Past
This exhibition explores the evolution of Joseph Stalin’s public persona and the power of visual propaganda through a selection of works from The Wende’s Collection and the Tom and Jeri Ferris’s collection at the Institute of Russian Culture at USC.
Canadian artists Vid Ingelevics and Blake Fitzpatrick recorded stories of how people acquired a piece or pieces of the Berlin Wall. Their oral history project, Freedom Rocks: the Everyday Life of the Wall, involves collecting stories about the Wall from people who own Wall sections and souvenirs in Los Angeles and California.
Musical theatre actress Lola Fisher, Institute of the American Musical executive director Miles Kreuger, and University of California Irvine professor Kiril Tomoff engaged in a lively discussion of American musical theatre presented from 1946-89 in the USSR, East Germany and other Soviet bloc countries.
The unprecedented sport spectacular, known as Leipzig 1977, combined for the first time the VI. Sports and Gymnastics Festival (VI.Turn und Sportfest) with the VI.Spartakiade, the children’s and youth’s athletic competition. For athletes and public, it was considered the most unforgettable experience. Because East German government leaders understood that sporting events furthered socialist aims, they commissioned and produced souvenirs to promote athletic accomplishment in unison with socialist ideals and to sustain a memory of the collective experience. The objects from the Wende collection illustrate the popular iconography and speak to the political, social and economic importance of athletics in the GDR.
Justinian Jampol led an engaging discussion in the ongoing series “Collectors in Conversation” at The Allendale Branch Library.
The topic of escaping to the West was taboo in the GDR, consequently The Flight is an exception in East German film history. Winner of the Grand Prix at the Karoly Vary International Film Festival in 1978, this was the last film Armin Mueller-Stahl made at the East German DEFA studios.
The Wende presented the Director’s Cut of a new documentary about the Soviet Jewish immigrant experience in Los Angeles. The film, directed by Mark Hayes, follows several Jewish families who left the former Soviet Union to settle in Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Wende Museum partnered with ESMoA in Experience 05: FAME, an exhibition that explores the ambivalent soul of Los Angeles.
Jazz music was among the most controversial and hotly-debated cultural aspects of East German (GDR) society. It celebrated its American origins, and therefore considered imperialist, capitalist, and decadent across the Eastern Bloc countries. However, the music was immensely popular, despite the official censors. These artifacts from the Wende Collection capture the liberating effect that jazz afforded the citizens of the GDR and Eastern Europe, as well as the government’s ever-changing position on how to best control the unstoppable musical force.
Cristina Cuevas-Wolf, The Wende’s Manager of Collection Development, led a lively discussion about Political Icons in Experience 05 FAME.
In collaboration with the Thompson Gallery, The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War presented Deconstructing Perestroika, the first major exhibition in the United States of hand-painted Soviet-era political posters that were inspired by a new government policy of transparency in the former Soviet Union. Organized to mark the 20th anniversary of the former super power’s demise in December 1991, this exhibition highlighted some of the key political and cultural shifts that defined the era and ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Wende Museum hosted a booth at Fiesta La Ballona for a second time to promote the Museum’s collections and its move to the Armory building, which is adjacent to Vet’s Park where the event is held.
Join Jeff Gauthier, Executive Director of The Jazz Bakery, CSUN jazz historian Glen Garrett, and musician and Culver City Arts Commissioner John B. Williams for a lively discussion at the exhibition opening for Music of the Imagination: Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain.