The Freud Museum is opening a new art exhibition celebrating the many women that featured in Sigmund Freud’s life.
But it'll also look at Freud's ideas today, and for this bit some pretty huge artists — such as Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas — are involved.
The museum — which is the preserved former home of Freud and located in London’s Hampstead — will see contemporary artworks installed throughout every nook and cranny, including out into the stunning garden.
Works by some of the most famous female contemporary artists of today will be shown, including Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego, Sarah Lucas, Rachel Kneebone, Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker, and Helen Chadwick.
Freud Museum Director Giuseppe Albano calls it a “magnificent array of artists” and he’s not wrong. Collectively these artworks will grapple with Freud’s legacy, and how his ideas of memory, free association and sexuality continue to fascinate and endure with women today.
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The modern art pieces will be displayed along with a powerful combination of historic items, books, letters, diaries, photographs, sketchbooks and manuscripts. Some of these will be very significant loans — with one coming all the way from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
The exhibition is titled Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists and it'll fully reveal the women who shaped Freud’s life.
For example, the show will examine writer Virginia Woolf, who visited Freud at home in Hampstead and who started publishing Freud’s works. In fact, this year marks the 100th anniversary of Woolf’s Hogarth Press agreeing to publish Freud’s collected works in English.
Visitors will also discover the story of Princess Marie Bonaparte, a patient who became an analyst and helped Freud escape Nazi-occupied Vienna, as well as early patients such as Anna O, Cäcilie M and Dora, whose impact on Freud led to the formation of psychoanalysis.
Among the highlights of the historic exhibits will be early love letters between Freud and his wife Martha during their engagement; extracts from analyst Lou Andreas-Salomé’s diaries; Marie Bonaparte’s childhood notebooks which outline her dreams; and a selection of female figures from Freud’s antiquities collection, dating from Middle Bronze Age Syria (2000 BC) to 1st century AD France.
But it'll be the contemporary artworks that'll be a major draw for many visitors. Or that will certainly help bring in new audiences to the small museum.
Some of the most striking pieces will be a series of previously unseen works in fabric by Paula Rego, including ‘dollies’ and Alice’s Oversized Chair.
There'll be Tracey Emin’s neon work I Whisper to My Past Do I Have Another Choice which will be a bright and bold addition to the heritage setting (and of course, very, very modern). And there’ll also be wonderful porcelain by Rachel Kneebone, a sculpture by Sarah Lucas, and drawings by Cornelia Parker.
Many of the spectacular loans come directly from the artists themselves or their estates. These pieces will show how the influence of Freud’s thoughts and theories carry through the centuries, right up to the present day.
Exhibition curators Lisa Appignanesi and Bryony Davies said “the combination of a truly exceptional collection of works of art and the unparalleled personal setting will make [it] a memorable and significant instalment in the continuing story and enduring legacy of Sigmund Freud.”
Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists — supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust — runs at the Freud Museum in London from 30 October 2024 until 05 May 2025.
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