Spiritual Pedagogies Fellowship Dia Art Foundation

Summary

Dia’s Learning and Engagement fellowships bring together early-career artists, educators, and cultural producers to explore and deepen their own creative, intellectual, and professional practices. Based in Beacon and Chelsea and engaging Dia’s sites across New York, fellows activate Dia as a resource for collective scholarship, experimentation, and exchange.

The 2026–27 Spiritual Pedagogies Fellowship draws on the sustained inquiry of artists in Dia’s collection and exhibition history to question the evolving relationship between artistic practice, pedagogy, and spirituality. What does it mean for artists to act as conduits, channel inspiration, and create artworks that invite contemplation, revelation, or transcendence? How have spiritual traditions and spaces shaped the ways that people gather, learn, and make meaning?

With a broad understanding of spirituality that encompasses theological, mystical, ritualistic, and embodied practices, fellows will examine how spirituality is entwined with creative and pedagogical pursuits and explore what a rigorous engagement with spirituality might open in our understanding of contemporary art, learning, and culture.

Compensation: $3,000 stipend

Term: October 2026 – June 2027

Schedule:

• Monthly cohort sessions: first Friday of each month at Dia Chelsea or Beacon; select sessions will take place at alternative sites and/or times
• Monthly mentorship meetings
• Monthly program engagements

Format: In-Person

Cohort: Six fellows

Deadline: 08/09/2026

Dia invites applications from early-career artists, educators, and cultural producers with an interest in contemporary art, experimental pedagogy, and community engagement, and who seek opportunities to deepen their individual creative or pedagogical practice in collaboration with peers and within the context of Dia Art Foundation and its Learning and Engagement department.

Based in New York, Dia Art Foundation is committed to advancing, realizing, and preserving the vision of artists. A nonprofit founded in 1974, Dia collects the work of some of the most renowned artists of the last half-century; presents long-term, site‑specific projects; executes new commissions; and produces scholarly publications related to its exhibitions and collection.