Past
The project “The Berlin Wall as a symbol of the Cold War: from an instrument of the SED’s domestic policy to an architectural monument of international significance” aims to document the remnants of the border installation from between 1961 and 1989/1990 as well as about 120 Berlin Wall memorials erected in many countries around the world.
Join Leo Schmidt, the head of this project at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, in a discussion about this new Geographic Information System at UCLA and an informal talk on the Berlin Wall as a place of cultural significance and a potential World Heritage site at The Wende Museum.
In the exhibition Traces of Division/Signs of Unity, material artifacts and fragments offered a glimpse into East German culture, the dissolution of the GDR and the vote for unification in March 1990. These artifacts represent images and icons that once inhabited public and private spaces, while also offering insight into the transformation of East German culture during the time between 1989 and 1990.
Why do many Germans from the East still speak of themselves as "Ossis" and refer to their cousins from the West as "Wessis?" Will they ever really become one country?
Justinian Jampol , Executive Director of The Wende Museum, spoke to students who were receiving their German language qualifying certificates at the Goethe Institute, about how to look at the past in order to gain an understanding of the present.
Culled from The Wende Museum collection and curated by William Nickell, Lecturer in Russian at the UC Santa Cruz, this exhibition explored the culture of Soviet public health and collective leisure, focusing on the use of spas and workers clubs to promote political values.
Gero Gandert, German film critic and historian, talked about his run-in with the East German State Secret Police (Stasi). Gandert was arrested by the Stasi, charged with “agitating against the state” and sentenced to three years of solitary confinement. This sentence came after he asked critical questions at a press conference about Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) in 1958, as well as from his writings about the Film Festival in Karlovy Vary for the Ministry for All German Questions.
Co-sponsored by the Villa Aurora and Goethe-Institut, Los Angeles.
The Wende Museum partnered with Taschen and The German American Business Association to host a final celebration ofThe Wall Project and the release of the Museum’s Wall Project Documentary Film. Many of the artists who participated in The Wall Project were in attendance to receive official Certificates of Appreciation from Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge and the City of Los Angeles.
The Wende Museum hosted a discussion about the cultural and civic legacies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in reunified Germany between journalist, activist and writer Daniela Dahn and Joes Segal, Professor of History, University of Ulbrect, Fulbright Senior Researcher and Curator-in-Residence, The Wende Museum.
Co-sponsored by the Fulbright Alumni Association’s Chapter of Greater Los Angeles
The Wende Museum hosted a roundtable discussion of daily life and consumer culture under communism with Justinian Jampol, Executive Director of The Wende Museum and Patrick Patterson, Professor of History, University of California, San Diego. The discussion was moderated by Joes Segal, Professor of History, University of Ulbrect, Senior Fulbright Scholar and The Wende’s Curator-in-Residence.
Sponsored by USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Co-Organized by The Wende Museum, the History and Slavic Languages and Literature Department at USC.
Iconoclash was culled from The Wende Museum’s collections and co-curated by Marion Deshmukh, Professor at George Mason University and Justinian Jampol, Executive Director of The Wende Museum. This exhibition commemorated the events of 1989 and the subsequent reunification of Germany. It explored the momentous and traumatic changes in Germany reflected in material culture from the 1980s until today.
Fragments refer to what is left behind, broken or has been isolated from lived reality. They reflect the imprint of time and memory. Curated by Justinian Jampol, Executive Director of The Wende Museum and Joes Segal, professor of History, Utrecht University, Fulbright Scholar and Curator-in-Residence, The Wende Museum at The Wende Museum, the exhibitionCollected Fragments conveyed a sense of this fragmentation through the material remnants of East Germany, a culture now lost.
In conjunction with the exhibition Collected Fragments, Katja Zelljadt (Head of Scholars Program, Getty Research Institute), Farrah Karapetian (Artist) and Joes Segal (Professor of History, Utrecht University, Fulbright Scholar and Curator-in-Residence, The Wende Museum) discussed the power of images to destabilize traditional or dominant interpretations of the world by pointing to incongruities or by showing new perspectives. They confronted current interpretations of the past with “disturbing” objects and broken biographies.
Moderated by Cristina Cuevas-Wolf, Manager of Collection Development, The Wende Museum.
This festive event brought together the organizers, artists, sponsors and individual donors whose collective generosity and vision made The Wall Project possible. City of Los Angeles Councilmember Tom LaBonge and Justinian Jampol, Executive Director of The Wende Museum, presided over the evening’s activities which included a performance by renowned chanteuse Ute Lemper, a DJ set by artist Shepard Fairey and a silent auction.
As part of its Wall Project, and in collaboration with LMU, The Wende Museum presented a discussion with the L.A.-based muralist Kent Twitchell, Berlin Wall muralist Thierry Noir, L.A. graffiti artist Timoi, and Steve Bagish, founder and director of ArtStorm. Moderated by Carolyn Peter, director and curator of LMU’s Laband Art Gallery, the panelists shared their experiences working in the realm of public art. The discussion explored why these artists were drawn to create art in public spaces where politics, legal issues, scale and the weather all play a role in the creative process. Whether they were painting on the Berlin Wall, the side of an L.A. freeway or at Venice Beach, these artists have grappled with the temporality of their work in shifting urban and political landscapes.
Thierry Noir, one of the first artists to paint on the Berlin Wall, joined Justinian Jampol, director of The Wende Museum, in a conversation about his experiences in Berlin as he painted the Wall in the 1980s and his plans for the segments of the Wall in Los Angeles.
Support provided by the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles