Feature: Exhibition - The Freud Museum open Wednesday to Friday, 12am to 5pm
Published: 17 February, 2011
by GERALD ISAAMAN
Make a new appointment with Sigmund
YOU might think it a sombre, even sacred place, a temple to the man who changed the world’s thinking – and a place where dreams and sex are taken deadly seriously.
Yet the Freud Museum is rapidly becoming a place of fun. You can buy a pair of slippers decorated with the face of old Sigmund – Freudian Slippers, of course – a box of Psychogames and even a fridge magnet of Freud’s famed, carpet-covered couch where patients revealed their deepest secrets.
Although there remains an air of reverence to the father of psychoanalysis, who spent his last days at the house in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, after escaping the Nazi arrival in his native Vienna in 1938, the substantial property has become a venue for the unexpected.
The reason is that the museum, whose director Carol Seigel used to be at Hampstead’s Burgh House, needs to raise some £200,000 a year to keep going and is open for hire for conferences and other events.
Enter now Sophie Leighton, the museum’s newly-appointed curator, who is directly charged with bringing new life to the museum, which is preparing to celebrate its 25th anniversary as the international mecca for Freudian thinkers.
While psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion in the West – Hampstead once had more than 20 practitioners clustered around Freud’s old home – it has become popular in the East.
“Last year we received around 20,000 visitors,” Sophie explains. “We are not yet overwhelmed with Chinese visitors, but we are monitoring the development of psychoanalysis in East Asia.
“Visitors are still keen to see Freud’s study and, of course, the couch – one of the most iconic pieces of furniture in the world.
“Another large group of visitors are students. We run education programmes for all ages, from primary school pupils to adult learners.
“And we are keen to encourage local visitors. Our busy programme of events is designed with local people in mind.”
Born in London but brought up in Cornwall from the age of nine, Sophie taught English in France and Japan after winning a first-class degree in French and English at Sheffield and then an MA in the history of art at the Courtauld.
But museums always fascinated her, the more so after becoming an assistant curator at the V&A and a guidebook editorial assistant at the National Trust, then a freelance researcher for BBC art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon.
She added: “Whatever people say about Freud today, his legacy in the history of art, literature and science remains strong. He arguably changed the way people think about the mind.”
And the future?
“The trustees have raised over £100,000 for the museum’s development fund,” says Sophie. “In the coming year we are planning to spend this on new displays, a new design for the Anna Freud Room, making more space for events, and updating the interpretation”
• The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12am to 5pm, £5 for adults, £3 concessions for students and seniors, children free.