Curator Diya Vij Named NYC Culture Commissioner
The veteran art worker is a “visionary and deeply thoughtful leader,” said Mayor Mamdani.
Diya Vij, vice president of curatorial and arts programs at the Brooklyn nonprofit Powerhouse Arts, will be New York City's next culture commissioner.
Rumors about Vij's pick for the top job at the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) have circulated in the local art community for weeks, until the New York Times broke the news today, February 28.
Vij, who was a member of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's transition team, will succeed Laurie Cumbo just four months after joining Powerhouse Arts.
An experienced curator with a community-forward approach, she has held several key positions at Creative Time, the High Line, and elsewhere. She has even worked at the DCLA from 2014 to 2019.
Vij got her start as a curatorial fellow at the Queens Museum in 2010, where she worked under the leadership of Tom Finkelpearl, who later served as culture commissioner under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I feel grateful all the time that it was my entry point into the art world because it was always about understanding how art and community live together and having a blurry understanding of the limits of the fields of art,” she told Hyperallergic in a 2021 podcast interview.
“I'm always working around the assumption, idea, and understanding that art is everywhere," she added. "The artists are everywhere...they're in and out of different industries and movement spaces, and part of coalition building.”
When Finkelpearl was tapped as commissioner in 2014, he brought Vij with him. Together with the department's then-Chief of Staff Shirley Levy, she launched the Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) program in 2015, nestling artists within city agencies for a year-long residency to “propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges.”
At Creative Time, Vij spearheaded the organization's CTHQ — a permanent event space in Manhattan's Lower East Side that functions as a collaborative hub for artists and activists working in social, economic, and accessibility justice. In that same vein, she launched the organization's Research & Development Fellowship for socially engaged artists and re-ignited the Creative Time Summit in 2024 after a five-year hiatus. Among other major projects, Vij facilitated the Indigenous-led public exhibition The World’s UnFair (2023) and organized Moving Chains: Toward Abolition (2023), a critical day-long program on Governor's Island.
In a statement to the Times, Mayor Mamdani called Vij a “visionary and deeply thoughtful leader who understands that art is not ornamental to this city — it is essential to it.”
He continued: “Under Diya’s leadership, we will fight to keep New York a city where artists can afford to live and create, and where every New Yorker, in every borough, can experience the energy and inspiration that makes art possible.”
