Upcoming
As part of Virtual Friday Night Films at the Wende, Vladimir Paperny, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures at UCLA and author of Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, will present a talk comparing two early Cold War films: Encounter at the Elbe (1949, Soviet Union) versus Berlin Express (1948, United States). This presentation is a continuation of his project with late film critic and screenwriter Maya Turovskaya, called "Hollywood in Moscow: American and Soviet Film of the 1930s-1940s."
The sixth Cold War Spaces lunchtime talk with Annette Vowinckel, Research Fellow and Head of the Department of Contemporary History of Media and Information Society at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam (Germany), and Joes Segal, the Wende Museum's Chief Curator and Director of Programming.
The seventh Cold War Spaces lunchtime talk with Asif Siddiqi, Professor of History and Director of the O’Connell Initiative on the Global History of Capitalism, Fordham University, and Joes Segal, the Wende Museum's Chief Curator and Director of Programming.
Globalization is all about the free flow of people, goods, capital, and ideas, but more than ever states are encapsulating themselves, closing their borders and hesitant to recognize immigrants as part of the nation. Why are border crossings, both physically and culturally, conceived as a threat? What motivates the current worldwide tendency toward exclusion? In Search of Our Times is a six panel discussions presented as part of Wende Conversations: A Discussion Series Supported by Susan Horowitz and Rick Feldman.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. What is its current role and status? Is it still possible to believe in universal human rights, even if they are constantly challenged at home and abroad? Has postmodernism eroded the belief in universal ethics? How could we restore ethics in politics? The six-panel discussions are presented as part of Wende Conversations: A Discussion Series Supported by Susan Horowitz and Rick Feldman.
Due to the continuing precautions in Los Angeles County regarding COVID-19, exhibition dates are tentative and exact dates will be announced soon.
The series of (mostly) peaceful revolutions that took down the Berlin Wall effectively ended state socialism in Eastern Europe, and brought not just a political but also a material transformation. Countless people who lived through socialism discarded the household and consumer items they had lived with and loved or hated for many years, as they finally had access to higher-standard goods. This exhibition presents the metamorphosis of household and consumer goods from objects of everyday life to items in a museum collection, by way of flea markets, and invites contemporary artists to position them in the here and now.
Due to the continuing precautions in Los Angeles County regarding COVID-19, exhibition dates are tentative and exact dates will be announced soon.
Proving that photography is no more “objective” than any other medium, two photographers with the same mission offer very different views of East Germany. Through reports published by Stern, unpublished photographs, and documents and photos from the Stasi archives (both photographers were closely monitored by the East German secret police), this exhibition highlights Thomas Höpker and Harald Schmitt’s very different approaches to East German life, culture, and society.