Freud Museum
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Freud Museum is situated at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, London.
In 1938, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, left Vienna after the Nazi annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) and moved to London, taking up residence at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, one of London's most intellectual suburbs. A small sun room in a modern style was added at the rear by Ernst Ludwig Freud. Freud was over eighty at this time, and he died the following year, but the house remained in his family until his youngest daughter Anna Freud, who was a pioneer of child therapy, died in 1982.
The Freuds were able to move all of their furniture and household effects to London. The star exhibit in the museum is Freud's psychoanalytic couch. There are also Biedermeier chests, tables and cupboards, and a collection of 18th century and 19th century Austrian painted country furniture. The museum owns Freud's collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Oriental antiquities, and his reference library. The collection includes a portrait of Freud by Salvador Dali.
The museum is open to the public five days a week. It also organizes research and publication programmes and it has an education service which organizes seminars, conferences and special visits to the museum. The museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine.
There are two other Freud Museums, one in Vienna, and another which has recently opened in Pribor, the Czech Republic, in the house where Sigmund Freud was born. The latter was opened by president Václav Klaus and four of Freuďs great-grandsons.
