Reopening of Painting to Scale – Panel and Reception: Rethinking Dissent in the USSR: Practices and Possibilities in the Arts
Maija Tabaka, "(Jokers)", 1970, oil on canvas. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Join us to celebrate the reopening of Painting to Scale at the Zimmerli following a brief closure for artwork rotation.
The evening opens with a panel discussion featuring: Elita Ansone (Curator and Head of Collections, National Museum of Latvia), Mark Lipovetsky (Professor, Columbia University), Irina Nakhova (artist featured in Painting to Scale), and Jane Sharp (Professor, and Research Curator of the Dodge Collection).
This panel takes the opportunity presented through the exhibition to reflect on and reimagine possibilities for interpreting dissent in the former artistic communities of the USSR. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and especially now after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, artists and scholars alike have questioned the extent to which "nonconforming" artists accommodated and defied official art institutions and aesthetic imperatives. The speakers gathered at the Zimmerli return to these questions from a range of perspectives, from within—as long-time curator in Riga, and artist in Moscow, as well as scholars who have addressed the ambiguities and tensions in unofficial art and literature for decades.
Following the panel discussion is a reception where guests are invited to enjoy refreshments and explore the newly rotated exhibition.
Program Schedule
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. / Panel Discussion in Lower Dodge gallery
6 p.m. - 7 p.m. / Reception in Lower Dodge gallery
Pre-register here for free visitor parking, which allows you to park in Lots 11, 16, 26 & 30. Until this process is completed, your vehicle is not registered and you may receive a citation. Special event parking and special event permits are only for visitors to the university and does not include free metered parking. Faculty, staff, and students must park only in lots where they are authorized to park. Please note, this is a unique link for this event and not valid for any other dates or events.
- For directions to campus parking lots, search by the lot number on the Rutgers map.
- Lot 16 is the closest to the Zimmerli, located behind the museum. For directions, you also may use the address 536 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, which is the building located next to the lot entrance.
Panelist Bios
Dr. Elita Ansone is head of the Second Half of the 20th and 21st Centuries Collections and Research Department of the Latvian National Museum of Art. Research field – contextual art history of the second half of the 20th and 21st centuries. She has researched the problems of interpretation of Socialist Realism art, art styles and movements in Latvia – Hyperrealism, Linguistic Conceptualism, feminist art. She has curated extensive conceptual exhibitions, has compiled collections of articles and catalogues, and has curated exhibitions of Latvian atrists – Vija Celmins, Imants Tillers, Ilmārs Blumbergs, Daina Dagnija, Miķelis Fišers, Raimonds Staprāns, Aija Zariņa and other artists. Currently working on a monograph and exhibition of Ojārs Ābols.
Mark Lipovetsky is a professor of Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University. His research interests include Russian postmodernism, New Drama, Soviet literary and cinematic tricksters, Soviet underground culture as well as various aspects of post-Soviet culture. He is the author of twelve monographs and two hundred articles. He is one of coauthors of the Oxford history of Russian literature (2018). In 2022, Lipovetsky published a monograph A Guerilla Logos: The Project of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov (co-authored with Ilya Kukulin); he also curated the publication of Prigov’s five-volume collected works at NLO Press in Moscow. He also co-edited twenty collections of articles on Russian literature and culture of the 20th-21st centuries, including volumes on Dmitry Prigov, Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Sharov, and the Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture (2024). Lipovetsky is a recipient of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages award for the outstanding contribution to scholarship (2014) and Andrey Belyi Prize (2019). At Columbia University, Lipovetsky runs the Contemporary Culture Series that includes talks, conversations and symposia on the most significant aspects of contemporary Russophone culture.
Irina Nakhova graduated from the Moscow Institute of Graphic Arts in 1978. She is one of the pioneers of the genre of total installation in Soviet underground art. Nakhova concurrently works with painting, creating structured environments from several superimposed planes; and installation, the most vivid of which employ painting, digital printing, sculpture and interactive audio and video. In 2013, she won the prestigious Kandinsky Prize for Best Project for Without a Title, an installation that uses photography and film from the 1920’s until today from her own personal archive. Nakhova’s installations often create and define space using formal means and material together with biting wit and a historical and social perspective.
She has worked and lived between Moscow and the United States since 1992. Since 1989, her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. Nakhova was the first woman to have a solo exhibit at the Russian Pavilion, for the 2015 Venice Biennale. In 2019, she had a solo exhibition at Zimmerli Art Museum, Irina Nakhova: Museum on the Edge.
Dr. Jane A. Sharp is a professor in the Department of Art History, at Rutgers University, she is also Research Curator of the Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum where she has curated over 20 exhibitions. She has published widely on the historical avant-garde within the Russian empire and now focuses on unofficial art of the late Soviet period. Her first book, Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-14 (Cambridge U P, 2006) won the Robert Motherwell Prize from the Dedalus Art Foundation. Thinking Pictures: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism, acted as catalogue for her exhibition drawn from the Dodge Collection held at the Zimmerli Art Museum (September 6-December 31, 2016). This exhibition served as a departure point for a re-curated show held at the National Museum of Estonian Art in 2022. Dr. Sharp is currently completing a book on Thaw era abstraction in the former USSR.