Beacon, New York, August 5, 2022 – This August, Dia Art Foundation presents three exhibitions at Dia Beacon drawn from the institution’s permanent collection. Opening over the course of a month, these presentations of works by Robert Irwin, Blinky Palermo, and Lawrence Weiner demonstrate key themes at the core of Dia’s program: light, space, color, and language. Irwin’s Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia Beacon (1972/2022), a new addition to the collection, will be installed for the first time at the museum, the galleries and grounds of which the artist redesigned in 1999–2003. Exhibitions of works by Weiner and Palermo, opening later in the month, bring iconic and much-loved artworks back on view. 

Robert Irwin
Opening August 6, 2022, Long-Term View
Dia Beacon
A progenitor of the late 1960s California-based Light and Space movement, Robert Irwin began his career as an abstract painter but quickly turned to more ephemeral installations that respond to their surrounding environments. Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia Beacon exemplifies what the artist describes as his site-conditioned mode of working. First realized as a commission in 1972 for Harvard University’s Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts (and then titled Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Fogg Museum, Harvard), the work is also one of the artist’s earliest uses of scrim—a gauzy material he discovered in 1970—to create luminescent volumes of light in relationship to existing architecture. This large-scale work places his work in dialogue with concurrent presentations of works by Larry Bell, Melvin Edwards, and Charles Gaines—all of whom have critically contributed to Minimal, Postminimal, and Conceptual art on the West Coast. Given Irwin's central role in the redesign of Dia Beacon, this display celebrates his foundational vision for the museum and offers the rare opportunity to appreciate the interconnections between the artistic and architectural aspects of his work.  

Lawrence Weiner
Opening August 12, 2022, Long-Term View
Dia Beacon
In part a medium for representing material relationships in the world, language is at the core of Lawrence Weiner’s practice. Each installation of his works can be conceived in relation to the venue and context. At Dia Beacon, visitors encounter Weiner’s text works in different environments—in a stairwell, in the cafe, over the admissions desk, or on the back of the building. This installation brings a key work, 5 Figures of Structure (1987), back to the galleries, and marks the first presentation of the artist’s work at Dia since his passing in 2021.

Blinky Palermo
Opening August 20, 2022, Long-Term View
Dia Beacon 
Returning to view at Dia Beacon, Times of the Day (1974–76) is one of Blinky Palermo’s most pivotal series yet one rarely seen in its entirety. Conceived by the artist after his relocation to New York from Düsseldorf in 1973, Times of the Day comprises six four-part works, the use of color, spacing and progression of which suggests the transition from day to night, and was deeply formative for Palermo’s serialized, multipart Metallbilder (Metal Pictures, 1973—77), the last body of work in his short yet prolific career.

About Dia Art Foundation

Taking its name from the Greek word meaning “through,” Dia was established in 1974 with the mission to serve as a conduit for artists to realize ambitious new projects, unmediated by overt interpretation and uncurbed by the limitations of more traditional museums and galleries. Dia’s programming fosters contemplative and sustained consideration of a single artist’s body of work and its collection is distinguished by the deep and longstanding relationships that the nonprofit has cultivated with artists whose work came to prominence particularly in the 1960s and ’70s. 

In addition to Dia Beacon, Dia Bridgehampton, and Dia Chelsea, Dia maintains and operates a constellation of commissions, long-term installations, and site-specific projects, notably focused on Land art, nationally and internationally. These include: 

• Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room(1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), and Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, inaugurated in 1982 and ongoing), all located in New York City
• De Maria’s The Lightning Field(1977), in western New Mexico
• Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty(1970), in the Great Salt Lake, Utah
• Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels(1973–76), in the Great Basin Desert, Utah
• De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer(1977), in Kassel, Germany 

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For additional information or materials, contact: 
(U.S. press inquiries)

Hannah Gompertz, Dia Art Foundation, hgompertz@diaart.org, +1 212 293 5598
Melissa Parsoff, Parsoff Communications, mparsoff@parsoff-communications.com, +1 516 445 5899

(International press inquiries)
Sam Talbot, sam@sam-talbot.com, +44 (0) 772 5184 630

Image caption: Robert Irwin, Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia Beacon, 1972/2022. Installation view, Dia Beacon, Beacon, New York, 2022. © Dia Art Foundation. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York