Sometimes artists and exhibitions of art can try a bit too hard, be a bit too clever, and fall flat on their face as a result. Sadly, that’s what’s happened at the Freud Museum, where they invited an artist in to create a site-specific installation based around the story of Sigmund Freud’s long-serving housekeeper.
Paula Fichtl was the longtime housekeeper for the Freud family, initially serving as the live-in housekeeper in Vienna, and later coming to London with the family when they escaped on the eve of WWII.
To tell her often overlooked story, the museum invited Cathie Pilkington to create an art installation dotted around the museum, but has ended up with an exhibition that’s almost as invisible as the housekeeper.
Contemporary art inside a classic home is a delicate idea, but when done well, it can challenge our preconceptions about a space.
However, the art needs to stand out and contrast strongly with the background, and the difficulty with this exhibition is that the interventions are almost invisible.
In part, that’s the venue, as Freud’s house is packed with his collection of antiquities, so anything added needs to be pretty obvious. Here, it’s more of a treasure hunt that can only be solved by picking up the exhibition guidebook and using the room maps to locate the new art. It really doesn’t help that some of the additions look like antiques or the sort of glassworks that Freud might have collected anyway.
Apart from one room, which has been turned into the artist’s storehouse, it’s an otherwise invisible exhibition.
If you are thinking of a visit to the museum, go anyway, but sadly, as a contemporary art exhibition within a museum, its invisibility makes it all too easy to overlook.
The exhibition, Housekeeper, is at the Freud Museum until 22nd February and is included in the entry price.
Standard Ticket: £14.50
Concessions: £12.50
Young Persons (12-16): £9
Children Under 12: Free
