The Library's exhibition "Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture" will open in the autumn of 1998, Dr. Billington has announced.
The exhibition, originally slated for autumn 1996, was postponed last December because the necessary private funds had not been raised.
In announcing the new date, Dr. Billington said, "This postponement has been erroneously characterized in the media either as a cancellation or a response to outside controversy over the show's content. It was, in fact, nothing more than a postponement due to inadequate funding. We have always had full confidence in the integrity and scholarship of the curator, the organizers and the advisers."
The guest curator of the exhibition, Michael Roth, said he was pleased with the 1998 opening date. Dr. Roth, professor of European history at Clare-mont Graduate School in Claremont, Calif., said: "This exhibition will draw attention to the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress and underscore their importance by examining Freud's enormous cultural impact in our century. . . . The exhibit team will continue to work toward integrating the widest possible range of scholarly viewpoints into our planning process. "
The Library has the world's largest Freud archives. Materials under consideration for the show include some of the approximately 45,000 manuscripts in the Freud collection, the bulk of which are unrestricted, and related items from the Library's holdings of rare books, films, maps and photographs.
The exhibition will explore Freud's influence throughout 20th century culture and how and why his legacy is contested.
