When Sigmund Freud reluctantly left Austria in 1938, he soon settled into 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London. Following his death, his daughter Anna continued on for the rest of her life in her father's last home. In 1980 she arranged for the purchase of the house by the Sigmund Freud Archives for the purpose of establishing a museum. In 1986 the museum opened to the public, and interested visitors could view Freud's home much as he had left it.

Harold Blum, executive director of the archives, authorized 65 items from Freud's collection of over 2000 antiquities to go on an American tour beginning in 1989 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Freud's death. This exhibit, The Sigmund Freud Antiquities: Fragments From a Buried Past, was organized by Lynn Gamwell, Director of the University Art Museum, State University of New York at Binghamton, and the staff of the Freud Museum in London. Opening in Philadelphia in September 1989, the exhibit has traveled to Columbia, S.C.; Binghamton, N.Y.; Chicago; Boulder, Colo.; Miami; Irvine, Calf.; Palo Alto; New Orleans; and Houston.

From November 7 through February 19 the objects will be exhibited at the Jewish Museum at the New York Historical Society. For the New York showing only, Susan L. Braunstein, Associate Curator for Archeology at the Jewish Museum, in conjunction with Dr. Gamwell, has selected 20 additional objects specifically related to Freud's Jewishness. Among these items is an extremely rare 13th century Hanukkah lamp. Also on view will be the original manuscript of Moses and Monotheism, Freud's only work on an explicitly Jewish theme, and Freud's personal copy of the Talmud in the original Aramaic.

This is a rare and not-to-be-missed event of which many members of The American may wish to avail themselves while in New York for the Fall Meeting.

Glen Gabbard