Diana Thater at “Inspirations – Five Practices" Symposium →

Diana Thater
October 25, 2025 | Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment, Richardson Memorial Hall, New Oreleans

Top L-R: Carol Reese, Deborah Berke, Mary McLeod. Bottom L-R: Amy Murphy, Joan Ockman, Diana Thater. Images courtesy of Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment

“Inspirations—Five Practices” is a one-day symposium that promotes the 2025-2026 Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment's Lecture Series and Public Programs theme “Common Good,” which is also the title and theme of the school's upcoming issue of The ReView book. It brings together five women who have made outstanding contributions through their award-winning works of art, architecture, theory, and scholarship. Educating and inspiring thousands of university students, they have had wide-ranging influence in the academy and beyond. Over the course of the day, each will present perspectives on the ways in which she has endeavored to address issues in support of the common good.

Organized by Carol McMichael Reese, Emerita Professor, Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment, the symposium features invited speakers: Deborah Berke, Yale University School of Architecture, TenBerke; Mary McLeod, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation; Amy Murphy, University of Southern California School of Architecture; Joan Ockman, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; and Diana Thater, ArtCenter College of Design.

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FullCircle Presents Diana Thater: ArtCenter’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner (A special conversation with the artist) →

Diana Thater
Saturday, October 4, 2–3 p.m. | ArtCenter, Pasadena

Portrait of Diana Thater with Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, 2016 (Kenya). Photo by T. Kelly Mason.

Diana Thater (MFA ‘90 Fine Arts/Painting) has been at the forefront of her medium since her graduation from ArtCenter in 1990. Her work in film, video and installation has been internationally recognized. In her 35-year career, she has been the subject of 92 solo exhibitions and has participated in over 200 group exhibitions. She has produced eight monographs and has received numerous fellowships, grants and awards including her most recent award - The Trellis Art Prize - announced in July of this year. Thater has just returned from a shoot at Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny. The film and video shot on location will become a large-scale permanent outdoor installation commissioned for the new LACMA campus. Tonight she will preview this new project, as well as some of her recent work, and will discuss her wide range of interests and inspirations. Her presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

*A private reception will precede the presentation from 1–2 p.m. in the Faculty Dining Room, Hillside Campus (ArtCenter FullCircle Members Only)

ArtCenter College of Design, Hillside Campus, 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103

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ArtCenter Chair Diana Thater Honored Amidst Loss and Renewal →

Diana Thater | Pasadena Now

ArtCenter College of Design will present its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award to Diana Thater on Saturday, September 27 in Pasadena, honoring a career defined by vision and resilience.

Thater, chair of ArtCenter’s Art Department since 2024 and a faculty member since 1995, experienced profound upheaval when the Eaton Fire devastated her home, studio, and three decades of creative work in Altadena last January.

“I have no concept of home. I sort of lost it, and I haven’t refound it yet. I don’t know where I’m going to be living. I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things. So everything’s kind of up in the air for me right now,” Thater said, reflecting on the loss. “We lost everything, including our studio and all of our work.”

Read More Here.

Diana Thater: Peonies at ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena →

Diana Thater
September 20 - November 9, 2025 | ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena

Diana Thater, Peony (2020); Installation: 4 flat monitors, media player; Edition of 1 + 1AP (video still)

A special presentation of acclaimed artist, educator, writer, curator and alumna Diana Thater's work Peonies will be on view in the College's Mullin Transportation Design Center. The work, presented on one large video monitor, is a still life of a bouquet of flowers filmed over the course of 12 hours and presented in one minute.

Thater will receive the College’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 ArtCenter Awards ceremony on Saturday, September 27, 2025.

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OCMA Artist Talk: Diana Thater with Heidi Zuckerman →

Diana Thater | Orange County Museum of Art

Join acclaimed Orange County Museum of Art collection artist Diana Thater in conversation with the museum’s CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman on Sunday August 3rd as they discuss the importance of time, what it means to perform with and for an artwork, memory, and human nature.

Thater was recently awarded a Milestone Grant from the Trellis Art Fund, adding to an impressive list of accolades.

Pre-order tickets here

Diana Thater a Recipient of MCA Santa Barbara's 2025 Art Award →

Diana Thater | MCA Santa Barbara Art Awards

The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara’s Art Awards honor and recognize individuals or organizations that have made a significant impact on the arts and culture of the region.

