--- title: Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists Is on the 2026 TIME100 Art List description: Find out why Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists is one of 2026's 100 most influential people in art. canonical: https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-17T12:01:14.256Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-17T12:01:14.529Z og:title: Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists: TIME100 Art 2026 og:description: Find out why Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists is on the list og:url: https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt580dad90c6be56ee/6aa4ad8d3d4527a860384add/t100-art-2026-vij.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.28 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists: TIME100 Art 2026 og:type: article twitter:card: summary twitter:title: Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists: TIME100 Art 2026 twitter:description: Find out why Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists is on the list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt580dad90c6be56ee/6aa4ad8d3d4527a860384add/t100-art-2026-vij.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.28 --- Sep 17, 2026 # Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. Funding for culture by Isa Farfan  Marcus Maddox—The New York Times/Redux What do artists need to survive—and dream big? These questions guide the work of curator and arts administrator Diya Vij, who has spent years supporting contemporary artists at New York City institutions including the nonprofit Creative Time, where she commissioned public art and launched a fellowship for politically engaged artists. Now, Vij is working to build arts infrastructure that can sustain artists on a much larger scale as the new commissioner of New York City’s department of cultural affairs (DCLA). Since Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed her to steer the department in February, Vij—the first South Asian person to lead DCLA—has carved out a space for artists in the administration’s broader affordability agenda. She says she envisions a New York City that nurtures artists from their first art classes to the “big stages and all the places in between.” This goal appears harder than ever. Vij takes on the role at a time when public grants for cultural activities across the country are caught in political cross fires, and artists are leaving New York. The city’s population of artists, from actors to painters, has dropped by more than 4% since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, according to a 2026 [report](https://nycfuture.org/research/integrating-artists-into-nycs-affordable-housing-strategy) from the Center for an Urban Future, a policy organization that works to reduce inequality. It’s the first sustained decline in decades, while artist populations in more affordable cities like Philadelphia and Nashville are growing. Vij and her team are well positioned to tackle the challenge. The 40-year-old curator has a strong track record for establishing programs that imagine artists as collaborators in city government. Before becoming commissioner, Vij worked at the Queens Museum, High Line Art, and on special projects in Bill de Blasio’s DCLA, where she co-directed and launched a residency program that embeds artists in municipal agencies, from the department of sanitation to the Mayor’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations. DCLA is the largest city-level arts funder in the U.S., and distributes even more cultural funding than the congressionally supported National Endowment for the Arts. “This is a super important position in a very experimental and progressive administration,” notes Tom Finkelpearl, who worked with Vij in his previous roles as DCLA commissioner and director of the Queens Museum. “There's a lot at stake.” During her very first budget season, Vij helped secure a $323.8 million allotment from the city, the largest the agency has ever managed. The vast majority of those funds will filter through to New York City cultural organizations—including its most famous museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art among them—as well as local arts councils that support individual artists and grassroots groups. These councils facilitate programs including SU-CASA, which places resident teaching artists at senior centers across New York City to host free classes. The agency also administers the Cultural Development Fund, which typically awards funds to more than 1,000 nonprofits—including those advancing equity in the arts by engaging multilingual audiences and participants with disabilities. And it manages the Percent for Art program, distributing 1% of the city’s construction budget to commission site-specific artworks, including a forthcoming monument to the jazz singer Billie Holiday. In addition to its portfolio of visual and performing arts initiatives, DCLA supports the city’s botanic gardens, Bronx Zoo, and New York Aquarium. To make life as an artist in a changing New York more sustainable, Vij is also establishing a $10 million emergency fund for artists who find themselves in unexpected circumstances. People facing onetime emergencies—including health care costs and federal arts-funding cuts—will be able to apply for assistance through the Cultural Stability Fund in the coming months. The idea for the emergency pool came after local artists encouraged the city council to create a funding program to offset the mass rollbacks of art grants at the national level. Moving forward, Vij will continue to build her policy with input from the cultural workers most affected by it. “I have a practice of listening,” Vij says. “Even as a curator, I was really interested in making gathering spaces where people could surface the ideas of what it looks like to kind of live together differently, to govern differently, to build a different world.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/"},"headline":"Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists","datePublished":"2026-09-17T12:01:14.256Z","dateModified":"2026-09-17T12:01:14.529Z","description":"New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Diya Vij, appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is redesigning how the city funds and protects its artists.","url":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/","keywords":["TIME100 Art 2026","list","franchise","Accolades","Magazine"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt580dad90c6be56ee/6aa4ad8d3d4527a860384add/t100-art-2026-vij.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.28&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Isa Farfan"}],"creator":"Isa Farfan","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt580dad90c6be56ee/6aa4ad8d3d4527a860384add/t100-art-2026-vij.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675%2Coffset-x100.00%2Coffset-y0.28&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/","name":"TIME100 Art 2026"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collection/time100-art/2026/diya-vij/","name":"Diya Vij Wants New York to Fight for Its Artists"}}]}] ```