Past
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.
“Vessel of Change” is a video installation by artist and filmmaker Bill Ferehawk, who also edited The Wende Museum documentary “Collecting Fragments”, and multimedia designer David Hartwell. Ferehawk and Hartwell developed their video for the museum, which playfully reinterprets the Malta Summit of December 1989 between Presidents George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev, symbolically sealing the end of the Cold War. The summit took place on a ship in wild waters in front of the harbor of Marsaxlokk. In this case, the museum becomes the ship that metaphorically anchors the end of the Cold War in Los Angeles.
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.
A two-day conference organized by The Wende Museum, USC’s Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies, the Center for Cultural Studies at UC Santa Cruz, and the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Potsdam
Experience a musical "behind the scenes" moment during the open rehearsal of conductorless chamber orchestra Delirium Musicum at the Wende Museum. Spend time in the exhibits and meet the musicians in an informal setting as they rehearse for their concert at the Glendale City Church on April 14th at 5 p.m.
Alik, a play written by Julio Vera and presented by the Elysium Conservatory Theatre about Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union, will be performed amid Cold War artifacts in the Wende Museum galleries.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Bernard is a professor of cultural studies at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and a lecturer in the university's Center for Digital Cultures. He studied literary criticism and cultural studies in Munich and was a research assistant at Bauhaus University, Weimar, and at the University of Konstanz. As a journalist, he currently writes for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and ZEIT Magazin.
The Wende Museum's popular discussion series Art - Past - Present resumes at our new location. Please join us as we launch a dynamic season of public programs with a conversation between artist, curator, and writer Corrina Peipon and artist Bari Ziperstein about how the past gives meaning to the present. Chief Curator Joes Segal will moderate what is sure to be a lively interactive discussion.
The exhibition Facing the Wall: Living With the Berlin Wall reflects upon larger issues of the human impact of the Cold War and the activities, behaviors and opinions of those living in those tumultuous times. It traces the personal stories of four individuals: a West Berlin wall painter, Thierry Noir, an East German border guard Peter Bochmann, a day visitor from the West Alwin Nachtweh, and a former East German Stasi officer Hagen Koch. Exploring the complex, interconnected and often contradictory nature of history seen through the lenses of these four individuals living at the Wall, this exhibition recreates the place where the realities of political ideology and personal experience came face to face.
Through a survey of fine art, posters, menus, and films, Dinner Party Politics: Food Culture in Eastern Bloc Countries examines the ideological goals, gender roles, and individual desires expressed by the production and consumption of food in socialist countries during the Cold War.
Join us for the third installment of our discussion series as The Wende Museum invites contemporary artists to share their ideas about how the past gives meaning to the present. Chief Curator Joes Segal will moderate an interactive conversation with artist Ken Gonzales-Day and art advisor and independent curator Brenda G. Williams as they consider how interpreting the past informs the present.
The second installment of our discussion series as The Wende Museum featured contemporary artists sharing their ideas about how the past gives meaning to the present. Chief curator Joes Segal moderated an interactive conversation with filmmaker Bill Ferehawk and writer Katya Tylevich as they considered what it means to make art in times of irreconcilable alternative truths.
Museums present their knowledge to a wider public. But what is the basis of this knowledge? Normally, visitors are not aware of the questions, issues, discussions and disputes behind an exhibition concept or even a simple wall text. In this case, artworks from the Wende collection are interpreted in different, often contradictory ways.
To understand the realities confronting us, we need historical and artistic reflection. In the first installment of a new discussion series, The Wende Museum invited contemporary artists to share their ideas about how the past gives meaning to the present. Chief curator Joes Segal moderated an interactive conversation with contemporary artists Farrah Karapetian and Christopher Wyrick as they considered what it meant to make art in times of irreconcilable alternative truths.