[3] The Dia Art Foundation was established in 1974 in New York City by Heiner Friedrich and Schlumberger heiress Philippa de Menil, who would later get married, as well as Helen Winkler.

The goal of the foundation was to assist artists in the creation of projects with scales and scopes that the standard museum and gallery systems could not support.

[4][5] In its first decade the foundation focused on supporting large installations in the American West as well as patronizing several artists, included Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Walter De Maria, with stipends, studios, and archivists.

[5][6] Previous to Dia opening a museum in Chelsea it supported a studio and exhibition space for the artist Robert Whitman in the neighborhood.

[3] The building was particularly well suited for displays of art with 8,000 square feet of space on each floor, copious natural light from perimeter windows, a grid of supporting columns and a large freight elevator.

[8][3][7] The first exhibits at the museum were by three German artists, Joseph Beuys, Blinky Palermo, and Imi Knoebel who each got an entire floor of the building decated to presenting their works in Dia's collection.

[3] Dia began as an institution dedicated to supporting long-term projects by living artists, and for several years, it was trying to raise money to build a space for such endeavors in Manhattan, after outgrowing its two locations on West 22nd Street in Chelsea and closing them in 2004.

[13] The foundation's board abandoned plans on opening a museum at the entrance to the High Line in 2006 after losing its longtime director, Michael Govan, and its chairman and benefactor, Leonard Riggio.

[14] In November 2009 Dia's Director, Philippe Vergne, announced plans to reopen in Chelsea on West 22nd Street.

[15] In 2011, after years of negotiations, Dia bought the former Alcamo Marble building at 541 West 22nd Street, located between its former space at No.

[21] For the installation on West 22nd Street multiple species of trees are used, including the Bradford cultivar of Callery pear, common hackberry, Ginkgo biloba, Japanese pagoda tree, Japanese zelkova, littleleaf linden, pin oak, sycamore, and thornless honeylocust.

The work consisted of a small urban park containing a pavilion created out of one-way glass, named Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, and a shed for viewing video art.