Photographing the War in Ukraine with Mark Neville
2026-09-11 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Photographer Mark Neville has lived in Ukraine since 2020 and stayed in Kyiv through four years of war. He co-founded Postcode Ukraine, a charity that drives humanitarian aid to frontline towns. On every trip he photographs the people he meets, and those photographs became his books.
Neville has spent his career asking what a photograph is for. He works closely with the communities he shoots, and he often puts the finished work back in their hands. His books travel as tools. He mailed Stop Tanks with Books to diplomats, journalists, and politicians two weeks before the full invasion began. He sends Diary of a Volunteer out one copy at a time, asks each reader to live with it, then has it collected and passed on.
Joes Segal, Chief Curator at the Wende Museum, talks with Neville about what a camera can do in a war.
The program takes place in the A-Frame Theater at the Wende Museum’s Community Center. Seating is first come, first served.
Bio
Mark Neville is a British artist based in Kyiv who works across art, activism, and documentary photography. He has had solo exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Imperial War Museum in London, and The Photographers’ Gallery in London. His books include Stop Tanks with Books, Battle Against Stigma, and Diary of a Volunteer.

FRAMEWORKS | Celia Hollander
2026-09-12 14:00 - 16:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
This new performance from Celia Hollander examines the emergent relationship between physicality and culture that gives life to a place. Drawing on Hollander’s personal loss of her house (Altadena) and childhood neighborhood (Palisades) in the 2025 fires, the piece incorporates footage of walks through both neighborhoods a year and a half after the fires. Musically, the piece bridges the geologic scale of landscape alongside rhythms of daily life, through processing and arranging familiar sounds within a palate of natural harmonics. The performance will conclude with a phone chorus, emphasizing the collective presence that ultimately gives a place its identity.
In this 2026 season of the Wende Museum’s experimental music series FRAMEWORKS, each featured artist will develop an interdisciplinary performance considering both domestic and public spaces as they relate to the artist’s singular perspective. The artists will reflect on the subtle implications of space, as functional and measurable records of cities or cultures; versus place, the conceptual and felt imaginings of the familiar or alien. Embodying the Wende’s ethos of promoting research into dynamic global networks and processes of transformation through an experimental lens, the series’ bimonthly, site-specific performances examine the “frameworks” through which we narrate the past and imagine the future; they complement the Museum’s exhibitions and programs while simultaneously acting as channels to contemporary scenes alive in Los Angeles.
Celia Hollander is a Los Angeles based composer, producer and performer. Combining acoustic and digital elements, her work focuses on themes such as shaping time through composition, surrendering to improvisation, and music as a natural phenomenon of dynamic systems. Her discography features releases on Leaving Records, Longform Editions, and Recital and she has performed at venues including 2220 Arts & Archives (LA), Public Records (NYC), Grace Cathedral (SF), Basilica Hudson (NY) and Bond Chapel (CHI). She has composed original music for feature films including Union County (Sundance 2026), Good One (Sundance 2024), and Dad & Step-Dad (2023), as well as for short films, television, theater, dance, art installations, and VR projects. She has taught acoustics and composition at the Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts, where she completed her MFA in Music Composition and Experimental Sound Practices.
Doors to the A-Frame Theater will open at 1:45 p.m. and the performance will begin at 2 p.m., followed by a garden reception until 4 p.m.
Please note that the A-Frame Theater doors will close promptly at the start of the performance, and late entry will not be permitted.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission to the A-Frame Theater. Limited seating will be available on a first come, first served basis.
An ADA-accessible entrance to the Wende Museum’s Community Center is available through the garden gate from the parking lot, which will open at 1:30 p.m.

