From the Director

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

Welcome to the Freud Museum, nestled away in beautiful Maresfield Gardens, the final home of Sigmund and Anna Freud. Our mission is to make this historic site more welcoming, inclusive, and accessible, aiming to inspire each and every one of the 30,000 people who visit us each year (and many more who connect with us online) to find out more about Freud’s achievements. We are dedicated to sparking curiosity and fostering deep reflection in today’s fast-paced world, offering a haven of warm 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.

We are excited to announce the commencement of a significant development project in the summer of 2024, following the conclusion of our Freud and Latin America exhibition. This initiative, kick-started by an extremely generous contribution from the Marie Louise von Motesiczky Trust, will begin with substantial enhancements to the Exhibition Room and Video Room on the first floor of Freud’s home. This project is set to transform the Freud Museum into a key cultural hub, dramatically improving our ability to host hybrid events, conferences, and educational sessions. Upgrades to the exhibition space will include the installation of UK government indemnity standard display facilities and advanced climate controls, enabling us to showcase loans from major international collections. To prepare for this transformation, we’re engaging with a team of engineering and robotics students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the USA to help ensure our improved spaces meet the dynamic needs of our visitors and the communities we serve.

We have also launched an Appeal to protect Sigmund Freud’s personal library collection of over 1,600 books including several important at-risk titles in urgent need of conservation. The carefully chosen books that Freud transported from Vienna to London in 1938 together form the bedrock of psychoanalytic thought. Through the Freud Library Conservation Appeal, we aim to preserve this invaluable part of Freud’s legacy for future generations to explore and learn from. Fortuitously, just as we initiated our Appeal, we received a bequest of twenty-three books from Victor Ross, the son of psychoanalyst Eva Rosenfeld, a close friend of Anna Freud and a former patient of Sigmund Freud. These books, which were previously part of Freud’s personal collection in Vienna, hold impeccable provenance and many are annotated by Freud, offering further unique insights into the development of his thinking.

Another of this year’s goals is to draft our first Conservation Management Plan. This will help us document and appreciate the heritage value of the Museum, comprising the splendid house, its unique collections, and the beautiful garden, which provided palliative respite for Sigmund Freud during the last year of his life and which Anna Freud enjoyed for the forty-four years she lived here, before any further major renovations are carried out and changes made. In the meantime our public programme continues to thrive with several exhibitions and displays taking place at the Museum this year, such as A Century of the Ego and the Id, Freud and Latin America, and the eagerly awaited Freud’s Women: Patients, Pioneers, Artists, which is set to open on 30 October 2024 and debut in our newly refurbished first-floor spaces.

As a Museum which receives no regular public funding your support, as always, plays a vital role in preserving the legacies of Sigmund and Anna Freud. We are deeply grateful for your generosity and engagement and eagerly anticipate welcoming you to the Museum to experience these exciting developments at first hand.

From the Director

Dr Giuseppe Albano MBE

Director, Freud Museum London