18th Chemnitz Museum Night: Almost 9,000 visitors accepted the invitation to explore the museums at night

The 18th Museum Night in Chemnitz attracted a total of 8,984 visitors to museums, galleries, collections and memorials in perfect weather. That's a good 1,000 more visitors than last year.

Almost 2,000 visitors bought their tickets in advance, which can also be used as a ticket to start the Museum Night in an uncomplicated way. 1,500 young people travelled with their youth ticket. 2,300 children came with their families.

A total of 3,500 people showed great interest in the cultural and creative industry offerings on the southern Sonnenberg, which took centre stage as a "special offer". At twelve different locations between Augustusburger Straße and Fürstenstraße, visitors were able to experience the diversity of the cultural and creative offerings developed by Sonnenberg stakeholders in recent years and learn interesting facts about the history of the neighbourhood. The guided tours of the neighbourhood, for example, were very well received. Not only did the pizza workshop for children at Augusto run late into the night, the Birikino circus was also bursting at the seams, as were the hands-on activities organised by FabLAB and the Chaostreff association. Hours later, children could be seen running happily through the museums in the city centre with the light panels they had soldered themselves.

Shortly after the start of the museum night, Professor ZickZack, alias Martin Kiefer, presented absurd everyday occurrences full of surprises and comedy on the KOMPLEX off-stage. The first performance was attended by 30 people, followed by a further 320 theatre fans throughout the night. There were readings and live music in the Kaffeesatz cultural pub, as well as current art and photo exhibitions at various locations, such as LOKOMOV.

More than 80 partners were involved in the 18th edition of the Chemnitz Museum Night, more than ever before for the Museum Nights in Chemnitz. On this year's nocturnal tour through Chemnitz's museums, galleries and cultural institutions, visitors were able to put together their own individual programme from 29 main locations with a total of 43 points of contact, discovering familiar things in a new way and new things that were previously hardly known.

The "Treasures of Vietnamese Archaeology", presented by smac in a special exhibition, attracted huge crowds. Many of the 400 or so unique archaeological and historical objects are being shown outside Vietnam for the first time. These include magnificent jade sceptres, precious mythical creatures made of terracotta and huge bronze drums. The people of Chemnitz accepted the museum's offers with interest, as well as the supporting programme, which was prepared for the museum night in cooperation with the Vietnamese Association. For example, several hundred visitors watched the Vietnamese fan dance in the foyer.

There was also a queue to visit the Red Tower, but the guests were happy to do so in order to see the last remaining section of the historic city wall from the inside and find out about "Great Chemnitzers".

At the TIETZ, the programme picked up on the theme of this year's International Museum Day "Searching for Traces. The courage to take responsibility". Guests were able to search for and find traces of many different kinds in the Museum of Natural History in the special exhibition "via regia - Road of Species", in the Neue Sächsische Galerie, in the offers on the ground floor, in the museum's storerooms and in the outdoor area of the window into the history of the earth on Glockenstraße. The special offers, e.g. the visit to the basement magazine of the city library and the search for traces of the contact centre for cultural education were also very well received.

The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (Chemnitz Art Collections ) showed prints from the Hartmut Koch Collection in special exhibitions on Theatre Square to mark the 90th birthday of Wolfgang Mattheuer and "Culture Cuts" by South Korean artist Cody Choi.

Works by the German expressionist Fritz Ascher and young Saxon art by Wilhelm Frederking were on display at the Gunzenhauser Museum. Throughout the evening, interesting details about the artworks of Otto Dix & Co were revealed during discussions of individual works from the permanent exhibition.

The presentation of an exhibition on the Reformation and confessionalisation as reflected in the church furnishings in the Schloßbergmuseum was accompanied by joint guided tours of the museum and the Schloßkirche through the former monastery complex. This gave visitors a very good impression of the complex as a whole.

In all of the Chemnitz Art Collections' facilities, there were wonderful hands-on activities for the little ones as well as for adults who wanted to try out their creativity.

The Museum of Saxon Vehicles, the Chemnitz Industrial Museum and the Chemnitz Tram Museum jointly organised a "Technology & Fashion" themed tour. Tickets even had to be reordered to cope with the crowds. In the Industrial Museum, for example, visitors were able to experience practical sports and service clothing or customised everyday clothing and creative fashion designs from different eras in the special ambience of the museum halls in the new special exhibition. There were also plenty of demonstrations, music and opportunities to join in in the three buildings.

The association Lern- und Gedenkort Kaßberg-Gefängnis e. V. once again opened the gates of the former prison on the Kaßberg for the Museum Night. There were longer waiting times, but visitors were able to find out about the moving history behind the walls at the recently inaugurated memorial site on the prison wall and a singer-songwriter and open-air films shortened the waiting time.

The programme at the German Games Museum in Chemnitz was dedicated to the anniversary of the Reformation, with the opening of the special exhibition and a medieval fair dedicated to Luther's time. But the current permanent exhibitions also met with great interest from visitors.

In Klaffenbach moated castle, the variety of artistic scope in ceramics was also the centre of the musical programme.

Those who had planned their night-time discovery tour in the Ebersdorf district had plenty to experience there:

In the Chemnitz-Hilbersdorf railway park, you could not only marvel at large steam, diesel and electric locomotives, but even take a ride in the driver's cab of a locomotive or the engine house express between signal boxes 3 and 2. On guided tours through the extensive area of the railway park, visitors learnt exciting facts about the cable drainage system or the variety of railway signals. At 10 p.m. there was a special guided tour with words and signs, which was very well received by the visitors.

Visitors were able to travel back in time in the historical classroom of the Ebersdorf School Museum and in the Ebersdorf Museum Store. In the school museum, visitors discovered the wonderland of physics with amazing experiments. A "real" descendant of Adam Ries explained what the arithmetic artist taught us.

The galleries and art associations were also well attended during the night, such as the ArtECK gallery of the Beseder e. V. association, the LATERNE gallery, the WELTECHO and the project space of the Chemnitz Artists' Association.

This year's programme of the Stasi Records Authority, Chemnitz branch office, focused on the Stasi in Saxony. As every year, there were also many visitors at this location.

The city and the university are looking for suitable ways to work together so that students can take advantage of the cultural programme even better and citizens can gain an insight into what the UNI has to offer. This opportunity was provided at the Museum Night. Chemnitz University of Technology took part in the "Long Night of Science". At the locations on Reichenhainer Straße and Straße der Nationen, interested visitors were able to experience exciting experiments in laboratories or in the lecture theatre, learn about the latest research in Chemnitz during numerous lectures and presentations or see exhibits from areas of the university that are otherwise rarely open to the public. Lecture theatre N112 was still full of visitors at 11 p.m., who experienced a lecture on Nikolas Tesla and exciting experiments with lightning and energy.

According to the TU, 4,000 visitors took advantage of the programme, including around 1,000 children and young people.

The Chemnitz Museum Night has existed since 2000 as a joint project organised by the City of Chemnitz's culture department with the participation of municipal, association-owned and private museums, galleries and institutions.

The CVAG shuttle service - on tour by bus and train - was very popular. Most locations were easily accessible with four extra CVAG tours. In addition, all regular CVAG lines could be used with the Museum Night ticket.