Samizdat Sundays
2026-09-13 10:30 - 12:30, 2026-09-20 10:30 - 12:30, 2026-10-04 10:30 - 12:30 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
We encourage participants to bring an item each week—a T‑shirt, a pair of jeans, or any textile you’re ready to transform, repair, or experiment with.
Each session is free, open to all skill levels, and guided by artists who delight in subversion and play. Come for one or come for all—together we’ll stitch, alter, repair, and imagine new forms of expression.
Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
August 30: Finish It Clinic.
Today, we will finish up projects. If you don’t have anything to finish, don’t despair! Come and I will give you a project from a past workshop to do during our time together.
September 6: Model Memory
In “The Sextant,” the exhibition in the main gallery of the museum, artist Enrique Martinez Celaya presents a handful of paintings and sculptures, including a scaled-down replica of the house his father built in the sugar-producing town in Cuba where Martinez-Celaya grew up. The slippery nature of memory and a deep sense of loss emanate from the work, some of which are quite literally covered in suffocating sugar, which seems to imply the weight that memories can carry. The installation touches on exile, dislocation, and the incongruities of memory and dream and our actual lived experience. This week, we will visit the exhibition together and then return to the classroom to make a model of a place from memory. This model can be a 3D sculpture, a collage, a 2D drawing, or a textile piece, or perhaps a combination. It can be of a whole place or a small detail; a window sill or a cathedral. What place will you recreate?
September 13: Navigating Our Way
Enrique Martinez-Celaya’s exhibition, “The Sextant,” is named for a tool for celestial navigation used in the faraway time before GPS and digital navigation. We often talk about ‘“navigating” tough situations, emotional ups and downs, life transitions, and, of course, in the literal sense of finding our way to a physical location using a map or landmarks. Today we will explore the idea of making a map. Perhaps your map will be a conceptual map, or perhaps it will be a map of the palm of your hand. Your map can be sewn into a pocket or drawn on a magazine cover. Where will you navigate to this week?
September 20: All That Jazz
Have you been so hooked by a song that you listened to it over and over again, perhaps to the point of exhaustion? The Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, in his performance/video work “A Lot of Sorrow,” invited the band The National to perform their song “Sorrow” for over six hours, a sort of live-action version of what many of us have done in our living rooms and cars with cassette tapes and MP3 files. Many artists have been inspired by music and have made artwork in response to their favorite songs. In the Undercurrents show of 2023, the Wende exhibited artworks about jazz and jazz musicians by artists in the Soviet Bloc. Inspired by this work, we will make an artwork in response to music — a favorite song, perhaps, or favorite performance, album, musician, musical or opera. Or perhaps yours will be in relationship to a bird song, or a lyric, or a rumbling train. Your artwork can be on paper, or with textiles, or a patch to put on your favorite jean jacket.
October 4: From One to Many
Taking inspiration from Jan Sawka’s Invasion/Trees series, which was featured in the Undercurrents I show in 2023, we will tell a story through a series of three or more pieces that share the same elements but demonstrate a transformation. Sawka’s series began with a print of a tree in a landscape. Each piece in the series is based on this same image, yet each one is different, and a story is told through a growing red cloud or fog that seems to overtake the image as the pieces progress. We will not begin with prints, but can echo Sawka’s strategy by choosing an element (or two) that will appear in each of the pieces in our series. Perhaps your element will be a shape (circle, square, triangle, etc.) or a color (blue, purple, yellow, etc.), or a pattern or texture (textile works are welcome!). Begin with a shared element and see where the series/story takes you!
About the teaching artist
Kate Ingold is an LA-based artist and poet working with the discarded, the damaged, and the worn out. Materials and methods include textiles, collage, photography, video, ceramics, and performative installation. She works in series driven by conceptual concerns and is currently making work in two interwoven projects: Relics for Future Rituals and Damaged Goods/Small Repairs.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission. Limited seating is available on a first come, first served basis.
An ADA-accessible entrance to the Wende Museum Community Center is available through the garden gate from the parking lot. This gate will be opened approximately 15 minutes prior to the program.

