Jane McAdam Freud

Jane McAdam Freud (24 February 1958 – 9 August 2022) was a British conceptual sculptor working in installation art and digital media. She was the winner of the 2014 European Trebbia Awards for artistic achievement.

Life and work McAdam Freud was born in London to Katherine Margaret McAdam and Lucian Freud, and was the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Her career began with a solo show at the age of 18, curated by her art teachers at Putney College, which is now part of South Thames College. After completing a Foundation course at Wimbledon College of Art, McAdam Freud studied Mosaics in Ravenna from 1977 to 1978, returning to London to study at the Central School of Art and Design and at the Royal College of Art under the supervision of John Stezaker and Eduardo Paolozzi.

In 1986 McAdam Freud won the British Art Medal Scholarship in Rome where she studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma under Gino Marotta and at the Scuola d'Arte della Medaglia in Rome. McAdam Freud was an associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins and taught short courses in the Sculpture School at Morley College. She has also taught at the Royal College of Art, London and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

McAdam Freud was a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. In 1991 she was awarded the Italian State Mint prize for her work Moments and Memories; her winning design was put into production by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato. In the same year she was granted the Freedom of the City of London. She has published several catalogues including; On the Edge (1996), Relative Relations (2006) and papers on art and Ppychoanalysis.

McAdam Freud's short film Dead or Alive refers to Freud's concept of Condensation. The pairings morph into each other through the merging back and forth of Freud's antiquities with her sculpture, from past to present 'virtually' closing the gap of time. At midway the two objects merge and form a third image of a 'virtual object. Her preference for this work was to locate it within reach of a psychoanalytically aware audience. Dead or Alive was shown at museums, institutes and galleries including Philoctetes Centre for the Imagination, NY, New York USA in 2008, Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation, (Media Tek Lectures) Taipei, Taiwan and the Kosciuszko Foundation, NYC, USA in 2009. Also the Sundaram Tagore Gallery, LA, USA in 2010 and Whitelabs Gallery, Milan in 2012.

Her works are represented in public collections including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, National Gallery Archives, London, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. International collections include the Brooklyn Museum, The National Arts Club, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the Greek National Gallery, and the Berlin State Museums.

McAdam Freud lived in northwest London at the time of her death, and was married to architect Peter Henson. She died on 9 August 2022, aged 64; no cause was given.

Solo exhibitions 1996: Yorkshire Museum, York 1997: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1997: Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, Scotland 1998: Simmons Gallery, Bloomsbury, London 1998: Marishal Museum, Aberdeen, Scotland 1999: Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, Missouri, USA 2000: Das Norske Veritas, London Bridge 2001: 'Resonating' The Gallery, University College Cork 2004: 'Give and Take' Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2006: 'We Do' Adele Boag Gallery, Adelaide, Australia 2006: 'Relative Relations' Freud Museum 2006: 'Subject as Object' Beverley Knowles Fine Art, London 2007: 'Relative Relations' Harrow Museum, London 2007: 'Relative Reflections' Muzeum Novojičínska, Pribor, Czech Republic 2009: 'Repetitions' New York Psychoanalytic Society, NYC, USA 2009: 'Other Side' Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue 2009: 'Repetitions' Kosciuszko Foundation NYC, USA 2009–10: 'Conceptual Sculpture' London Centre for Psychotherapy 2010: 'StoneSpeak' Freud Museum, London 2010: 'Freud on Freud' New Center of Psychoanalysis in LA, USA 2010: 'Random' Sundaram Tagore Gallery, LA, USA 2010: 'War Works' Centre for Jewish Culture, Kraków, Poland 2011: 'Random Plus' Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York 2011: 'Hinged' Freud Museum of Dreams, St. Petersburg, Russia 2011: 'HiStory' Austria General Consulate Gallery, Cracow, Poland] 2012: 'Lucian Freud My Father' Freud Museum, London. 2012: 'Family Matters' Gazelli Art House, London, UK 2012: 'Flesh and Stone' New School House Gallery, York, UK 2012: '3 Generations' Whitelabs Gallery, Milan, Italy 2013: 'Family Matters' Gazelli Art House, Baku, Azerbaijan 2013: 'Taking Care' Palazzo Tagliaferro, Andora, Italy 2013: 'Dreaming and Doing' Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow 2014: 'Painted Earth' Harrow Arts Centre, London 2014: 'In My Own Image – Ill Fit' British Psychotherapy Foundation, London 2014 'In the Mould of the Fathers' C2 Contemporanea, Florence, Italy 2014: 'On Identity', Gallery Martini Ronchetti, Genoa, Italy 2014: 'Parallels' 2 man show with photographer Frank Dabba Smith at The Priory, Roehampton, London 2014: 'Dance of Disapproval' Anna Pavlova House, London 2015: 'Mother Mould', Gazelli Art House, Mayfair, London 2015–16: Wooyang Art Museum, Gyeongju-si, South Korea Retrospective 2017: TIMH, NY Psychoanalytic Association – small works display 2017: 'Object Authority' Pasmore Gallery, Harrow School, London 2017: 'Recent works', C2 Contemporary – Di Pinto, Florence, Italy 2017: Societe Psychanalytique de Paris, Lyon, France, exhibition and presentation 2017: Symposium and Exhibition with works by Claudio Costa, Silesiun Uni. of Mestre, Vencice, Italy 2017: Museum of Modern Art, Ascona, Lugano, Switzerland – Group exhibition 2017–18: 'Object' Fix Me in Your Turquoise Gaze', Gazelli Art House, London 2017–18: 'Freud Study Merge', CE Contemporary, Milan, Italy 2018: Jekza Gallery, Timișoara, Romania 2018: Oradea City Museum, Oradea, Romania 2019: Palazzo Tagliaferro, Andora, Italy 2019: Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy 2019: Museo Attivoa Claudia Costa, Quarto, Genoa, Italy 2019: Spatui Intact, Cluj, Romania 2020: Headstone Manor Museum, Harrow, London 2020: Gazelli Art House, Baku, Azerbaijan 2021–22: Installation, Freud Birth House, Pribor, CZ