Diana Thater is awarded this honor alongside composer Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin and artists Gabriela Ruiz and Manjari Sharma.

Thater has pioneered the use of film, video, light, and sound, continually challenging the boundaries of time-based media and installation art. Her work explores the relationship between the natural and man-made worlds while critically examining the structures of mediated reality. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including literature, animal behavior sciences, mathematics, chess, and sociology, her evocative works directly engage their surroundings, producing an intricate relationship between time and space.

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Diana Thater Awarded a 2025 Tellis Art Fund Milestone Grant →

Diana Thater | ArtCenter College of Design

The Trellis Art Fund provides financial support to artists who demonstrate a trajectory of excellence, regardless of career stage, age, education, location, or commercial representation.

Each year, The Trellis Art Fund award grants to artists who reflect a consistent, engaged practice. The Trellis Art Fund has a particular interest in artists from historically underrepresented groups, as well as those working outside the commercial art market.

This grant recognizes artists who have demonstrated a trajectory of creative excellence over the course of their career. Their work embodies a sustained professional commitment, as well as an engaged and evolving practice over time.

This award is an acknowledgment of an artist’s sizable contribution to their area of focus. As such, it’s intended to provide them with the additional resources to plan their future pursuits.

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Diana Thater and 8 Other Artists Pick Most Influential Environmental Art of the Past Century →

Diana Thater | Cultured Magazine

“This might not be environmental art, but it is an astounding image of the living environment, and it does what 'environmental' art should do and that is to give us an appreciation of the fascinating lives of others. It covers the 'art' part of the equation be being a REALLY GOOD photograph—something, ironically enough, we see very little of these days.

The story is this: A photographer was filming crested black macaques in Indonesia. He left his camera, and a female macaque snapped a series of self-portraits. You can see her thinking about it across the range of images. There are several shots where she tries serious looks—then she finally grins. Presumably, she was looking at her own reflection in the lens as she tried out different attitudes. In some of the photos you can see the camera lens reflected in her eyes. It’s not just a charming image of self-reflection; smiling from ear to ear, this macaque presents herself to the world. My purpose in making art is in representing those who do not represent themselves. But this macaque doesn’t need me. Crested black macaques are critically endangered.”

Read more here.

Diana Thater in Atmospheric River at Gattopardo →

Diana Thater
February 16 - March 15, 2025 | Gattopardo, Glendale

Diana Thater, Peony (2020); Installation: 4 flat monitors, media player; Edition of 1 + 1AP (video still)

Atmospheric River is a group exhibition benefiting LA fire relief efforts featuring works by Ren Ebel, Juliana Halpert, Gordon Matta-Clark, T. Kelly Mason, Olivia Mole, Jasminne Morataya, Josh Schaedel, Diana Thater, Jennifer West and Jason Yates.

Atmospheric River foregrounds a small history of intergenre artists working with the prescient efflorescence of their time. In Open House, an industrial container becomes a vessel for expansive collaboration. Likewise, the city of Los Angeles functions as an improbable container, subject and asylum for its artists. The exhibited artworks traffic in this diligent fluidity, landscapes of psychic topographies and medium agnosticism.

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The Art of Film →

Diana Thater | Aesthetica Magazine

Diana Thater, Practical Effects, Installation view: LUMA Arles, France, 2024.

By Emma Jacob

Diana Thater (b.1962) has been a pioneering creator of film and art since the early 1990s. She is best known for her site-specific installations, such as Delphine (1999) and knots + surfaces (2001), which explore the relationship between humans and the natural world. Here, she approaches the idea of post-apocalyptic life through a poignant and wistful lens, following a primate-like robot that is the last being left on Earth. It is tasked with the upkeep of a garden filled with intricately sculpted topiary animals. Devoid of interaction, the colourful robot can only find companionship with the figures it cares for. This video is a strange and tragicomic vision of how the organic and inorganic worlds may collide and support one another in unexpected ways as the Earth shifts and changes due to human behaviour. 