Illustrating Picture Books with Stephanie Lunkewitz
2026-09-13 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-09-20 14:00 - 15:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Join our Picture Book Illustration Workshop led by author and illustrator Stephanie Lunkewitz.
In six engaging sessions, you’ll explore storytelling, drawing from nature, mixing real life with fantasy, different illustration techniques, character design, and storyboarding. You can choose to attend any or all of the sessions. Whether your goal is to write a story, create illustrations, or simply learn more about picture books, this workshop is perfect for you. It’s open to families, adults, and anyone age 15 and up. Minors must be accompanied by adults. All required materials will be provided.
Aug 9 — Introduction to Children’s Literature and Storytelling
Aug 16 — Observational Drawing and Nature Inspiration
Aug 23 — Blending Realism and Fantasy in Illustrations
Sept 6 — Techniques in Illustration
Sept 13 — Character Design and Development
Sept 20 — Storyboarding and Creating Book Dummies
About Stephanie Lunkewitz
Stephanie Lunkewitz, a German-American illustrator and author, was born into an intellectual family in East Germany and came to the West at age 12 the night after the Berlin Wall fell. Her mother, director of the Bauhaus library in Dessau, and her grandparents, prolific children’s book illustrators, shaped her creative path. Stephanie studied textile design and art history in Germany and Italy, and built a career that includes award-winning work in silk weaving, real estate redevelopment, and children’s literature. She has published three illustrated books and is currently on tour with Holocaust survivor Eva Szepesi, whose story she adapted for young readers.
In 2025, a firestorm in Pacific Palisades destroyed her family home, studio, and much of her art archive, but key works were saved and will be exhibited. A member of SCBWI and board director at the German Academy for Children’s Literature, she divides her time between Frankfurt and Los Angeles, where she runs a real estate company, supports arts institutions like the Wende Museum, and continues to explore her family’s history, including her grandfather’s role in the 1953 uprising on Stalin Allee.
ADA access to the Wende Museum’s Community Center is available through the garden gate from the parking lot; this gate will be opened approximately 30 minutes before the program.

Tea Dance: Swing
2026-09-13 15:00 - 18:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
The Wende’s Tea Dance series invites you to move, mingle, and unwind through the joyful rhythm of social dance.
Hosted in the Wende Museum’s Community Center, each session features different dance traditions, ranging from Argentine tango to vintage swing, led by local artists and dance instructors. No experience or partner required.
This session will include a lesson on swing basics at 3 p.m., followed by open dancing at 4 p.m.
Tea dances originated in early 20th-century Britain and America as daytime socials, often held in hotels and ballrooms, offering live music, light refreshments, and a welcoming space for community connection. Revived in the queer communities of mid-century America, the tradition evolved into a vibrant celebration of expression and belonging.
In that spirit, our Sunday Tea Dances offer a space to unplug, connect, and move together. These afternoons are for everyone: curious beginners, practiced dancers, and people just looking to enjoy good music and warm company.
Come for the class, stay for the social, and rediscover the art of togetherness.
Free and open to all. Comfortable shoes are encouraged.

Tuesday Men's Club
2026-09-15 19:00 - 20:30, 2026-10-06 19:00 - 20:30 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Tuesday Men’s Club is a gathering for men to sit in meditation, have an honest conversation, and enjoy each other’s company. Men of all ages (our group ranges from 27 to 82) gather after work every other Tuesday. Some nights we talk about integrity, grief, or what it means to show up. Other nights it’s managing screen time, coaching Little League, parenting teenagers, staying in shape, or dealing with tennis elbows.
The format is simple: we introduce ourselves, we meditate, we talk, and then we eat ice cream.
We meet the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month at 7pm at the Wende Museum. No experience with meditation or group work is required. Drop-ins are welcome.
More at tuesdaymensclub.com

Wellness Wednesday
2026-09-16 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-09-23 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-09-30 09:00 - 10:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
In September, our regular Mindfulness session with Christiane Wolf will be replaced by a Sound Bath led by Kris Matsuoka. Christiane returns on Wednesday, October 7.
Whether you are new to meditation or already have experience, we welcome you to this community sit in the beautiful A-Frame Theater of the Wende Museum’s Community Center. Each session is followed by complimentary garden refreshments and an optional movement class.
This Sound Bath is designed as a continuation of Christiane Wolf’s regular Wellness Wednesday session. We will begin together with a visualization for inner peace, followed by a guided relaxation of the body to help release tension, and finish by relaxing together to sound from live instruments tuned specifically to help you find peace. Please wear comfortable clothes. Floor space is limited for those who wish to lie down for the full experience, but you are welcome to bring a yoga mat, pillow, and blankets.
Teacher Bio:
Kris Matsuoka is a Los Angeles native and a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He lives and works in Culver City, California.
While working in the creative industry, Kris was always asked the same question: “How do you come up with your ideas?” That led to an ongoing exploration of a second question: “Where do ideas even come from?” Looking into the lives of his favorite artists and mentors, Kris found one common thread. They had all turned to meditation at some point, and discovered that “not knowing” is a nice place to be.
Through the practice of meditation, Kris has seen how it can sharpen our perception of the world and reconnect us with nature. Sound meditation has become his most recent area of focus. For the past decade, he has hosted Sound Baths, workshops, and classes that use sound to invoke a sense of wonder and help people relax. Kris has found that in a relaxed, free, and peaceful state, your best ideas come most clearly.
An ADA-accessible entrance to the Wende Museum Community Center is available through the gate from the parking lot at 10858 Culver Blvd. Limited floor space is first come, first serve. Please arrive early as RSVP does not guarantee admission to this free program.

