“Musée Imaginaire” is a research project created by the artist and sculptor Mihail Chemiakin. At its core is the analysis and academic classification of object, artistic devices, signs and symbols in the works of various genres of visual art. The analysis is conducted through the juxtaposition of images culled from books, exhibition catalogues, engravings, and photographs of works in museums. In decades of work on this project, Chemiakin, working not only as an artist but also as a philosopher, analyst, art historian and educator, has created a unique research laboratory-library of artistic expression. The research materials reveal whole previously unexplored areas of world culture, and demonstrate how an image is transformed and interpreted in the art of different cultures and epochs. Among approximately 400 themes examined in the context of the research are “Children in Art”, “Images of Death in Art”, “Blurred Images in Art”, “The Hand in Art”, and the subject of this book, “Letters, Words and Text in Art”. The laboratory and library are currently housed in the artist’s studios at his residence in France, where artists and art historians come from Russia to study.
The Russian television channel“ Kultura” produced a series of 21 filmed lectures titled “Mihail Chemiakin’s Musée Imaginaire” in 2002–2009. In 2003 the series was nominated for the TEFI award, and was awarded four prizes at the VIII International “Velvet Season” Television Festival, for best film in the category of “Cultural and Educational Programming”.
Beginning in 2000, Chemiakin has curated numerous thematic exhibitions in Hudson, NY; Loches, France; and in Russia, in St. Petersburg, Khanty-Mansiisk, Nalchik, Maikop, Kaluga, Voronezh, Lipetsk, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Kaliningrad, Sochi and Norilsk.
In 2013 Chemiakin published a book dedicated to the study “Chair in Art”. Then in 2015 the first full catalog of the exhibition “Letters, Words, Text in Art” from the project “Imaginary Museum” was brought out. In 2018 a book based on the materials of the exhibition “Swaddling, bandaging, wrapping in Art” was released. This publication is a part of the catalog of the project “Imaginary Museum” and includes materials from the exhibition “Stairs in Art”, held in the Centre of Mikhail Chemiakin in 2019.
This exhibition, like all the Centre's thematic exhibitions, is complemented by a series of one-man shows by contemporary artists on the given theme. These shows are the result of open international juried competitions conducted in the period leading up to the thematic exhibition, and serve to involve artists more profoundly in the research and creative process of “Mihail Chemiakin’s Musée Imaginaire“.
The Mihail Chemiakin Centre works through the Mihail Chemiakin Foundation in St. Petersburg, which was created in 2002 and is the primary venue for public programs of the “Musée Imaginaire“ project and programs of The Institute of the Philosophy and Psychology of Art. The Centre's goals are to support Russian culture, organise cultural exchange with other countries and assist young artists, writers, performers and musicians. Since 2015 the “Musée Imaginaire“ operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.