THE SECOND DIMENSION. THE CONTEMPORARY ART COLLECTION OF THE CARDIAC SURGEON MIKHAIL ALSHIBAYA

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the famous collector of unofficial Soviet and contemporary Russian art, the renown cardiac surgeon, director of the Dept of coronary and vascular surgery of the A.N. Bakulev National Medical Research Centre for Cardiovascular Surgery, Moscow, Mikhail Alshibaya, and to the artworks from his collection. The article provides some details of the collector’s biography, the history of launching and compiling of his collection, its appending, wih some unique cases of acquisition of items, and the collector’s reflections on art, collecting and life. An attempt follows to analyse the collection of the material, included in 2014 into the permanent display of the «Other Art» museum at the premises of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. The artworks, chosen for display, presented the collection as a one whole unity. This exhibit is an attempt to present the history of Russian art of the last 80 years on the example of the artworks, accumulated by a private person, and in many cases, incidentally. The collector’s comments, recorded for the article, disclose some mysteries of acquisition of the artworks, and the «exhumation», as he likes calling it, of forgotten artists. To save these artists and their work from oblivion is the main topic of activity of Mikhail Alshibaya, who is a collector-researcher at its full.