Mayor proposes honorary citizenship for Ingrid Mössinger

The General Director of the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Dr h.c. Ingrid Mössinger, is to be honoured with honorary citizenship of the city for her services to the art collections and the city of Chemnitz. Mayor Barbara Ludwig proposes the honour to the City Council. The committee is to vote on this on 7 March.

Mayor Barbara Ludwig: "Ingrid Mössinger has put her profound knowledge, her exceptional professionalism, her own charming perseverance, unwavering courage and an excellent network at the service of the City of Chemnitz for decades. She has proven what is possible when ability and ambition are successfully combined. The reputation that the art collections enjoy thanks to Ingrid Mössinger has made Chemnitz better known throughout the world. It is thanks to her work that Chemnitz is mentioned in the same league as art metropolises."

According to the statutes of the City of Chemnitz on honours and awards, honorary citizenship, as the highest distinction of the City of Chemnitz, is awarded "to persons who have rendered outstanding services to the development of the city or who have contributed to the representation of the city in national and international life through great personal commitment and their direct work."

Ingrid Mössinger fulfils both conditions in an outstanding way. She has shaped the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz since 1996 and has not only significantly expanded the museum over more than two decades, but has also understood the potential of the collection and its tradition and utilised it for the benefit of the city. Her high-calibre and internationally acclaimed exhibitions have made the museum a first-class address in the art world. Under Ingrid Mössinger's leadership, the art collections were named "Museum of the Year 2010" by the art critics' association AICA. The art collections have been listed in the Blue Book of nationally significant cultural institutions in eastern Germany since 2001. In 2003, they were honoured by the "Lebendige Stadt" foundation for the best German museum concept out of 163 competitors.

It is mainly thanks to the museum director that the unique collection of the Munich gallery owner Dr Alfred Gunzenhauser with more than 2,400 works of classical modern art found a home in Chemnitz in 2003. In 2007, the Gunzenhauser Museum, which was remodelled especially for the collection, was opened. Ingrid Mössinger also made an outstanding contribution to the expansion of the collection. The city also owes Ingrid Mössinger a large number of donations of works by famous artists.

The exhibitions organised by Ingrid Mössinger have often caused a stir - also internationally: "Picasso et les femmes" (2002), Edvard Munch (1999), Lucas Cranach (2005), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (2016), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (2007), the Peredwischniki (2012), Andy Warhol (2014) and many others. She achieved a celebrated and marvelled world premiere with the first exhibition of Bob Dylan's works (2007). The number of exhibitions during Ingrid Mössinger's tenure has totalled around 170, with more than 500 artists from 45 countries shown.

At the same time, Ingrid Mössinger has succeeded in living the pride in "her" art collections together with the citizens. The "Friends of the Chemnitz Art Collections" association alone now has more than 1,000 members, making it the association with the most members of any fine arts museum in Saxony. Making art accessible to everyone has always been one of Ingrid Mössinger's maxims - the Konrad art bus, which has been taking schoolchildren to the art collections since 2011, is a product of this aspiration that has had a lasting effect.

Ingrid Mössinger has been honoured many times for her work. In 2007, she was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was followed in 2016 by the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany. Mössinger is also a recipient of the Saxon Constitutional Medal (2010) and the Saxon Order of Merit (2014). She has been a Knight of the French Legion of Honour since 2008 and has also held the Knight's Cross of the Danish Order of Dannebrog since 2010. In the same year, she was also awarded the Central German Business and Communication Prize "Hot Potato". In 2015, the Director General was awarded an honorary doctorate from Chemnitz University of Technology. Ingrid Mössinger was also a member of the University Council of the Berlin University of the Arts and a member of the ZDF Television Council. She is currently a member of the University Council of the Dresden University of Fine Arts and a member of the Board of Trustees of Burg Giebichenstein University of Applied Sciences Halle.