Wende Museum Opens Two Major Exhibitions November 8: Martínez Celaya and Cold War Architecture in Ghana

Culver City, CA (October 29, 2025) – The Wende Museum announces the opening of two major exhibitions on Saturday, November 8, 2025: Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Sextant and Intersections: The Architecture of Victor Adegbite and Charles Polónyi in Ghana. The openings are joined by a new installation by Hande Sever in the museum’s East German guardhouse. The day will include a curator-led tour at noon, followed by a public reception with artist and curator remarks at 2 p.m.

Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Sextant

The Wende Museum dedicates its first solo exhibition to artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, whose artwork combines history, poetry, and philosophy in a unique and highly personal way. The exhibition features a sugar-coated scale model of the house that was built by the artist’s father in the sugar-producing town of Nueva Paz, Cuba, between 1957 and 1963, during and shortly after the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the height of the Cold War. Sculptures and paintings within and around the house complement the installation, which balances history, memory, and artistic imagination.

Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Sextant concludes the artist’s trilogy on Cuba, which began with Los muertos llaman al alba at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, and The Word-Shimmering Sea: Diego Velázquez / Enrique Martínez Celaya at the Hispanic Society in New York, both presented in 2024. It reflects on personal yet universal topics including individual versus cultural identity, exile and belonging, history and memory, realism and imagination, image and projection, past and present, as it transposes the viewer into a magic-poetic realm.
Martínez Celaya evokes an environment rich in symbols and associations connected to Cuban Cold War history, mythology and folk tales, religious practices, and personal memories, while reflecting on the meaning of time in our lives. The sculptures and paintings in the installation counterbalance the house as a symbol of steadiness, referencing life as an ever-changing journey, full of complexities and contradictions, yet always rich in surprises and new perspectives.

Martínez Celaya is an artist, author, and former physicist. He is Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in 58 public collections. He will return to the Wende Museum for a conversation with Chief Curator Joes Segal at 2 p.m. on November 22. The Sextant will remain on view through October 11, 2026.

Intersections: The Architecture of Victor Adegbite and Charles Polónyi in Ghana

On view through April 12, 2026, Intersections explores how architecture shaped the ambitions of newly independent Ghana during the 1960s.

The exhibition centers on two encounters. The first was the collaboration between Ghanaian architect Victor Adegbite and Hungarian architect Charles Polónyi who, in the wake of Ghana’s independence in 1957, designed housing schemes that responded to Ghana’s needs, means, and aspirations. Archival documents, analytical drawings, and contemporary photographs by Ghanaian photographer Eric Don-Arthur show how Adegbite’s and Polónyi’s buildings continue to structure life in Accra today. The second encounter takes place in the exhibition space between two archives, preserved by the architects’ daughters in the United States and Hungary. They reveal how the history of modern architecture is made possible by personal acts of memory and care.

The exhibition is curated by Michael Dziwornu and Łukasz Stanek, the founders of Accra-based urban research collective Office Southeast, in collaboration with Dana Salama.

Also debuting November 8: Specters of the Red Woodstock by Hande Sever, a new installation in the East German Guardhouse that explores the surveillance of the International Youth Festivals. These large-scale gatherings of artists, writers, and political activists were held in the former German Democratic Republic.

All exhibitions open to the public on Saturday, November 8, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with free admission. The Wende Museum is located at 10808 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230.

A press preview will take place on Friday, November 7 from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring a curator-led tour. If you would like to attend, kindly RSVP by emailing communications@wendemuseum.org.

A press kit featuring images from the exhibitions can be found here.

The Wende is an art museum, cultural center, and archive of the Cold War that preserves history and brings it to life through exhibitions, scholarship, education, and community engagement. Founded in 2002, the Wende Museum holds an unparalleled collection of art and artifacts from the Cold War era, which serves as a foundation for programs that illuminate political and cultural changes of the past, offer opportunities to make sense of a changing present, and inspire active participation in personal and social change for a better future.
The Wende Museum is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit wendemuseum.org or follow the Wende on social media: @wendemuseum.

Media Contact
Andrew Hartwell
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communications@wendemuseum.org