American art

The Zimmerli Art Museum's American art collection^[3] contains more than 16,500 objects. It includes paintings, sculpture, works on paper (prints, drawings, and photographs), and decorative arts. The earliest paintings in the Zimmerli collection date to the late eighteenth century, when the United States and Rutgers University – then called Queen's College – were in their infancy. Reflecting America's rich artistic and cultural heritage, the museum showcases examples of portraiture, landscape, still life, narrative art, and abstraction. Modern and contemporary styles represented in the collection include precisionism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction, pop art, op art, Fluxus, photo-realism, and minimalism, as well as works that explore social and political issues. Work by women artists is a distinguishing aspect of the museum's American holdings and signals the pioneering role of Rutgers in women's studies.

European art

The Zimmerli collection of European art^[1] comprises paintings, sculpture, works on paper, rare books, and decorative arts, and ranges in date from the Renaissance to the present, totaling close to 10,000 objects, with its primary strength in French nineteenth-century works on paper, notably prints and rare books. Strongly represented subjects include portraits and caricatures, landscapes, and popular entertainments. Also among the European holdings is a renowned collection of Japonisme, late-nineteenth-century works by European artists inspired by Japanese art and aesthetics.

In 2011, the Zimmerli restituted a rare Renaissance portrait by Hans Baldung Grien to the heirs of Friedrich and Louise Gutmann who had been murdered by Nazis in concentration camps. The painting had been donated to Rutgers by Rudolf Heinemann who, according to the Zimmerli, had acquired it from Rosenberg and Stiebel.^[5][6][7]

Russian art and Soviet nonconformist art

The Zimmerli Russian and Soviet nonconformist art holdings contain some 22,000 objects and provide an overview of art in Russia from the fourteenth century to the present. The Imperial era of Russian art is represented through George Riabov's 1990 donation, which spans styles and subjects that represent Russia's diverse artistic heritage, genres, and visual cultures.

The Dodge Collection is the largest collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in the United States of America.^[2] The collection was amassed by an economics professor from the University of Maryland, Norton Dodge, from the late 1950s until the advent of Perestroika.^[8] The collection was gift of Norton and Nancy Dodge in 1991. More than 20,000 works by close to 1,000 artists reveal a culture that defied the politically imposed conventions of Socialist Realism. All media are represented, including paintings on canvas and panel, sculpture, assemblage, decorative objects, installations, works on paper, photography, video, artists’ books and self-published texts called "samizdat". This encyclopedic array of nonconformist art extends from about 1956 to 1986, from the beginning of Khrushchev's cultural “thaw” to the advent of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika. Work created during the Gorbachev era (through 1991) also is represented. The collection includes art made in Russia, as well as many examples of nonconformist art produced in the Soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. A recent gift by Claude and Nina Gruen extends the Zimmerli Russian art holdings to post-Perestroika work produced since 1986. Many of these artworks were made by former Soviet artists now living in the diaspora. In addition, the museum has seven archives associated with Soviet nonconformist art. Collectively, these archives include more than 50,000 items.

The Dodge Collection includes work by Russian painter Irina Nakhova, who in 2015 was selected as the first woman to represent Russia with a solo show of her artwork in its pavilion at the Venice Biennale.^[9]