Seemingly empty: Freud at Berggasse 19, A conceptual museum in Vienna

Abstract

In this article, the author posits and argues for a new category of museums: the conceptual museum. By taking the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna and its Contemporary Art Collection as a case study, she suggests that museums that are seemingly empty, for instance, without objects, are, in fact, filled with their own histories, contingencies and epistemological confluences, which, when they come into contact with the personal histories, fantasies, knowledge, expectations and longings of their visitors produce a rather full encounter. © The Author(s), 2013.