The Wende Museum Presents the U.S. Premiere of Mobile Churches by Anton Roland Laub

Culver City, CA (April 18, 2026) — The Wende Museum announces the opening of Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches in Ceaușescu’s Bucharest on Saturday, April 25, 2026. The exhibition marks the U.S. premiere of the series, which has been presented at numerous venues across Europe. It is guest-curated by Sonia Voss, independent curator. Mobile Churches will remain on view through October 11, 2026.

Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches in Ceaușescu’s Bucharest

In the 1980s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu launched a “systematization” program intended to restructure the country’s cities and urbanize its rural areas. In Bucharest, the program resulted in the demolition of one-third of the historic center to make way for imposing buildings and wide avenues built to glorify the regime. When Ceaușescu fell in 1989 and the demolition stopped, the program was said to have caused the largest peacetime destruction in European history.

Ceaușescu was particularly ruthless toward religious sites. Even so, seven churches were spared, subjected to a process as remarkable as it was absurd: lifted onto rails, moved, and hidden behind housing blocks. Several other sacred buildings, including the Great “Polish” Synagogue, were surrounded and masked by Socialist-style prefab construction. Withdrawn from the cityscape and isolated in the gaps between Bucharest’s disparate architecture, these structures lead secret lives, harboring unresolved memories.

Combining recent photographs by the artist with archival material, Mobile Churches is a critical and artistic record of a dramatic and little-known chapter in the urban and political history of the Eastern Bloc. At the crossroads of satire, analysis, and melancholic reflection, the work is driven as much by irony as by the hope for a society that would finally face its past and strive for reconciliation.

Mobile Churches (2013–2017) is the first installment of a photography and book trilogy addressing the final years of the Ceaușescu regime and the period immediately following it. The exhibition centers on Mobile Churches while also featuring displays highlighting the two subsequent installments: Last Christmas (of Ceaușescu) (2015–2020) and Mineriada (2014–2022). All three series were published as books by Kehrer Verlag (Heidelberg). Anton Roland Laub was born in Bucharest and is based in Berlin.

Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches in Ceaușescu’s Bucharest opens to the public on Saturday, April 25, 2026, 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, April 24 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 exhibition 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
310-216-1600 x305
communications@wendemuseum.org