Inside the Freud Museums: History, Memory and Site-Responsive Art

Abstract

Sigmund Freud spent the final year of his life at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, surrounded by all his possessions, in exile from the Nazis. The long-term home and workspace he left behind in Berggasse 19, Vienna is a seemingly empty space, devoid of the great psychoanalyst's objects and artefacts. Now museums, both of these spaces resonate powerfully. Since 1989, the Freud Museum London has held over 90 exhibitions by a distinctive range of artists including Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker, Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Susan Hiller, and Sarah Lucas. The Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna houses a small but impressive contemporary art collection, with work by John Baldessari, Joseph Kosuth, Jenny Holzer, Franz West and Ilya Kabakov. In this remarkable book, Joanne Morra offers a nuanced analysis of these historical and their unique relationships to contemporary art. Taking us on a journey the ‘site-responsive' artworks, exhibitions and curatorial practices that intervene in the objects, spaces and memories of these museums, Joanne Morra offers a fresh experience of the history and practice of psychoanalysis, of and contemporary art. 'In this sparkling book, Morra integrates a thorough re-visiting of psychoanalysis, an in-depth study of a number of contemporary art as installed in a museum not meant for art and, most importantly, she demonstrates the fruitfulness of revising the relationship between site and the art installed there. The concept of site-responsiveity will transform our thinking about that special spatiality without which art cannot reach its audiences.' Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam 'Rugs and couches, videos and photographs - all play important roles in Joanne Morra's impressive and thoughtful book. Both a cultural and a material history of psychoanalysis, Inside the Freud Museums works through the charged sites of the two personality museums devoted to this titanic figure, vie the impressive roster of contemporary artists who have engaged with these historic yet deeply personal sites. For anyone interested in the pervasive influence of Freudian psychoanalytic ideas within conceptual art, this is an important read.' Caroline A. Jones, MIT

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