Zimmerli's treasures Expanded art museum displays its world-class collection Archived article from Nov 3, 2000 By Alice Roche Cody   New exhibits at the Zimmerli Michael Mazur: A Print Retrospective Nov. 12-Feb. 16 Monotypes in Contemporary American Printmaking from the Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios Nov. 12-Feb. 18 An Arkful of Animals: Captivating Creatures Nov. 12-Dec. 22 A World of Stage: Designs for Theater, Opera and Dance from the Riabov Collection Nov. 12-Dec. 22 Realities and Utopias: Abstract Painting from the Dodge Collection Nov. 12-Jan. 14 Provincetown Prints: Innovative Printmaking From an American Art Colony, 1910s to 1990s Nov. 12-Jan. 14 Opening Up: A Half-Century of Artistic Dialogue Between Japan and the West Nov. 12-ongoing The newly expanded and renovated Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, reopening Nov. 12, has joined the ranks of the top university art museums in the United States. With more than 60,000 works of art housed in 35,000 square feet, the Zimmerli is now firmly in the top 5 percent of university museums, right behind Harvard and Yale. Not bad for a small space that started 34 years ago as the Rutgers University Art Gallery. Phillip Dennis Cate, Zimmerli director, said that the opening is the culmination of his 30-year goal: to develop a museum of world-class stature with holdings of national and international significance. Thanks to the $5 million expansion, which adds some 15,000 square feet of space, many of these holdings are now out of storage and mounted in specially created displays designed to educate and delight viewers. "The expansion allows all aspects of the collection to be on view, including ancient art, European and American art, Russian art, and print and graphic art," says Cate. "There are also several spaces for classrooms and multipurpose rooms so that courses and community programs can be held in the museum. The Zimmerli can now better serve the academic community and New Jersey." Unofficial Soviet art The new two-story wing, designed by the architectural firm KSS of Princeton, houses one of the largest collections of Soviet nonconformist art in the world, the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, 1956 to 1986. The collection, comprising more than 17,000 works by some 1,000 artists, documents Soviet dissident art from the Cold War period. Financing for the expansion came primarily from the Dodges. The Dodge wing is connected to the museum's lobby by a long hallway, one side of which displays a time line of art and culture in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, while the other shows official Soviet propaganda posters. These include portraits glorifying Soviet leaders, such as Stalin and Lenin, and posters depicting idealized images of Soviet prosperity and the working class. "It's important to see what artists were reacting against," observes Jeffrey Wechsler, Zimmerli senior curator. "The nonconformist art was unofficial; it was not permitted. The artists who produced underground art were risking their careers, financial success and even their lives. Many were jailed or exiled." Categories of unacceptable art include political art, religious art, erotic art and formalistic art. The upper level of the new wing is dedicated to social and political art, including satire, protest and works that comment on Soviet life and its difficulties. "Aleksei Sundukov, for example, depicted the mundane dreariness of everyday Soviet life; Oscar Rabin showed dilapidated hovels, suburban slums and desolate streets; other artists addressed alcoholism, police brutality and street fights," says Alla Rosenfeld, curator of Russian and Soviet nonconformist art. "Viacheslav Sysoev produced boisterous scenes that bitingly satirized the Soviet system, exploiting the folk-art tradition of popular prints." One gallery contains AptArt, exhibitions shown between 1982 and 1984 inside artists' own studios and homes. These illegal shows could be quickly dismantled and moved. The gallery is designed to suggest a traditional Soviet apartment, complete with chairs, a table, a television and an ashtray overflowing with Russian cigarettes. Artists such as Sergei Anufriev, Yurii Leiderman and Nikita Alekseev were major participants in the AptArt movement. The wider gallery space has been dedicated to Sots Art, art from the 1970s and 1980s that mocks the imagery of official Soviet art and culture. Such images include works satirizing Communist slogans and scenes that depict themes of social progress or glorified political leaders. "In Sots Art, these stereotypes of Soviet propaganda were transformed into a new, contemporary language, which was the satirical inversion of Soviet ideology," says Rosenfeld. "The official kitsch of mass-produced Soviet ideological souvenirs -- statues of Soviet leaders, postcards showing idealized workers, toys or posters depicting Young Pioneers -- was mocked through distortion, defacement, satirical juxtapositions or recasting in crude materials." Leonid Lamm's 1987 "Birth of an Image" depicts the artist's views of life in prison and his regret over creating a propaganda installation to celebrate International Labor Day Photo by Nick Romanenko The installation "Birth of an Image," created by Leonid Lamm, depicts the artist's experiences in a prison labor camp. While incarcerated in 1973 on false charges, he was forced to make an outdoor propaganda installation to celebrate May 1, International Labor Day. After completing the project under strict supervision, Lamm was filled with sorrow and regret, Rosenfeld says. In response, he painted the watercolor "The Morning of Our Motherland" (1976), which shows prisoners marching next to his creation. The central component of the installation "Birth of an Image" is Lamm's 1987 composition, a modified version of "The Morning of Our Motherland," set against a black screen. Two rows of 10 black plywood boxes mounted on black, wooden posts extend from either side of the black screen, giving the structured effect of a prison. The window of each black box exhibits sketches of Lamm's Labor Day project. "We asked the artist to create a contemporary installation with old works from the Soviet Union," says Rosenfeld. "This is a new way to exhibit old works." The museum expansion also allows four temporary exhibits a year to be displayed from the Dodge Collection. One of these exhibits, Realities and Utopias, will be shown through Jan. 14. It is the first in a series that focuses on abstract painting as a continuous tradition in Russia, the republics of the Caucasus and the Baltic States. Downstairs, in the lower level of the new wing, works by individual artists from the Soviet nonconformist movement will be displayed on a rotating basis. "Their art exemplifies the range of subjects, styles and aesthetic approaches that became the foundation for the development and growth of unofficial art in the Soviet Union," says Rosenfeld. "Visitors will be able to see a variety of styles and movements within the collection, such as abstraction, expressionist, surrealist and conceptual art." A community resource While the new wing is devoted to the Dodge collection, the rest of the Zimmerli Museum has also been extensively renovated and reorganized. The David and Lillian Lilien Hall now displays European and American art of the 20th century. Works are organized in nontraditional groupings that serve as an educational tool for students to experience how realistic depictions were transformed into abstract expressions. The gallery displays give viewers an understanding of the integration of text and images, the emergence of abstract landscape painting, the development of Cubism and the use of organic forms to depict natural processes. Also downstairs is the newly created Adi Blum Learning Center, which encourages children to read, draw, play and learn about art. Activity stations include a magnetic poetry board, a corner aisle for making art, a portrait center and flip books to compare and contrast various artworks. "It's an interactive space where we help kids make connections with the permanent collection," says Reagan Kiser, curator of education. She adds that a variety of programs will be offered to serve family audiences and community groups. The museum can now offer more public programs because its multipurpose space has increased from 800 to 2,600 square feet. The two new multipurpose rooms can convert into a single room holding up to 150 people. With several new classrooms, Rutgers professors can incorporate the Zimmerli's holdings into the curriculum. Other Zimmerli collections include ancient art, European art from 1400 to the present, French graphic art of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Japonisme, American art, printmaking and the graphic arts, American prints, the Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios, the Rutgers Collection of Original Illustrations for Children's Literature, the National Association of Women Artists Collection at Rutgers and the George Riabov Collection of Russian Art. "The expansion of the Zimmerli allows the museum to become a community museum for New Jersey that holds internationally significant collections," says Cate. "The museum now reaches out to people of all ages and all backgrounds while also serving the academic needs of students and scholars." Indeed, Cate continues, with many of its exhibits traveling around the world, the Zimmerli is quickly gaining an international reputation. "We're actively sending collections way beyond the borders of New Jersey," says Cate. Exotic Flower, for example, will return from its Mexican venue in March 2001. At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Zimmerli's Spirit of Montmartre is now on display. Japonisme is currently touring several museums throughout Japan, and Whistler to Warhol recently finished its tour in St. Petersburg, Russia. After its three-month exhibit at the Zimmerli, Michael Mazur: A Print Retrospective will be shown at the Minneapolis Institute of Art through 2001. The Nov. 12 celebration of the reopening of the Zimmerli Museum will feature free admission from noon to 5 p.m., light refreshments, a ribbon-cutting ceremony, raffles, hands-on activities for children, merchandise at the museum store and gallery tours. For more information or to register for the children's program, call ext. 2-7237. Michael Mazur retrospective Among the opening exhibits at the expanded and renovated Zimmerli Art Museum will be Michael Mazur: A Print Retrospective, which just completed its tour of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. The retrospective of artwork from 1956 to 1999 consists of 100 objects, including prints, monoprints and monotypes. For the first time since their creation in 1983, his two monumental monotypes "Wakeby Day" and "Wakeby Night" will be shown together. Also featured in the exhibit are Mazur's books, portfolio projects, a six-panel printed folding screen and Asian-influenced abstract works. Hailed as a pioneer in the printmaking process, Mazur was a leader in the monoprint and monotype movements of the 1970s. He has also been recognized as a figurative artist who works in several media: painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. Mazur played a pivotal role in the revival of monotype, a hybrid "painterly print" that helped break down the barriers between art-making media in recent times, says Trudy V. Hansen, curator, in the catalog, "The Prints of Michael Mazur." "Just as Mazur recognizes no hierarchy among media, and has worked simultaneously on prints, paintings, pastels, and drawings throughout his career, neither does he recognize a hierarchy in subject matter," she writes. His subjects range from "confined residents in a psychiatric ward to caged monkeys and other animals at the Stoneham Zoo and the Boston Aquarium, from the light in his studio to the compositional challenges representing an ashtray on a table." Both the exhibition and catalog were organized by the Zimmerli and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibit will run through Feb. 16, when it will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Art through 2001.

For questions or comments about this site, contact Greg Trevor Last Updated: May 30, 2006 © 2008 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.