Past
Join Culver City cultural leaders and scholars for a timely discussion on the hidden history of racism in Culver City and what can be done in the present to undo harm in the future. This event is co-presented with the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, located at 4130 Overland Ave, Culver City, CA 90230.
Encounter subversive art across geographic, ideological, and historical borders in a new exhibition at the Wende Museum. Crumbling Empire: The Power of Dissident Voices will present Russian poster designs of the 1980s and early ’90s, from the Wende's Tom and Jeri Ferris Russian Collection as well as the collection of AIGA San Diego, alongside contemporary American street art by Shepard Fairey and a monumental work by Komar and Melamid
The Wende Museum presents the first U.S. museum exhibition of the North Korean dissident artist Sun Mu. Sun Mu – a pseudonym, meaning “no borders” – fled his country (the last remaining Stalinist state on earth) in 1998. Trained as a propaganda-poster artist, he continues to work in the style in which he once glorified the North Korean army and state leaders, ironically turning propagandistic messages on their heads.
Look up! Looming above Los Angeles are haunting relics of panic and fear. Once distinctly prominent and alarming fixtures in the city, civil-defense air-raid sirens still pepper the vast landscape. Installation began during World War II, but the sirens became prolific symbols of the subsequent Cold War. The formerly intimidating objects erected to warn Angelenos of impending danger have morphed into eerie artifacts of a foregone era. Now deteriorated and defunct, the sirens have become camouflaged within the visual fabric of the modern city and have developed their own unique character and look. By photographing environmental portraits of the sirens, some of which have since been removed, Nicole Weingart has created a comprehensive photographic series of Los Angeles air-raid sirens. This exhibition presents a sample of the diversity of the series.
Explore your memories and personal stories in a new intergenerational writing workshop at the Wende. Participants from teens to seniors are invited to engage in inspiring writing exercises that will make connections between Cold War memories and present-day life.
Join us for a reception and performance to celebrate the closing of our current exhibitions.
Victor Grossman, born Stephen Wechsler in 1928, is an American journalist, writer, and popular speaker, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1952. He has since lived in East Germany, then in reunified Germany, chronicling life, politics, and humanity. Grossman will speak about his recent book A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee (2019).
Please join us at an upcoming neighborhood-engagement gathering to help shape a community-led vision for the parcel next door. What would you like to see there? How might we best activate 10858 Culver Boulevard for the benefit of our Culver City community?
Join us for special kid-friendly activities on the theme of sports diplomacy all day on Sunday, May 26.
Special guests Hertha BSC Berlin - one of Berlin's leading soccer teams - will join in the fun from 3:30 to 5. Guests of all ages will have a chance to interact with the team as part of their U.S. tour spreading the message "Berlin tears down walls!," in honor of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
My Brothers and Sisters in the North portrays the people behind the persistent clichés and stereotypes of a misunderstood nation and provides an in-depth look behind the garish façade of propaganda in a living environment that is usually inaccessible to us. The people encountered by the director on her journey through the country – engineers, soldiers, farmers, painters, seamstresses – are not chance acquaintances, they were chosen by the regime. Nevertheless, Cho approaches her protagonists with sincere interest, respect, and, most of all, devoid of any judgment. Thus appears a cheerful folk who, despite their often peculiar-seeming love towards their “leader,” have by no means given up on their dreams or the hope of reunification of both Koreas. Co-presented with the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.
Join us for the sixth installment of the Wende discussion series Art - Past – Present. Chief Curator Joes Segal will moderate an interactive conversation with Russian-born artist Vitaly Komar as he considers how interpreting the past informs the present.
Music at the Wende: SASSAS’ sound. concert series presents the premiere of Carmina Escobar’s The Fundamental Impermanence of All Things.
RSVPs open April 8, 2019, at 10 a.m.
Join us for special kid-friendly activities all day on Sunday, April 28. Program materials and supplies are free!
Enjoy drinks and light refreshments in the Wende Sculpture Garden, plus a flash talk on "Utopian Ideas in Times of Moral Confusion" by Wende Museum Chief Curator and Director of Programming Joes Segal.
How do Putin and the Russian government see themselves on the global stage? Join us for a special discussion with Russia expert Angela Stent, who will illuminate how Russia has emerged from the ashes of the Cold War to become a world power. Stent will discuss Russia’s key relationships with countries that are at odds with many in the West, including Russia’s backing of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, its support of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and its growing strategic partnership with Iran. Stent will also discuss relations between Russia and China, and how a stronger partnership between the two could pose a threat to the US.
Co-presented by the Wende Museum and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council