Freud and Antiquity: shaping understanding for museums, psychoanalysts and creative artists

Professor Miriam Leonard’s research on the importance of antiquity for Sigmund Freud led her to curate a major exhibition at London’s Freud Museum in collaboration with the Petrie Museum at UCL.

Professor Leonard’s research underpinned her exhibition at the Freud Museum (London), Between Oedipus and the Sphinx: Freud and Egypt, which combined objects from the Freud’s collections with items from the Petrie Museum, London. The exhibition was viewed by 7,980 with an extended reach of 200,000 across 25 countries via online media. Due to its popularity, the original exhibition run from 7 August to 12 October 2019 was extended by a further two weeks until 27 October. The audience included international visitors (60%), school groups (mainly UK-based, aged 16+) and industry professionals (psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology).  

Professor Leonard’s research on Freud’s last work Moses and Monotheism and its discussion of Akhenaten and the origins of Judaism prompted her to make its ideas the centre piece of the exhibition. Freud’s last work was brought to life by the objects from the Petrie collection excavated at the site of Akhenaten’s kingdom. Visitor surveys found that 82% said that the exhibition changed their understanding of the influence of archaeology and ancient Egypt on Freud's thinking. The exhibition catalogue (which sold 300 copies) included essays by Professor Leonard and Anna Garnett, the curator of the Petrie Museum, and explored the cultural and personal background to Freud’s fascination with Egypt. 

Professor Leonard led a series of events at both museums that ran alongside the exhibition. These included guided tours (20 participants), a day course (19 participants) and a symposium at the Freud Museum (40 participants). The participants came from the UK, Australia, Sweden and Poland and were a mixture of psychoanalysts, students and interested members of the public. The course fee of GBP65 per person helped to raise funds for the Museum’s archival, research and educational work.  

In September 2019, a sold-out public event was held at the Petrie Museum on the subject of Egyptomania in the Time of Freud, attracting 120 participants. In conversation with the Egyptologist J. J. Johnston, Professor Leonard talked about how her research gave rise to the exhibition. The artist Sal Pittman produced a video montage inspired by the themes of the exhibition, which was shown at the event. The award-winning dramatist Michael Eaton’s play Fragments: When Sigmund Freud Did Not Meet Flinders Petrie was first performed at the event and was then published by Shoestring Press in November 2020. The exhibition inspired a special edition of the magazine Pericles at Play (readership 13,986 in 71 countries) which included 2 poems, 4 short stories and 6 new translations directly drawing on its ideas.  

Links

• Professor Miriam Leonard 
• Department of Greek & Latin 
• UCL Faculty of Arts & Humanities
• UCL Faculty of Arts & Humanities REF 2021

Image 

• Image credit: Freud Museum London