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RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology at the Barbican review: hits hard right from the start →

Simryn Gill & Diana Thater | the Evening Standard

Fern Shaffer, Nine Year Ritual of Healing - 9 April, 1998, 1998

By Ben Luke

This important and timely exhibition about ecofeminism and art across several decades, gathers 50 international women and gender-nonconforming artists who explore the links between the oppression of women and environmental collapse. An exhibition titled RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology undoubtedly risks preaching only to the choir, but that would be a shame. It is both ambitious and admirable, if uneven in places.

Mostly through film and photography, it treats the climate emergency as systemic and intersectional; connected to widespread abuses of power relating to the extractive impulses of colonialism and capitalism, to racism and the exploitation of indigenous communities. Organised thematically, it has distinctive focuses within this vast subject, from the effects of industrial extractivism, to histories of protest and artists’ reimaginings of the connection beneath the Earth and womanhood.

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Anonymous Was a Woman and New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Announce 2023 Environmental Art Grants Recipients

Diana Thater | NYFA Awards

Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) and The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) have announced the recipients of the Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grants (AWAW EAG) program, which provides one-time grants of up to $20,000 to support environmental art projects led by women-identifying artists from the United States and U.S. territories. In the 2023 cycle, the second year of the program, a total of $309,000 in grant funding was awarded to 20 projects that will focus on environmental issues and advocacy in locations including Belize, Southern Iraq, Mongolia, New York, Pennsylvania, Tierra del Fuego, West Virginia, and Washington. The 20 projects were selected from 884 applications from artists who reside in the United States and U.S. Territories.

Avant L'Orage at The Pinault Collection →

Diana Thater | Pinault Collection

(c) Les Graphiquants

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, in the urgency of the present, before the storm breaks again, the artists in the exhibition invent unusual ecosystems that contain new seasons.

Whereas ancestral calendars were conditioned by cosmic movements, our frantic race for progress and abundance has irrevocably transformed our environment. Its disruption forces us to adapt in turn. Formerly the granary of Paris, the Bourse de Commerce building has been both a witness to and an agent in the global acceleration of predatory trade since 1889, resulting from colonisation and the intensive exploitation of the planet’s resources. The building embodies this new, desynchronised cycle of time. In the iron, glass, stone, and concrete architecture of the Bourse de Commerce, which could be that of a greenhouse, a series of fleeting and contradictory temporalities appear, including the landscape imagined by Danh Vo for the Rotunda.

In the other spaces, a display from the Pinault Collection supports this birth of a new cycle of seasons in the making, of mutating ecosystems, of micro-territories in gestation, bathed in a light approaching a mutating climatic dusk. Hicham Berrada’s Présage, which immerses the visitor in a landscape in the throes of transformation, makes us aware of the beauty of a world without us. Diana Thater’s Chernobyl takes us into an irradiated landscape, an apocalyptic theatre, while Pierre Huyghe’s film follows the movements of a monkey wearing a human mask, abandoned in the outskirts of Fukushima. Robert Gober’s Waterfall depicts a trompe l’oeil nature from which we are irretrievably separated, while Pierre Huyghe’s Untilled (a play on the words “untitled” and “uncultivated”) recreates the world as experienced by non-humans, from dogs to insects, in a compost committed to new possibilities for fertilising the world.

Exhibition runs from 8 February to 11 September 2023.

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Diana Thater: Windows 1992-2021 →

Diana Thater

Since emerging in the early 1990s, Diana Thater has pioneered the use of film, video, light, and sound, continually challenging the boundaries of time-based media and installation art. Her work explores the relationship between the natural and man-made worlds while critically examining the structures of mediated reality. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including literature, animal behavior sciences, mathematics, chess, and sociology, her evocative works directly engage their surroundings, producing an intricate relationship between time and space.

Diana Thater speaks with Nikita McCauley of 1301PE.

The Conversation →

By D. Edward Martin

“Beyond the fun, however, there are layers of meaning to unpack and to contemplate. For example, the conversation between human and animal is one that is fraught with difficulty. We speak for animals, and we talk over them. A conversation implies two or more parties that are equal in some way, and this conversation is held back by those who believe that between human and animal there is (to borrow a phrase from Jane Goodall) a difference of kind, and not simply one of degree. Additionally, the idea that nature is somehow “out there” and not surrounding us at every moment—whether in a gallery, at home, or in the outdoors—erects barriers to sympathy as well.”

