Ildikó Ember
ILDIKÓ EMBER, PhD (Zombor, 1942), art historian. From 1967 she worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, where she became Director of the Old Picture Gallery, a position she kept until December 2012. Focusing on the Dutch and Flemish painting of the 17th–18th centuries, she is the author of a great number of scholarly articles published in Hungarian and international journals. She designed several temporary exhibitions in Hungary and abroad; in 2004 she mounted the enlarged permanent exhibition of Dutch paintings of the Museum of Fine Arts, comprising some 250 works of art and giving a comprehensive survey of the golden age of Dutch painting. She edited the two volumes (2000, 2003) of the Summary Catalogue containing the results of scholarly research on these works, and in 2011 she launched the systematic catalogue series of the Old Picture Gallery, whose first two issues (by Rudi Ekkart and Ildikó Ember) offer new approaches to Dutch portraits and Dutch still lives. Her contribution to Hungarian art history was recognised by the Móra Ferenc Prize (2002) and the Ipolyi Arnold Medal. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age (2014), the King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander bestowed on her the Order of the Knighthood of Orange-Nassau.
