- Wikidata identifier:
- Q1455777
- Also known as:
- 20 Maresfield Gardens, The Freud Museum, Freud Museum
- Instance of:
- historic house museum; biographical museum; independent museum
- Museum/collection status:
- Accredited museum
- Accreditation number:
- 22
- Persistent shareable link for this record:
- https://museumdata.uk/museums/q1455777/
Collection-level records:
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Collection history (Collection development policy)
The collections are mainly personal belongings that were brought by the Freud family from Vienna in 1938, and further items belonging to Anna Freud who lived in the house until her death in 1982. Very few items have been added to the collection since the house opened as a museum in 1986; some donations and some left as legacies.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2016
Licence: CC BY-NC
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Collection overview (Collection development policy)
The museum’s collections consist of:
- Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of classical antiquities (c 2000 items)
- 19th and 20th century furniture and furnishings (c 130 items)
- Oriental carpets (c 30 items)
- Paintings, prints, and etchings (c 50 items)
- Photographic prints (c185 items)
- Sigmund and Anna Freud’s personal effects (including Anna Freud’s possessions such as jewellery (c.1000 items))
There are also extensive archive and library collections.
The core of the collection is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic couch and the rugs and cushions that cover it – it is highly symbolic of and significant to the history of the mind and the 20th century. Other key collection items include some flat works, for example a portrait of Sigmund Freud by Salvador Dali and Palm Tree by Lucian Freud. Some of the collection is significant solely because it was owned by Sigmund and/or Anna Freud and can help to shed light onto their lives and/or work. Some objects, such as some of Sigmund Freud’s antiquities, for example, are fine and rare examples drawing international interest in their own right.
As the priority when forming the museum (at the wish of Anna Freud) was Sigmund Freud and his possessions, many of Anna Freud’s possessions didn’t get accessioned. It is only recently in 2013 that Anna Freud’s possessions were reassessed and many were accessioned.
The museum has upwards of 10000 digital images, forming a record of the history of the museum and a record of museum objects and archival material. These have not been accessioned but are in a sense actively generated and ‘collected’.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2016
Licence: CC BY-NC