The Philadelphia Inquirer
 Saturday



Rutgers receives $34M collection of Soviet-era art

Emerson I. Max


Rutgers University has received what it says is its largest-ever
single donation, a huge collection of Soviet nonconformist art valued
at more than $34 million.

Nancy Dodge, widow of famed economist and art collector Norton Dodge,
is the donor of the collection, which contains over 17,300 artworks,
the university said in a statement Thursday. The works will join the
body of over 4,000 pieces of Soviet nonconformist art the Dodges
donated in 1991 to Rutgers Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New
Brunswick, N.J.

It is staggering to have the entire collection brought together at
last, said Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Zimmerli. Rutgers
University No. 2, Sacralizators for a Friendly Party (1979) by Viktor
Pivovarov. Graphite and colored pencil on paper.

The Dodge family-related Avenir Foundation also will provide an
endowment of $10 million for exhibiting and conserving the art and for
scholarships.

The joined collections contain the work of more than 1,000 artists who
were active between the 1950s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in
the early 1990s.

The newly donated works include paintings on canvas and panel,
sculptures, assemblages, installations, works on paper, photographs,
videos, and artists books.

Besides Russia, the collection includes works produced in the former
Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and
Uzbekistan, the university said.

My husband, Norton, and I felt it was our mission to bring to light
these remarkable works that had been consigned to obscurity, and to
honor artists of exceptional talent who had been suppressed and
defamed, Dodge said in a statement.

The university said the donation makes the museum the world s
principal site for studying and exhibiting the most vital, diverse,
and daring strains of art produced throughout the USSR over four
decades.

This remarkable gift underscores our university s cultural and
educational value to our global society, said Deba Dutta, chancellor
of Rutgers=New Brunswick.

The largest donation Rutgers had previously received was $27 million
from an anonymous donor in 2011 to fund endowed chair positions.