Current
Encounter subversive art across geographic, ideological, and historical borders in a new exhibition at the Wende Museum. Crumbling Empire: The Power of Dissident Voices will present Russian poster designs of the 1980s and early ’90s, from the Wende's Tom and Jeri Ferris Russian Collection as well as the collection of AIGA San Diego, alongside contemporary American street art by Shepard Fairey and a monumental work by Komar and Melamid
The Wende Museum presents the first U.S. museum exhibition of the North Korean dissident artist Sun Mu. Sun Mu – a pseudonym, meaning “no borders” – fled his country (the last remaining Stalinist state on earth) in 1998. Trained as a propaganda-poster artist, he continues to work in the style in which he once glorified the North Korean army and state leaders, ironically turning propagandistic messages on their heads.
Look up! Looming above Los Angeles are haunting relics of panic and fear. Once distinctly prominent and alarming fixtures in the city, civil-defense air-raid sirens still pepper the vast landscape. Installation began during World War II, but the sirens became prolific symbols of the subsequent Cold War. The formerly intimidating objects erected to warn Angelenos of impending danger have morphed into eerie artifacts of a foregone era. Now deteriorated and defunct, the sirens have become camouflaged within the visual fabric of the modern city and have developed their own unique character and look. By photographing environmental portraits of the sirens, some of which have since been removed, Nicole Weingart has created a comprehensive photographic series of Los Angeles air-raid sirens. This exhibition presents a sample of the diversity of the series.
Organized in collaboration with British-Slovenian media historian Sabina Mihelj and British cultural historian Susan Reid, this exhibition focuses on the impact of Cold War-era television programming in Eastern and Western Europe on private lives.
The exhibition Tito in Africa – Picturing Solidarity, previously displayed at the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, documents the strong relationship between the Yugoslav state leader Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) and African heads of state.