250,000+ objects have been waiting for a permanent home. The wait is almost over!
@latimes broke the news this week: the Wende is expanding to Hawthorne with a $16-million living archive. A place where historic objects are stored, studied, and shared. Where scholars, artists, and the curious public share the same room.
The Wende Institute for Archival Research, opening Spring 2028.
Our free wellness programs are making headlines! We are proud to share that the wellness offerings at our newly opened Glorya Kaufman Community Center have been featured in the @latimes :
"Introducing the Glorya Kaufman Community Center — a 7,500-square-foot space for cultural programming and wellness activities located at a Culver City museum — where everything, from workshops to food, is free."
You can read the full article by @deborahvankin at the link in our bio.
Tomorrow at the Wende: harp, viola, poetry, and electronics collide in Sonic Intersections, a live performance by Zora Nelson and Amira Zia Jafri. Part of our experimental music series FRAMEWORKS, this interdisciplinary collaboration draws inspiration from Accra, Ghana as a historic crossroads of cultural exchange and political imagination.
Doors open at 1:45 p.m. Performance begins at 2 p.m., followed by a garden reception. First come, first served. Free as always!
RSVP at wendemuseum.org/frameworks or click the link in our bio.
Just announced: Cinema Under Pressure continues... and this one WILL sell out!!
Our screening series turns to one of the most contested films ever made: The Battle of Algiers (1966) was banned in France for five years, and has been studied by revolutionary movements and military strategists alike. The questions it raises about occupation, resistance, and state violence remain as relevant today as they were in 1966.
Screening + conversation. Monday, June 15 at 6 p.m. Free as always! RSVP at wendemuseum.org/algiers
Victory Day: May 8 or May 9? It depends on where you were! Germany surrendered at 11:01 p.m. Central European Time, May 8, 1945. In Moscow, it was already past midnight. The Soviet Union therefore marked the end of the war in Europe on May 9, and has ever since.
This 1968 poster marks the occasion with striking force. A Soviet soldier gazes up at the Kremlin rising through fireworks. The black void behind him is the war he survived. The red sky ahead is the world he helped build.
📷: V. S. Rybakov and V. Votrin, 9 May 1945, Soviet Union, 1968
We're having a party! @kcrw Summer Nights returns to the Wende on Friday, August 14 from 6–10 p.m. for a @kcrwgoodfood -curated Night Market, live DJs Anne Litt and Nassir Nassirzadeh, and the museum open late, just for you.
RSVP at the link in bio!
Wende Museum @wendemuseum Curator Joes Segal @joessegal gives us an introduction to their current exhibitions.
Wende is a German word meaning “turning point” or “change” that has come to describe the transformative period around the fall of the Berlin Wall. 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 the political and cultural changes of the past, offer opportunities to make sense of a changing present, and inspire active participation in the personal and social changes that will shape the future.
Video features: @studioenriquemartinezcelaya
Enrique Martínez Celaya: The Sextant
Between 1957 and 1963, the artist’s father built a modernist house in a small coastal village in Cuba. The time period spanned the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the United States embargo against Cuba, a political context that in various ways reflected the story of the house. This house, in which Martínez Celaya’s family waited for exile, now serves as an official wedding venue, carrying with it the contradictions and the scars of the Communist Revolution and its aftermath.
Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches in Ceasusescu’s Bucharest
Bucharest in the 1980s. Ceausescu’s “systematization” program is in full swing in the Romanian capital: one-third of the historic center is being wiped out to make room for the megalomaniacal “People’s House” and create large avenues for official parades. When halted after the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989, this demolition program is said to have caused the largest peacetime destruction in the history of Europe.
Ivana Dama: Breathing Alarms @ivana.dama
Reimagines this East German guardhouse inviting visitors to engage directly with sound, space, and the mechanics of perception. Rather than operating through a conventional mechanical or electronic trigger, the custom siren in Dama’s installation is activated by the breath of visitors.
Wende Museum is free to the public and open Friday - Sunday from 10am- 5pm
Filmmakers have long faced censorship, intimidation, and exile for telling uncomfortable truths. Cinema Under Pressure is a new Wende series focused on works that confronted political power, exposed institutional injustice, and provoked authoritarian backlash.
Each program pairs a movie with a live conversation featuring expert guests in film, history, and related fields. We open Monday, May 11, with Stanley Kubrick's earliest masterpiece. Paths of Glory (1957) follows French soldiers court-martialed for refusing a suicidal attack ordered by their own commanders. Released during the Algerian War, it was banned from France for nearly two decades.
Free admission. Complimentary reception at 6:00 PM, screening at 6:30 PM. Seating is first come, first served. RSVP at the link in bio!
Today is Karl Marx's 208th birthday, so we pulled out the balloons! This late Soviet painting turns the familiar profile portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin into bright balloons floating against a confetti-flecked background, playfully implying that the ideological foundations of the Soviet Union were filled with air rather than substance.
Created in 1990, it reflects the widespread cynicism and quiet erosion of belief that had taken hold as the Soviet project neared its end.
Ringing the canvas is a quote by Georgi Plekhanov, the Russian Marxist theoretician who opposed Lenin: "The great appear great to us because we ourselves are standing on our knees."
📷: Viktor Konstantinovich Dorokhov; Valentina Egorovna Dorokhova, The Great Appear Great to Us Because We Ourselves Are Standing On Our Knees, Soviet Union, 1990. From the Ferris Russian Collection, Donated by Tom and Jeri Ferris
We missed you! Wellness Wednesday is back after a week off. Join us tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. for mindfulness meditation with Christiane Wolf, followed by complimentary garden refreshments and an optional movement class with Cantilever Collective.
Free and open to all, as always.
“Off The Pills They Gave Me” will be on view for the @mutualaidartfair at the Wende Museum @wendemuseum in Culver City this Sunday, May 10 from 1-5pm for the “Sustenance” exhibition. All of my sale proceeds will go to resources for immigrants including food, rental assistance, and legal aid. 🙂
