NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ.- Debasish “Deba” Dutta, Chancellor of Rutgers University-New Brunswick, today announced the appointment of the distinguished museum leader and art historian Thomas Sokolowski to serve as Director of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, widely recognized as one of the largest and most respected university-based museums in the United States. Mr. Sokolowski will officially begin his tenure on October 16, 2017, taking charge of the Zimmerli’s programs of exhibitions, scholarship, and community outreach and its uniquely important permanent collection.

Mr. Sokolowski brings to the Zimmerli more than thirty-five years of experience as a museum professional. From 1996 to 2010 he led the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh as its Director, creating a strategic plan of operations, increasing the institution’s visibility on the national and international stage, and deploying the museum’s greatest strength—its incomparable collection of artworks by Andy Warhol—by curating exhibitions in 49 countries around the world, making these objects accessible to an estimated 9.3 million museumgoers and generating more than $30 million of earned revenue.

Prior to his tenure at the Andy Warhol Museum, Mr. Sokolowski served as Chief Curator at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA (1982-84) and Director of the Grey Art Gallery & Study Center at New York University (1984-96). He most recently advised museums, foundations, educational institutions, and civic organizations as head of his own consulting firm. In other activities, he has been Curator of the official United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1986); has served on the faculties of New York University, the University of Minnesota, and Kent State University; and was the founder of Visual AIDS, the organization that established the December 1 “Day Without Art” commemoration of the AIDS crisis.

“The Zimmerli’s extensive collections illustrate Rutgers-New Brunswick’s commitment to academic excellence and to society as a whole, providing the public with a rich and varied learning opportunity to experience first-hand some of the world’s finest works of art,” Dutta said. “With Thomas Sokolowski’s leadership, vision and expertise, the Zimmerli is poised to achieve new prominence in the field of university art museums and among the outstanding cultural institutions in the regions of New York City and Philadelphia. Our entire community welcomes him with enthusiasm. We also extend our appreciation to Marti Mayo, who has done brilliant work in stewarding the Zimmerli as its Interim Director.”

Thomas Sokolowski said, “The Zimmerli is among the youngest of the major university-based art museums, having been established only in 1966, but it has rapidly emerged as one of the most active and vital, with strengths that are uniquely its own. It is both an honor and a thrill to be chosen to lead this exceptional institution, which seems to me to bring together all of the artistic, scholarly, educational, and civic strands of my career. I look forward eagerly to beginning my work with the Zimmerli’s expert staff, and to collaborating with the vibrant Rutgers academic community.”

The Zimmerli Art Museum is currently presenting the exhibition Subjective Objective: A Century of Social Photography (through January 7, 2018), examining the shifting criteria for public belief in photographs as visual evidence of both social reality and the need for social change. Works in the exhibition are drawn from the Zimmerli’s holdings and from public and private collections. On October 14, the Zimmerli will open Commemorating the Russian Revolution, 1917/2017. It will be one of many exhibitions this fall organized on the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution, but with the distinction of looking at the Revolution from the dissenting point of view of the nonconformist Soviet artists of the 1950s through the 1980s, as seen in selections from the Zimmerli’s world-renowned Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection.