Key Highlights
- The Dia Art Foundation’s 2025 Fall Night celebrated Melvin Edwards and Meg Webster.
- A roster of contemporary artists, including Marina Abramović and Doug Aitken, attended the event.
- Artist Sanford Biggers delivered a tribute to Melvin Edwards, highlighting his impact on contemporary art.
- Architect Steven Holl paid homage to Meg Webster, emphasizing her ecological consciousness in art.
The Dia Art Foundation’s Annual Fall Night: A Celebration of Contemporary Art and Visionary Artists
The Dia Art Foundation’s 2025 Fall Night was a star-studded event that brought together an impressive array of artists, curators, and art enthusiasts to celebrate the foundation’s enduring mission. The evening featured a cocktail reception and exhibition viewing at Dia Chelsea, followed by a dinner honoring Melvin Edwards and Meg Webster.
Artistic Lineup and Exhibition
The event kicked off with an exhibition viewing at Dia Chelsea, where guests admired 12 + 2—Duane Linklater’s first major U.S. commission. His monumental clay animal forms inhabited the space, evoking a primal connection to matter. These gigantic creatures seemed to emerge from an elemental prehistory, before and beyond civilization’s structural and rational constraints.
A circular wall relief of swirling clay by Duane Linklater further emphasized the cosmic and earthy themes, channeling a sense of cosmic gesture—an improvised cosmology unfolding in earthy motion, connecting the microcosm of human making with the broader entropic order that regulates all forces between energy and matter. The galleries at Dia Chelsea were open for a special viewing of Duane Linklater’s work.
Honoring Visionary Artists
Artists such as Marina Abramović, Doug Aitken, Tony Cokes, Mary Corman, Jung Hee Choi, N. Dash, Torkwase Dyson, Miles Greenberg, Rachel Harrison, Tehching Hsieh, EJ Hill, Anne Imhof, Suzanne Jackson, Vera Lutter, Nate Lowman, Jill Magid, Tyler Mitchell, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kent Monkman, Camille Norment, Precious Okoyomon, Nicolas Party, Howardena Pindell, Alan Ruiz, Martha Rosler, Gedi Sibony, Haim Steinbach, Amy Sillman, Pat Steir, Richard Tuttle, Cheyney Thompson, and William T. Williams were present.
Sanford Biggers delivered a heartfelt tribute to Melvin Edwards, reflecting on their shared Houston roots and the profound emotional and artistic bond between them.
His remarks captured how Edwards has imbued his rigorous formalism with a uniquely human and political charge: abstract forms that pulse with the weight of history and memory, between oppression and liberation.
Architect Steven Holl paid homage to Meg Webster, tracing her practice’s infusion of Land Art and process-based sculpture with a prescient ecological consciousness. Her works embrace the entropic principle of impermanence and transformation while prompting reflection on sustainability and humanity’s relationship with the earth.
The Night’s Honorees
Nathalie de Gunzburg, chair of Dia’s board, welcomed guests with welcoming remarks. Jessica Morgan, Dia’s director, then took the dais to speak about her recent art week in Paris where she opened “Minimal” at La Bourse de Commerce. The show celebrated the aesthetics and philosophy of Minimalism while tracing its global evolution and enduring influence.
The night concluded with a dinner that included trustees Sandra J.
Brant, J. Patrick Collins, Carol Finley, Jahanaz Jaffer, Dana Su Lee, Sara Morishige, and Cordy Ryman. The crowd also featured collectors, philanthropists, and cultural figures such as Amy Astley, Stewart Butterfield and Jen Rubio, Lynne Cooke, Lisa Dennison, Fairfax Dorn, Michael Fisch, Molly Gochman, Steven Holl, Stephanie Ingrassia, Hiroyuki Maki, Courtney J. Martin, Sukey Novogratz, Monique Péan, Loring Randolph, Scott Rothkopf, Axel Rüger, Salman Rushdie, Bernard and Almine Ruiz-Picasso, Olivier Sarkozy, Ivy Shapiro, Allan Schwartzman, Akio Tagawa, Ann Temkin, Helen and Peter Warwick, and Sara Zewde.
No Dia gathering would be complete without members of the gallery world who have long supported the foundation’s mission: Paula Cooper, Lucas Cooper, Arne Glimcher, Alexander Gray, Carol Greene, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, José Kuri, Dominique Lévy, Alex Logsdail, Siniša Mačković, Ales Ortuzar, Sukanya Rajaratnam, Thaddaeus Ropac, Almine Rech-Picasso, and Kara Vander Weg were all among the evening’s guests.
