The Museum of Russian Art (MoRA) is a Russian art museum in Jersey City, New Jersey, specializing in Soviet Nonconformist Art. In 1980, the CASE Museum of Contemporary Russian Art was founded. After restorations, the Museum’s historic brownstone building in Paulus Hook reopened in 2010. Check this out here.
The mission statement of the Museum, as outlined in its call for proposals, is as follows:
- The Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City (MORA) aspires to be a leading cultural institution in its field, with a sizeable full-service art museum specialized in the acquisition, preservation, documentation, and presentation of complicated and essential works of art.
- MORA is a platform for cultural exchange between the United States and its diasporas and between the United States and other countries. In both small and big scale shows, emerging and established artists, both local and worldwide, join together to focus on practicing and producing socially meaningful and creative art. MORA is particularly interested in international cultural initiatives, scholarly conversation and discussion, and how they are conveyed and promoted via art and culture. MORA is interested in projects that show cultural interaction, cooperation, and communication between diverse groups in the life of artists who are immigrants of any nationality. Also, in the context of a larger, multicultural American culture and country and any other country on the path to establishing universal human cultural values in a cooperative worldwide community.
- The Museum’s particular focus is on Russian art and culture, specifically art and culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the colossal accomplishments of the great Russian Avant-Garde (Kandinsky, Malevich, and others) to the fascinating era of Nonconformist (or Unofficial) Art between the late 1950s and the 1980s.
The Museum of Russian Art (previously the C.A.S.E. Museum of Russian Art in Exile) has been at the forefront of bringing Russian art to American audiences since its inception in 1980. During its early years, the Museum’s collection was only second to Norton Dodge’s at the time, with its core collection mainly collected from human rights crusader Alexander Glezer’s private collections. Skate’s 5000 notables, Erik Bulatov, Alexander Kharitonov, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Evgeny Kropivnitsky, Lidia Masterkova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Ernst Neizvestny—the canon of late Soviet painting today—all showed for the first time outside Russia at MoRA in the 1980s and early 1990s. MoRA has promoted Russian culture and community in the Tri-State region through exhibits, activities, and lectures for over three decades. The Museum shows helped shape the contemporary Russian art market, which is today negotiated in New York, London, and Moscow.
Contact the Museum of Russian Art at (917) 449-2842 for further information.