Diana Thater: The Conversation at 1301PE →

Installation view, Diana Thater, The Conversation, 2021. 1301PE Los Angeles. Photography by Fredrik Nilsen.

Written by Shana Nys Dambrot

“Titled Talk to Us and Listen to Us (both works: 2021, 2-channel audio / video installation, endless loop), Thater packs a lot of poetry and dissonance into two installations. The color is warm and beckoning, while the literal cacophony is both mysterious and overwhelming. It’s loud and it’s hard to get a handle on. The human voices mimicking parrot voices which at times are themselves imitating human speech, intertwined with the lavishly expressive abstract natural language of these birds, blends and obscures and augments and eventually settles into a kind of rhythm. The soothing effect of the colored light flooding and unifying the space helps this process, anchoring the viewer to the room long enough for the poetics and onomatopeias to sort themselves out. “Up and down and in and out…To run, to walk, to dream. Bang, whistle, woo-hoo! Listen to us! Listen to us!””

Diana Thater: True Life Adventures Launches Art on theMART

True Life Adventures at Art on theMART

True Life Adventures at Art on theMART

Diana Thater

True Life Adventures

Opening Saturday September 29 at 6:30pm 

On View September 30 - December 30, 2018

Art on theMART

Upper Wacker Drive between N. Wells St.  and N. Franklin St.

& The Jetty and Confluence areas on The Chicago Riverwalk

between Wells and Lake St., Chicago, IL 60654

On Saturday, September 29, 2018, pioneering new media artist Diana Thater will present a site-specific program of digital artworks entitled True Life Adventures during the large-scale public unveiling event of Art on theMART. Spanning the river façade of Chicago's theMART, the public installation will be the world's largest permanent digital art projection.

The film explores the plight of animals living in imminent danger of poaching in Kenya. In scaling images of flora and fauna to the size of theMART’s façade, Thater explores the intersection between the time-based and spatial dimensions of the moving image. Thater manipulates video projections, light, color and architecture to transport viewers around the world.

“For the Art on theMART opening program I’ve made a short film titled True Life Adventures. It collages together live footage of wild animals living in the Chyulu Hills near Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya. My work focuses on nature and the remaining last bits of wildlife that we’re lucky enough to still have. Perhaps we can inhabit a space where these fragile creatures and understanding is part of our world. I want to bring them to Chicago as a kind of big splash of the wild in the midst of a great city," says Thater.

“The work is not narrative and linear - it is simultaneous - with multiple images inhabiting the screen at once, all moving in different directions at the same time. The accompanying soundtrack was all recorded live in Kenya, to further the exotic but peaceful story of elephants, zebras and giraffe in their native habitat.”

Art on theMART will be a first-of-its-kind, curated digital art installation across 2.5 acres (two football fields) of theMART's river façade. The installation's first season will include four contemporary, digital artworks by artists Thater, Zheng Chongbin, Jason Salavon, and Jan Tichy, using 34 projectors to illuminate building's exterior. Art on theMART marks the first time a projection of its size and scope will be completely dedicated to digital art with no branding, sponsorship credits or messaging. The City of Chicago and theMART have partnered to manage and curate the projected artwork for the duration of a thirty-year agreement. The inaugural installation will be on view for two hours each evening beginning at dusk Wednesdays through Sundays, September 30 through December 30, 2018.

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The Brooklyn Rail: Diana Thater with Steven Pestana

Diana Thater, Blitz, 2008. Installation view, Diana Thater: Here is a text about the world. . ., David Zwirner, New York, 2008. © Diana Thater. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

Diana Thater, Blitz, 2008. Installation view, Diana Thater: Here is a text about the world. . ., David Zwirner, New York, 2008. © Diana Thater. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

I first met Diana Thater in June at the opening of the Watershed, the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art's cavernous new project space facing the Boston Harbor. The ICA launched the venue, once an industrial metal facility, with a career-spanning selection of Thater's work. It was my first opportunity to encounter these architecturally transformative video installations in person. Immersed in a luminous sweep of the color spectrum, Thater's meditative images of natural phenomena left a strong visceral impression. The following interview took place on the last day of July at her home studio in Pasadena, CA with Thater vibrantly reaching for video excerpts, books, slideshows, and ephemera to illustrate the conversation. . .

By Steven Pestana

Full Interview