At London's Freud Museum, the artist Cathie Pilkington has made a ghostly intervention

"Even though they had fled Vienna, the Freuds managed to bring many of their most precious possessions to 20 Maresfield Gardens, most notably the contents of Sigmund's study and consulting room, including his remarkable collection of around 2,000 Roman, Egyptian, Chinese and Mexican antiquities, and of course his iconic psychoanalytic couch. Today all of this remains exactly as it was in Freud's day: books and artefacts crowd into cabinets and cover every surface,"

"Another memorable artist-disturber was Sophie Calle, who in 1999 spread her wedding dress across the hallowed couch and slyly interspersed personal keepsakes and intimate texts among the museum's reverentially preserved artefacts; and another was Mark Wallinger, whose 2016 take on Freudian notions of doubling and self-reflection involved installing a mirror across the entire ceiling of the study. I will also never forget Sarah Lucas's Beyond the Pleasure"

The Freud Museum in Hampstead preserves Sigmund Freud's final home and the contents of his study and consulting room, including his psychoanalytic couch and a collection of around 2,000 antiquities. Freud arrived in London in 1938 as a refugee, ill with cancer, and many of his possessions were brought from Vienna. The house opened to the public in 1986 and maintains the rooms as they were in Freud's day, with books and artefacts densely arranged. The museum invites contemporary artists to respond to the space. Notable responses include Susan Hiller's 1994 vitrine installation, Sophie Calle's 1999 wedding-dress intervention on the couch, Mark Wallinger's 2016 ceiling mirror, and Sarah Lucas's 2000 exploration of Eros and Thanatos that used a mattress and a cardboard coffin.

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