The Dodge Collection is the largest collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in the United States of America. The collection was amassed by an economics professor from the University of Maryland, Norton Dodge, from the late 1950s until the advent of Perestroika. 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. 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.