Dia Names New Director

NEW YORK—The board of trustees of the Dia Art Foundation has announced Philippe Vergne, currently deputy director and chief curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, as Dia's new director. He assumes the post September 15, 2008, and succeeds Jeffrey Weiss, who stepped down in March.

Vergne will preside over the organization's installations in New York and the American West and the museum Dia: Beacon, in Beacon, N.Y., and will be instrumental in finding a new home for the contemporary art program in New York City.

Vergne has organized more than 25 international exhibitions since joining the Walker in 1997, including last year's traveling Kara Walker retrospective, and co-curated the 2006 Whitney Biennial with Chrissie Iles. He left the museum briefly when, in fall 2004, he was appointed director of the Francois Pinault Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris. He left that post in July 2005 when the foundation relocated its proposed museum from Paris to Venice, returning to the Walker as deputy director and chief curator.

Vergne's departure from the Walker "is unlikely to surprise the art world," according to the New York Times, as he was seen as a candidate to replace Walker director Kathy Halbreich when she resigned last year after 16 years in the post but was passed over in favor of Olga Viso of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.