A brief history of
the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City (MORA)

MoRA is a place to come and learn about the vibrant and fascinating world of Russian art, but it is also far more than that. The museum itself has a rich and colorful past, and over the thirty years of its existence has played a truly unique role in the history of twentieth-century Russian art.

In the post-war Soviet Union, the regime tended to suppress any art except so-called Socialist Realism. The underground artists of the 1950s-1970s who would become famous as the Nonconformist or Unofficial Art movement (or the Second Russian Avant-garde) lived and worked largely outside of the system, without access to galleries and museums, without interviews or reviews or other normal access to an audience. Their best hope lay in a few lone-wolf art collectors, especially those who could take their work to the West.

Alexander Glezer, who would become the first director of the Jersey City Museum of Russian Art, was one of the earliest of these collectors. He was himself part of this underground art world and was involved in the organization of the famous "Bulldozer Exhibition" - in 1974, a number of key Moscow Nonconformist artists gathered to exhibit their work publicly in an open field, only for a squadron of pseudo-civilians to emerge from the brush with bulldozers and water cannon, scattering the participants and crushing artwork under the treads. Mr. Glezer emigrated in 1975, first to France and then to the US, taking most of his prodigious collection with him.

On September 15, 1980, on the sixth anniversary of the Bulldozer Exhibition, the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City opened its doors. Over the next two decades, it operated sporadically, but with enormous energy. The Museum became a crucial showcase for contemporary Russian art, but for the artists it was far more than a showroom. It became a center for Russian artistic culture, a cynosure for the life of the emigre Russian art world, a meeting-place for the wild artistic bohemian world that retained the flavor of its antiauthoritarian beginnings. Often, the museum's exhibitions were meticulously curated and planned, but still more were spontaneous affairs, cutting-edge paintings thrown up on the walls mere within a few hours of the opening of an exhibition that would run for a day... and still, magically, those shows drew throngs of artists, musicians, painters, sculptors, critics and writers, ending in an unruly intellectual party, complete with music and brawls.

And in the midst of this, the Museum introduced the Western world to the most important Russian art of the post-war period. It exhibited virtually the entire pantheon of Nonconformism, and also masters of the following generation, including Erik Bulatov, Alexander Kharitonov, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Evgeny Kropivnitsky, Lidia Masterkova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Ernst Neizvestny, Oscar Rabin, Eduard Shteinberg, Boris Sveshnikov, Oleg Tselkov, Oleg Vasiliev, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anatoly Zverev, and many others.

Today, MoRA is entering a bright new epoch. Under new management, the Museum is making the transition to a modern, professional, full-service cultural institution. Of course, MoRA will present a series of important art exhibitions, including not only Nonconformism, but everything related to Russian art, from the earliest times to contemporary artists. The geography of Russian art is now worldwide, and we will feature Russian artists both from Russia itself and the world over, including some living right here in New Jersey and New York.

But the Museum is expanding, adding a range of new departments and functions. We are developing a rich program of educational events, including captivating talks, lectures and tours by artists, critics and historians on the meaning, history, and life of Russian art. We will be hosting concerts and other events. Even now the Museum is engaged in cooperative efforts to bring wonderful public art projects to the communities of Jersey City, northern New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area. In the near future, MoRA plans to expand its permanent collection and to establish state-of-the-art facilities for the preservation, appraisal and documentation of Russian artworks. The Museum will also be home to a much-needed archival center for materials connected with Russian twentieth and twenty-first century art. We will be establishing a research library at the Museum, opening a museum store, and much, much more!

Click here to view the MoRA Mission Statement