Sigmund Freud-Museum | Newsletter - Sigmund Freud Museum Wien

Seit Mai 2002 präsentiert das Sigmund Freud-Museum eine neue Installation von Joseph Kosuth mit
dem Titel ‚Ansicht der Erinnerung‘ – ‘A View to Memory’ an der Außenfront des Hauses Berggasse
19. Das neben dem Hauseingang gelegene Lokal, in dem bis 1938 Siegmund Kornmehl eine koschere
Fleischerei geführt hat, bietet mit seinem großen Schaufenster den Schauplatz von Kosuths
Installation.
Die Projekte des Museums konnten in den letzten Jahren nur durch die grundlegende finanzielle
Unterstützung des Vereins der Freunde des Sigmund Freud-Museums Wien realisiert werden. Dieser
Verein blickte 2001 auf eine zehnjährige Tätigkeit zurück und hat zu diesem Anlass seine
Programmatik neu formuliert, die er in diesem Newsletter vorstellt.
Die verstärkte Öffnung des Museums für neue Wiener Publikumsschichten wird auch in den
kommenden Jahren im Zusammenspiel mit internationalen wissenschaftlichen Kooperationen und
Ausstellungen im Mittelpunkt der Zielsetzung stehen.
Inge Scholz-Strasser
Direktorin
Dear Readers,
In several building phases over the past ten years, the Sigmund Freud Museum has been able to nearly
double its exhibition space and has made the infrastructural improvements necessary for the
establishment of a scientific research library. Now that it has rented a street-level storefront that
provides a display surface on the building’s exterior, the Museum is able as of this year to draw
attention to its activities through installations in public space. These new developments offer an
opportunity to consider the manifold functions of the location Berggasse 19 and the spatial concepts
that have been realized there. The Museum’s spatial planning and its realization by architect Wolfgang
Tschapeller are documented in an architecture folder that was compiled this year by Lydia Marinelli
and Georg Traska.
In last year’s phase of the remodeling of all the facilities at Berggasse 19, the renovation of the original
parquet flooring in the library area and the complete renovation of the administrative rooms on the
house’s ground floor have been completed. From 1895 to 1908, Sigmund Freud had his first office in
what are now the administrative rooms. Today these rooms are also used as space for presenting the art
collection of the “Foundation for the Arts, Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna” which can be viewed on
request. The renovation was co-funded by Austrian Lotteries, one of the Sigmund Freud Museum’s
sponsors.
In addition to maintaining its usual high frequency of international visitors the Sigmund Freud
Museum has been able to reach a new, mainly young public in Vienna in particular by organizing
events in which psychoanalytic approaches overlap with the performing arts, literature and new media.
Berggasse 19 is now seen as a contemporary forum for scientific and cultural discourse. In this context
we are also printing the text of this year’s Sigmund Freud Lecture, given by Sherry Turkle and entitled
“Whither Psychoanalysis in a Computer Culture?” This lecture elaborated on the effects of the new
media on individual forms of communication.
The exhibition “Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture,” a cooperative effort of the Library of
Congress, the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna and the Freud Museum London was shown in Brazil at
the Museu de Arte Moderna São Paulo from 10 October 2000 through 8 January 2001 and at the
Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro from 6 February through 19 March 2001. Thereafter the
show was on view for the last time in the USA at the Field Museum in Chicago from 3 October
through 9 December 2001. Currently the exhibition can be seen in a facsimile version at Beth
Hatefutsoth Tel Aviv. For this show in Israel, the Sigmund Freud Museum has made available first
editions of Freud writings and the Sigmund Freud Gymnasium in Vienna has lent the protocol of
Sigmund Freud’s final examination.
The Sigmund Freud Museum has realized numerous exhibition projects at Berggasse 19 during the last
year. The exhibitions explored the interaction between psychoanalysis and art in the areas of literature
and new media. Julius Deutschbauer’s “Library of Unread Books at the Sigmund Freud Museum” was
on view in the exhibition and lecture room from 6 April to 10 June 2001. Readings were held in this
context and events were also hosted within the framework of the citywide “Long Night at the