Freud's Love Letters Featured in New Exhibition About the Women in His Life
Photograph of Martha, Amalia and Sigmund Freud on holiday at Altaussee, Austria. 1905. Photographer unknown.
Manuscripts, letters, diaries, photographs, and sketchbooks will be centrestage in a new exhibition which will celebrate the women who featured in the life of Sigmund Freud.
Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists which runs from October 30 through May 5 2025 at the Freud Museum in London, will look at the women who shaped Freud’s life and those whose work has been influence by Freud’s thoughts and theories. It will include items from the Freud Museum Archive and Library, as well as loans from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
Highlights include:
- early love letters between Freud and his wife Martha during their engagement
- extracts from analyst Lou Andreas-Salomé’s diaries
- childhood notebooks outlining her dreams which belonged to Marie Bonaparte, a patient who became an analyst and helped Freud escape Nazi-occupied Vienna
- a focus on Virginia Woolf who visited Freud at his home and with her husband Leonard at the Hogarth Press started publishing Freud’s collected works in English 100 years ago
Panels from Alison Bechdel’s graphic book memoir Are You My Mother? will go on display alongside relevant works of art including a series of previously unseen works in fabric by Paula Rego, Tracey Emin’s neon work I Whisper to My Past Do I Have Another Choice; drawings by Cornelia Parker, and sculpture by Sarah Lucas.
“The exhibition reveals how women were the driving force behind psychoanalysis and how Freud’s life and work continue to intrigue women today," said co-curators novelist and author of Freud's Women Lisa Appignanesi and Freud Museum Curator Bryony Davies. "The combination of a truly exceptional collection of works of art and the unparalleled personal setting will make the exhibition a memorable and significant instalment in the continuing story and enduring legacy of Sigmund Freud.”
The exhibition will be the first to showcase the museum's newly refurbished events and exhibition rooms which have been upgraded thanks to funding from the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.
