PRESS RELEASE
(Thursday March 23, 2006)
NEW BOARD AND CONSTITUTION FOR THE FREUD MUSEUM
• Freud Museum creates new governing body with seven Trustees
including five new members
• New Constitution based on Company Limited By Guarantee will allow
the Museum to begin a long-term development programme
• To mark the 20th anniversary of the Museum’s opening and
the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud, the Museum will
launch an ambitious Fund Raising Appeal in Autumn 2006
• New Trustees will be: Lisa Appignanesi, Nick Bunker, Susie
Orbach, Joan Raphael-Leff, Ken Robinson
The Freud Museum is delighted to announce in the 150th birthday year of
the founder of psycho-analysis that it has created a new Constitution
and a new Board of Trustees. The new governing body will take the
Museum forward to build on its success as one of London’s most important
historic house museums and as a centre for exploring the enduring legacy
of Sigmund Freud in the contemporary world.
Located at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, north London, the Museum
was the home of Sigmund Freud and his family during the last
year of his life, and the place of his death in September 1939. Among
its treasures are Freud’s couch, the contents of his consulting room,
his library, his collection of more than 3,000 antiquities and all
the furniture and personal effects that he and his family were allowed
to bring with them when they escaped from Nazi persecution in Vienna
in 1938.
After more than a year of planning and preparatory work, which
has included approval by the Charity Commission, the new Constitution will
come into effect at the end of March 2006. In place of the Charitable Trust
created with the support of Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna in 1980,
the Museum will become a Company Limited by Guarantee, called The Freud
Museum London.
The new Company’s Constitution has been drafted to ensure that it fully
reflects new standards for the governance of museums in England and
Wales developed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. It gives
the Museum the powers it needs to ensure the preservation of its
collections, to serve the public more effectively and to expand and develop
its existing programme of conferences, exhibitions, lectures and
educational activities which explore Freud’s legacy in all its dimensions.
The Museum also expects to launch in autumn 2006 a fund-raising appeal.
The money raised will enable the Museum to improve services to visitors,
to enhance its presentation of the life and work of Sigmund
Freud and of psychoanalysis, and to begin the creation of an endowment
fund intended to safeguard the Museum’s long-term future.
The new Company has a Board of Trustees with initially seven
members. They bring to the Museum experience from a wide range of
backgrounds including archaeology, art and museum administration, psychoanalysis,
the law, finance and university teaching and research.
It will also include a representative of Sigmund Freud Archives
Incorporated, the United States-based non-profit organization responsible
for the collection of Freud’s manuscripts and papers now held by
the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
The five new Trustees are:
• Lisa Appignanesi
• Nick Bunker (Chair)
• Susie Orbach
• Professor Joan Raphael-Leff
• Ken Robinson
Joining them on the Board of the new Company are two of the Trustees
of the original 1980 Trust, Harry James CBE and Hugh Hamilton.
Mr James was for many years Chairman of the Museum’s Management
Committee, and in his professional life he was Keeper of Egyptian
Antiquities at the British Museum. He remains Vice-President of the Egypt
Exploration Society and he is a Fellow of the British Academy. Mr Hamilton
was formerly Senior Partner of a leading firm of solicitors
in the City of London, acted as Miss Freud’s legal adviser until
her death in 1982, and has been closely involved in the governance of the
Museum since its foundation.
Nick Bunker, Chair of the Trustees, said: “Ranking alongside the
homes of Sir Isaac Newton and of Charles Darwin, the Freud
Museum is one of Britain’s and the world’s most important monuments to
a great scientist.
“We’re very much looking forward to the challenge of continuing to reach
out to a wide public with innovative activities, exhibitions and events
that show how vital Sigmund Freud’s work and his legacy remain in the 21st
century. Our new Constitution will enable us to do just that. It’s especially
appropriate, too, that this milestone in the Museum’s history has been
reached in the year that marks his 150th anniversary, and the twentieth
birthday of the Museum.”
* * *
Further inquiries:
Nick Bunker, Chair of the Trustees, on 020 7435 2002
or via e-mail at:
nickbunker1848@hotmail.com
Notes to Editors:
(1) Details of the new Trustees
• Lisa Appignanesi is a writer, novelist and broadcaster. A
former university lecturer and Deputy Director of London's Institute of
Contemporary Arts, she is the author of Freud's Women (with John Forrester),
Losing the Dead, and The Memory Man, among other books. For BBC Radio,
she made the progamme Freudian Slips and The Case of Sigmund Freud. She
is Deputy President of English PEN, and chair of the “Free Expression is
No Offence” campaign. Ms Appignanesi is currently editing a series, The
Big Idea, for Profile Books, and working on a cutural history, Women and
the Mind Doctors.
• Nick Bunker began his working life as a newspaper reporter
for the Liverpool Echo and then the Financial Times, where he wrote the
Lex Column. He was subsequently a highly-rated investment analyst
with two leading London Stock Exchange firms, Hoare Govett and HSBC James
Capel. His interest in Freud and psychoanalysis originated when he was
a student first at King’s College, Cambridge and then at Columbia University,
New York. He chaired the Freud Museum’s Management Committee in 2003 and
2004, and then became the Museum’s Treasurer.
• Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, and founded The Women's
Therapy Centre in 1976. The author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, The Impossibility
of Sex and eight other books, Ms Orbach has written widely on psychoanalysis
for the public and for her professional colleagues. A visiting Professor
at the London School of Economics, she has been a consultant and advisor
to the World Bank and the National Health Service, and a frequent speaker
at Freud Museum conferences and seminars.
• Joan Raphael-Leff is a psychoanalyst and Fellow of the British
Psychoanalytical Society and leads the University College London Master
of Science programme in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology, based
at the Anna Freud Centre. Previously Professor of Psychoanalysis at the
University of Essex, and Chair of COWAP, the International Psychoanalytic
Association's Committee on Women & Psychoanalysis. In her 35 years
of clinical practice, Professor Raphael-Leff has specialized in treating
emotional problems relating to human reproduction and parenting. Her nine
books include: Between Sessions & Beyond the Couch ; Ethics of Psychoanalysis;
Parent-Infant Psychodynamics and Psychological Processes of Childbearing.
• Ken Robinson is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society
in full-time clinical practice in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As Honorary Archivist
of the Society he is overseeing a major project funded by a grant
from the Wellcome Trust to catalogue and preserve the Society's important
collection of thousands of documents relating to the history
of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom. He is also Honorary Archivist
of the International Psychoanalytical Association and chairs The Freudian
Study Group. His research interests include the transmission of Freud's
theory and clinical practice into early British psychoanalysis.
(2) Sigmund Freud Archives Incorporated
Based in New York, Sigmund Freud Archives Inc was founded in 1951 by
a group of psychoanalysts led by Dr Kurt Eissler. An entirely independent
organization, it collects and safeguards the manuscripts and papers
of Sigmund and Anna Freud and other renowned psychoanalysts, housed
principally in the Library of Congress. It co-founded the Museum
and has participated in its governance since its inception as a Trustee
of the original Charitable Trust created by Ms Freud. Its current
Executive Director is Dr Harold Blum MD. Further details are available
on www. freudarchives.org
(3) The Freud Museum London
The Freud Museum London was registered as a Charity by the Charity
Commission on January 30 2006 under Charity Number 1112854. |