LA in Motion Now & Next: Reimagining Art, Access and Policy
2026-09-16 18:00 - 21:00 | CA
Dive into LA’s pubic art scene, learn about fresh policy moves shaping the city’s creative future.
Case Studies: LAX Airport x LA Metro
Join us in person for an insightful panel discussion where creative minds dive into the future of public art, accessibility, and policy in LA. Discover new perspectives, engage in dynamic conversations, and explore how art shapes our city’s landscape today and tomorrow. Don’t miss this chance to be part of the movement that’s reshaping our City’s cultural scene!
Free Admission, Seating is limited – Panel Discussion with Reception Preceding and Following the Discussion
Please RSVP here or on Eventbrite
PANELISTS:
• Maya Emsden, Executive Officer, Arts + Community Enrichment, LA Metro
• Sarah Cifarelli, LAX Art Program Director
• David Pagel, Claremont Graduate University Art Department
• Catherine Wagley, Moderator, Writer and Art Critic
ABOUT:
The newly relaunched Arts Council of Greater Los Angeles (The Arts Council) proudly announces its official launch as an independent nonprofit organization 501(c)(3), ushering in a new era of artistic collaboration, cultural engagement, and community impact across Los Angeles.
Building on more than 15 years of success as the Arts Council of the Century City Chamber of Commerce, The Arts Council now steps forward with an expanded mission: to foster a vibrant and inclusive arts community, support artists, and position Los Angeles as a global cultural capital.

Living with Loss: A Grief Support Circle
2026-09-17 18:30 - 19:30, 2026-09-24 18:30 - 19:30, 2026-10-08 18:30 - 19:30 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Join a warm and understanding space where you can share, listen, and heal. Led by Dr. Barry Goldstein, this grief support circle is all about connecting with others who get what you’re going through. Come as you are, no judgments—just open hearts and support to navigate the ups and downs of loss side by side. Everyone is welcome!

Saved by a Story–Wildfire Survivor Writing Workshop
2026-09-19 10:30 - 12:00, 2026-10-03 10:30 - 12:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Participants of all ages welcomed. Please arrive 5 or 10 minutes early to get settled, as we start the group promptly at 10:30 a.m.
Come together to write about the history of the cherished places we have been, what we have lost (and found), and how we will chart a way forward.
We’ll write to timed prompts to spark creativity, share stories, and connect.
We’ll meet Saturdays on the campus of the fascinating Wende Museum. The Wende is a cultural center, art museum and archive that brings history to life.
For more information, email: kathleenkatims@gmail.com
Please enter through the garden gate from the parking lot at 10858 Culver Blvd.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission. Doors will open and seating will begin 15 minutes prior to the start of the program. Limited seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Please note that doors will close promptly at the program’s start time and late entry will not be permitted.

Navigating Our Media Ecosystem: Reclaiming Our Stories & Media
2026-09-19 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-10-03 14:00 - 16:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
The stories we hear and see shape the world we live in. During these two free hands-on workshops, we will explore our relationships with media, technology, and popular culture. We will analyze media and create our own alternative messages with a focus on the ways environmental and climate justice impact our health.
These events are free for everyone. We are all part of a media ecosystem, whether we’re on social media, watching YouTube, reading articles, or sharing links with our friends and family. We will explore tools for critical media literacy and – as a community- discover how we can tell our own stories and create our own media.
Join Dr. Jeff Share, PhD, award-winning photojournalist and educator, UCLA senior lecturer, and author of numerous articles and books on critical media literacy and Dr. Amanda d’Almeida MD, MPH, family medicine physician at UCLA with a background in social media and environmental justice for these community events! We hope to see you there.

