Curator Diya Vij to Lead NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs
18March 3, 2026
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed curatorDiya Vijdirector of the city’sDepartment of Cultural Affairs. Vij, who is currently a vice president at Brooklyn nonprofit Powerhouse Arts, is the first person of Southeast Asian descent to occupy the role. She will report to Julie Su, New York’s first deputy mayor for economic justice. In her new job, Vij will develop exhibitions, serve as artistic liaison for festivals and fairs, support residency and artist subsidy initiatives, and help to expand educational programming.
“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,” Mamdani told theNew York Times.
Encompassing more than a thousand nonprofit cultural organizations across five boroughs, the DCA is the largest municipal cultural funder in the US, distributing $245 million over the last fiscal year. Vij arrives to her new post as the city’s cultural scene reckons with federal budget cuts to the arts, climbing costs, and the long hangover of the Covid-19 crisis. In addition, international tourism, a driver of the city’s museum economy, has taken a hit under the Trump administration.
Vij has a strong background in public and socially engaged art. She worked at the DCA earlier in her career, from 2014 to 2019, as a digital communications manager, inaugurating the agency’s Public Artists in Residence program and leading its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. Before joining Powerhouse, where she oversaw its curatorial and public arts program, Vij was a curator at Creative Time, where she launched CTHQ, a hub for politically and socially engaged art, and helped realize several public art commissions. Earlier roles include curatorial positions at New York’s High Line and at the Queens Museum.