Why Contemporary Art? Why Inside the Freud Museum?

More and more contemporary art exhibitions are finding their way into institutional spaces such as large and small-scale museums: whether they are national historical museums or independent micromuseums, contemporary art seems to be increasingly welcome in these spaces. What makes contemporary art so appealing to these institutions? What can contemporary art contribute to a museum whose primary focus is not art? Is the purpose of contemporary art to raise matters or questions that are otherwise repressed in these sites? Or does contemporary art simply become complicit with the museum’s status quo? Can a contemporary art exhibition make a lasting incursion, or is it a temporary hiatus in the museum’s otherwise normative practices?

By considering the Freud Museum London’s extraordinary history of contemporary art exhibitions, this talk will open up these questions for discussion.