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The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art From the Soviet Union

1,500 Artists, 13 Countries

Thanks to a remarkable 1991 donation from Norton and Nancy Dodge the Zimmerli Art Museum holds the largest collection in the world of Soviet nonconformist art. Over 20,000 works by more than 1,000 artists reveal a culture that defied the strict, state-imposed conventions of Socialist Realism. This encyclopedic array of nonconformist art extends from about 1956 to 1991, from the beginning of Khrushchev’s cultural “thaw” to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The collection includes nonconformist art produced in the Soviet Russia and beyond, in the ethnically diverse republics of Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Large archival holdings support scholarship in the collection.

About the Collection

Exhibitions