Political power relations, economic structures, and cultural ideas impact the way we experience, envision, and structure our environment. The Cold War, with its strict division between ‘East’ and ‘West’ both in physical and ideological terms, is a case in point. To a certain extent, Cold War history can be read as a history of spatial relations. This exhibition explores the spatial characteristics of Cold War era Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in ten sections: public space; private space; work space; border space; secret space; ideological space; alternative space; outer space; shared space; and changing space.

Photography exhibition by Nathan Farb, based on a trip he took in 1977 to Novosibirsk as a host of the American exhibition Photography USA, part of a cultural exchange program under President Carter’s administration. 

For the past ten years, British cultural historian Juliane Fürst has researched a topic that has never been consistently addressed before; the history and culture of Soviet hippies in the 1970s and 1980s. Hippies represented the most widespread and pervasive counter-culture in the Soviet Union. Maintaining an elaborate network between regional centers, they experimented with alternative life styles, liberating themselves from the constraints of imposed culture. The exhibition highlights the power of idiosyncrasy in the very heart of the socialist empire.

Ballet was part of the high drama of the “culture wars,” as the US and USSR jockeyed for position during the Cold War. The Soviet Union produced some of the greatest dancers the world has ever known, with the Bolshoi and Kirov companies as standard bearers. But there were also painful losses, such as the defections of star dancers Nureyev, Makarova, and Baryshnikov, and the stifling of dance innovation during a time of great creativity in the West. How did the culture wars fit into the larger context of Soviet and American ballet, and the place of dance in Soviet life?

In 2014, curators Yevgeniy Fiks and Stamatina Gregory organized the exhibition “Monument to Cold War Victory” in New York’s Cooper Union, the result of an international competition they initiated, inviting artists to reflect on the question why there is no monument to Cold War victory, and how such a monument might look like if it would exist. The submissions were judged by a team of high-ranking international artists, curators and scholars, among whom Susan Buck-Morss, Boris Groys, and Vitaly Komar. Fiks and Gregory are collaborating with The Wende Museum to present the second iteration of this exhibition, for which the participating artists will present works that reflect the context of Los Angeles. All of the artworks inspire reflection on the character of the Cold War and its topical meaning.