Zimmerli Art Museum Launches Global Resource for Soviet Nonconformist Art Dedicated Platform Expands Access to Renowned Dodge Collection.
From: Katerina Romanenko
Date: Jun 08, 2026

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University—New Brunswick is proud to announce the launch of a new website (dodge.zimmerli.rutgers.edu), dedicated to its internationally renowned Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, the largest collection of its kind in the world. This new digital platform provides access to the Zimmerli’s comprehensive visual and archival materials, an invaluable tool for everyone working in the field of Soviet and post-Soviet cultural history.

"The works in the Dodge Collection are testament to an entire generation of artists who understood, at considerable personal risk, that form itself was a political act,” said Maura Reilly, director of the Zimmerli. “For too long, the narratives surrounding this work have been fragmented and under-contextualized, and many of the artists and cultural communities represented here have received far less visibility than their work deserves. This new database will change all that.”

Developing this unprecedented resource would not have been possible without an international team of contributors. In addition to museum staff and digital specialists, 10 research managers, 21 translators, 11 editors and more than 150 scholars contributed their time and expertise. This initial iteration features hundreds of biographic entries about artists from 10 countries, and some 1,200 related works of art. Research articles explore the origins of the Dodge Collection, as well as defining moments in nonconformism in Armenia, the Baltics, Belarus, Latvia and Ukraine.

The new site was introduced during “Art and Dissent,” the conference held at the Zimmerli on April 30 and May 1, 2026. Fifteen scholars joined museum representatives to highlight the global significance of the Dodge Collection as a primary resource for research, teaching and the reexamination of Soviet‑era art through a contemporary lens. In addition to the launch of the new website, the conference featured several roundtable discussions, with a keynote by Madina Tlostanova, a decolonial theorist and professor at Linköping University in Sweden. Research managers—including current and former Dodge Fellows—discussed diverse topics featured in articles that spotlight Armenia, Baltic countries, Belarus, Central Asia, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia. The agenda and scholars’ biographies are available in the conference program and videos of sessions are available on the Zimmerli’s YouTube channel.

The Dodge website and conference were made possible by the generous support of the ADWT Endowment and Operating Fund, with additional support from the Avenir Foundation Endowment Fund and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Special thanks to the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) for their informational sponsorship of the conference program. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts offered additional support.