From the Director

Warm greetings from 20 Maresfield Gardens, the final home of Sigmund and Anna Freud.

Welcome to the Freud Museum London, housed in the final home of Sigmund and Anna Freud. Our aim is to inspire each of the 30,000 people who visit us each year—and the many more who connect with us online—to explore Freud’s remarkable legacy. We are dedicated to sparking curiosity and fostering deep reflection in today’s fast-paced world, offering a haven of tranquillity amidst the noise. Our efforts extend to rendering psychoanalytic concepts approachable and pertinent to a broad, non-specialist audience while remaining an important hub for the global psychoanalytic community.

This year has been transformative for the Museum. We recently completed a major development project to upgrade our exhibition and event spaces, ensuring we are fully compliant with UK government indemnity standards for security and environmental conditions and enabling us to host high-profile loans from international collections. Additionally, the improvements to our Video Room allow us to host fully hybrid conferences, events, and courses, further expanding our reach to global audiences. We are immensely grateful to the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust for their generosity and support in making these improvements possible, as well as for their support of our exhibitions programme.

Our current exhibition, Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists, runs until 5 May 2025 and highlights the women who helped Freud invent psychoanalysis and their enduring legacy in its practice, as well as their impact on arts and literature through to our own time. Featuring manuscripts, images, objects, visuals, and film footage, the exhibition brings to life the many women central to Freud’s history—from his early patients, whom he called ‘his teachers,’ to figures such as Princesse Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, and contemporary artists including Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego, and Tracey Emin. The exhibition also celebrates the centenary of Sigmund Freud’s first publication by the legendary Hogarth Press, founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

We are especially proud to have launched exciting new learning offers this year, designed for adult learners, higher education students, and organisations. Additionally, for the first time, we introduced family learning workshops, giving children the opportunity to learn about Freud and his ideas. As part of our expanded hybrid public programme, we have welcomed leading figures from the world of psychoanalysis to deliver courses and lectures. Among these, we were honoured to host Professor Juliet Mitchell, who marked the 50th anniversary of her landmark publication, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, with a thought-provoking course at the Museum.

This past year has also been transformative for the wider Freudian universe. We celebrated the UK launch of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, a mammoth undertaking 30 years in the making, which was officially launched at the Freud Museum. The initiative was marked by a number of celebratory events and initiatives, including a panel discussion at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Additionally, the UK cinematic release of Freud’s Last Session, starring Anthony Hopkins as the founder of psychoanalysis, has brought Freud’s legacy to new audiences. The Museum collaborated with the film’s producers and set designers, and we are immensely grateful to Vertigo Releasing, the film’s UK distributor, for allowing the Freud Museum to screen the film as a way to raise vital funds for our work.

As a Museum which receives no regular public funding, your support is vital so that we can continue to preserve the extraordinary final home of Sigmund and Anna Freud and to inspire audiences across the world with their unique legacies.

 

From the Director

Dr Giuseppe Albano MBE

Director, Freud Museum London