NEW YORK, NY.- Jessica Morgan, Director, Dia Art Foundation, announced today the appointment of James Meyer as deputy director and chief curator. Meyer is currently an associate curator of modern art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. As a member of Dia’s senior management team, Meyer will work closely with Morgan to lead and shape Dia’s artistic vision across the institution’s curatorial, education, and publications departments, including its public programs. Meyer’s appointment begins January 2016.

“I am delighted to announce James Meyer’s appointment,” says Morgan. “His new role as deputy director and chief curator expands the previous role of curator at Dia. The depth of his knowledge and scholarship and the originality of his thinking on modern and contemporary art are widely recognized. This background coupled with the deep respect he has earned among artists will be invaluable as we continue to expand our program and take Dia forward through acquisitions, displays, and exhibitions as well as dialogue on contemporary culture.”

“I am very pleased to join Dia, one of the leading contemporary art institutions in the United States. Dia’s commitment to exhibiting the most demanding work and to fostering critical dialogue is unique,” Meyer said. “My own scholarship strongly relates to Dia’s collection and curatorial program. 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.”

Meyer has been an associate curator the National Gallery of Art since 2010. He is currently organizing From Los Angeles to New York: The Dwan Gallery, 1959–71 (2016–17), which surveys Virginia Dwan’s groundbreaking support for Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Nouveau Réalisme, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Land art. At the National Gallery, he has also organized exhibitions on the work of Kerry James Marshall (2013–14) and Mel Bochner (2011–12) and has overseen several major acquisitions, including works by Hans Haacke, Barry Le Va, Marshall, David Novros, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Anne Truitt, as well as the promised gift of the Dwan Collection.

Since 2012, Meyer has been an adjunct professor of art history at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was previously the Winship Distinguished Research Associate Professor of Art History (2006–09) and an associate professor of art history (2002–10) at Emory University in Atlanta. He was also the Sterling Clark Visiting Professor (2006) at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and taught at Northwestern University (2004) in Evanston, Illinois.

His research has been awarded a number of prestigious grants and honors, among them a Sterling Clark Fellowship; a Smithsonian Senior Fellowship; the Daphne Mayo Visiting Professorship at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia; and a Getty Research Support Grant.

Meyer’s books include Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (2001), Minimalism (2000), and edited volumes of the writings of Carl Andre and Gregg Bordowitz. His work has also appeared in exhibition catalogues published by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Tate Britain, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and in journals such as Artforum, where he is a contributing editor, Grey Room, and October. He recently completed a book-length manuscript, The Art of Return: The Sixties and Contemporary Art and Culture which deals with the impact of 1960s and 1970s politics and aesthetics on art, film and writing of the last 20 years.

Meyer holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He received a BA from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.