Change Through Music
2026-09-19 14:00 - 16:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
A new co-production from the Wende Museum and the USC Polish Music Center highlights the overlapping subject matters represented in the Archives of these two great institutions. The collaboration will launch on Saturday, September 19 with a performance by special guests from Poland, pianist Piotr Kowal and cellist Paweł Czarakcziew, both professors at Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków.
This concert’s rich program will explore music of different worlds—that of the Baroque via Bach, as played by Rostropovich at the Berlin Wall; that of pre-War Poland, in a work composed by Szymon Laks not long before he was condemned to Auschwitz; and that of the Cold War in central Europe, through the artistic resistance of Poland’s Joanna Bruzdowicz and Estonia’s Arvo Pärt—and how these works helped transform the times in which they existed.
The concert will be followed by a discussion with the artists and PMC Director and Curator Marek Zebrowski, led by Wende’s Chief Curator and Director of Programming Joes Segal. The afternoon will conclude with a reception in the breezy courtyard of the Wende Museum.
The program takes place at the Wende Museum’s Community Center. Seating is first come, first served.
Piano transport is supported in part by POLAM Federal Credit Union.

Racist by Design: Kelly Lytle Hernández in Conversation
2026-09-20 14:00 - 16:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Kelly Lytle Hernández launches her new book Racist by Design in conversation with New York Times contributing opinion writer Jean Guerrero.
The book traces the American immigration system from its origins to the way it works today. Most accounts begin with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. Lytle Hernández starts a full century earlier, with the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, which prompted both the country’s first immigration bans and its first refugee resettlement program. She shows how eugenicists and Jim Crow segregationists built much of the current system as expressly whites only, and how Congress amended that system during the Civil Rights Movement while leaving many of its rules intact. She calls the book “an act of sabotage,” a blueprint published so the system can be dismantled.
Lytle Hernández and Guerrero will discuss that history and what rebuilding a just immigration system would take.
Village Well Books & Coffee will sell copies on site. A reception with wine and light bites follows the conversation in the garden.
Seating for this free program is first come, first served.
Kelly Lytle Hernández is the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA and a MacArthur Fellow. She is the author of Racist by Design, Bad Mexicans, and other award-winning books on race, immigration, policing, and incarceration. She lives in Los Angeles.
Jean Guerrero is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, and of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, which won a PEN Literary Award. She was a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and covered the U.S.-Mexico border as an investigative reporter at KPBS, where she won an Emmy and contributed to NPR and the PBS NewsHour. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Politico, The Nation, Wired, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Los Angeles.

Saved by a Story–Intergenerational Writing Group
2026-09-23 16:00 - 18:00, 2026-10-14 16:00 - 18:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Participants ages 14 and up welcomed. Please arrive 5 or 10 minutes early to get settled, as we start the group promptly at 4pm.
We are excited to come together in community, to dive into our creativity and share our stories.
What is Saved by a Story-Intergenerational Writing Workshop at the Wende Museum? Participants of all ages write to prompts to spark creativity, share stories and build community. We write to surprise ourselves and discover the bounty of stories that lie within.
We come together and write, choose to share (or not, you decide), listen and write some more.We do this in the beautiful environs of the Wende Museum and its provocative and compelling collection. Some of our prompts will help us engage with the current exhibitions as well as engage with each other.
In later groups, we will draft stories and workshop them.
We offer creativity and community in a non-judgmental environment.
The writing group meets in person on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month.
Please arrive 5 or 10 minutes early to get settled as we start punctually at 4pm.
What you will need:– a note book–nothing fancy–a pen–if you prefer to write on a computer, feel free to bring that.
Where:
Wende Museum’s Community Center
in the Cotsen Learning Center on the Second Floor
10858 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA, 90230
310-216-1600
Please enter through the garden gate from the parking lot at 10858 Culver Blvd.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission. Doors will open and seating will begin 15 minutes prior to the start of the program. Limited seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Please note that doors will close promptly at the program’s start time and late entry will not be permitted.

