board of Trustees of Mills College in Oakland, California, and is an Honorary Consul of Greece for the Republic of Estonia. She has been a supporter of the Thessaloniki State Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Cycladic Art, and the Greek Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Additionally, Panagopoulos serves on the committee for Documenta 14, part of which will open in Athens in 2017. She received a BA from Mills College.

Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation, founded in 1974, is committed to initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 in Beacon, New York. Dia also maintains several long-term sites, including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany; and Flavin’s untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection) (1973) in Munich, Germany. Dia also commissions original artist web projects and produces scholarly publications.

Dia currently presents temporary installations, performances, lectures, and readings on West 22nd Street in the Chelsea section of New York City, the neighborhood it helped pioneer. Plans for a new project space are underway.

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