Community Flow Yoga with Kate O’ Neal
2026-09-25 10:30 - 11:30 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Participants must bring their own yoga mat, and are encouraged to also bring a towel to pad their knees and yoga blocks if desired.
Join our new weekly yoga session; all experience levels welcome! Yoga is a practice that builds strength, flexibility, and focus while calming the mind and restoring balance to the body. Through mindful movement and breathwork, it supports physical health, reduces stress, and cultivates a deeper sense of well-being that carries into daily life. Each class offers a chance to reset, recharge, and reconnect.
Kate is a certified yoga instructor with teaching experience at Cliffs of Id, Iconic Fitness, Red Diamond Yoga, Downtown Women’s Center, and Stoneview Nature Center. Her classes combine gentle warm-ups, smooth flow sequences of strength-building poses, and restorative cool-downs, creating an accessible practice that leaves students grounded, energized, and renewed.
As this event takes place during museum open hours, guests may check in at the front of the museum. The garden side gate will open 15 minutes before the start time and is available for ADA access and alternative check-in. Theater doors open 15 minutes before the start time. Seating is first come, first served. An RSVP does not guarantee admission once capacity is reached. No late entry.

ESMoA Video Art + Film Festival: FREEDOM Screening + Award Ceremony
2026-09-25 18:00 - 20:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
ESMoA is excited to be partnering with the Wende Museum to bring EVAFF to the A-Frame Theater, part of their new 7,500 sq. ft. Community Center. The project reactivated a long-disused theater into a state-of-the-art space for film, learning, and gathering, and like everything at the Wende, all programming there is free and open to the public. “Wende” is German for “turning point,” which makes it a fitting home for a festival built around FREEDOM.
Join us for one night of selected shorts across film, animation, and video art, followed by the announcement of this year’s awards. Each year’s award plaque is designed by a different LA-based artist.
Founded in 2017, EVAFF is a free annual international festival open to filmmakers of all ages and experience levels. Each year we invite artists to respond to a single theme in 60 seconds.
ESMoA (Experimentally Structured Museum of Art) is a public non-profit run by the artlab21 Foundation in Lawndale, CA. We’ve hosted over 2,000 free programs and 60+ Experiences, reaching more than 140,000 visitors across LA County. Always free admission, always free programs.

2026 Fall ICEA Free Chess @ The Wende
2026-09-27 09:00 - 18:00 | The Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
ICEA Chess hosts a free quarterly, one-day chess tournament for players of all ages and skill levels, with the venue generously sponsored by The Wende Museum. The event offers a fun, competitive, and welcoming chess experience in one of Culver City’s most unique and inspiring cultural venues.
Whether you are an experienced tournament player or new to competitive chess, this event is a wonderful opportunity to sharpen your skills, meet fellow chess enthusiasts, and enjoy a day of strategy, learning, and community—all at no cost.

Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas
2026-10-08 19:00 - 21:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Written by Wendy Kout and Michele Willens
Starring Wendie Malick, Charles Shaughnessy, Diedrich Bader and Charlie Adler
Today’s political pundits are predicting the upcoming midterms will determine the life or death of our democracy. But in 1950 a California Senate race also changed the world. It was then that a young Richard Nixon falsely accused his opponent, the beautiful, three term liberal congresswoman and ex-Broadway and opera star, Helen Gahagan Douglas, of being a Communist. Nixon earned the name “Tricky Dick,” Helen was dubbed the “Pink Lady.” He ascended to the Presidency… until Watergate. She was forgotten… until now.
The play is set in the past and the present, in Hollywood and Washington D.C., and builds to that dirty, dramatic Senate race while telling the cautionary personal tale of Helen, a flawed and remarkable heroine. It also gives us the compelling love story of the entertainment world’s first activist couple.
Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas is a warning and call to action for the upcoming November midterms.

PUBLIC BROADCAST STEREO
2026-10-11 16:00 - 17:00 | The Wende Museum’s Community Center, 10858 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA, 90230, United States
Helix Collective performs the most iconic music written for public broadcasting.
Classical California’s Brian Lauritzen hosts this show featuring music written for Drama (Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife), Mystery (Sherlock, Dickensian), News (Fresh Air, Morning Edition, Marketplace), Kid’s Shows (Reading Rainbow, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Magic School Bus), Comedy (Monty Python’s Flying Circus), Documentaries (American Experience, NOVA, Independent Lens, Lost L.A.) and more!
This program is made possible in part by the City of Culver City and its Cultural Affairs Commission, with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment and Culver City Arts Foundation.
