Wende Museum

Wende (pronounced “venda”) is a German word that translates into English as “transformation.” It commonly refers to the era of uncertainty and possibility leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Wende Museum preserves Cold War history, inspiring a broad understanding of the period and exploring its enduring legacy. Named for the transformative period leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the museum:

• collects and preserves artwork, artifacts, archives, films, and personal histories from Cold War era Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union;
• challenges and engages the public through experimental exhibitions and interdisciplinary programming inspired by the collection;
• promotes rigorous scholarship, educates students, and stimulates general interest through lectures, symposia, and publications; and
• illuminates the past and informs the present through creative collaborations with contemporary artists and designers.[3]

The Wende's collections are a resource for the vanishing cultural and political history of the former East Bloc countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania) and the Soviet Union. The Wende uses cutting-edge museum and archival models to support emerging fields of academic study in visual and material culture studies as well as cultural history. The museum promotes a multi-layered exploration and discussion of the Cold War era.[4]

The comprehensive collection focuses on four areas:

1. materials originating from East Germany, with more than 50% of the collection from the GDR;
2. items used in everyday life and holdings capturing lived experience;
3. materials that document "Wende Moments", or junctures in Cold War history marked by extreme change—beginnings, endings, and transformative events such as the formation of the Warsaw Pact, the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, and the collapse of the Soviet Union; and
4. official and unofficial artwork.[5]

The ever-increasing collection widely ranges from consumer products (e.g., computers, radios, records, toiletries, foodstuff) to works of art in all media (e.g., paintings, drawings, sculptures, graphics, photographs), iconic political symbols (e.g., statuary, medals, flags, uniforms, commemorative gifts), and archives — including a substantial gift from East German leader Erich Honecker's estate — and some 3,500 16mm documentary, animation, and educational films as well as home movies from the GDR.[6] The museum contains large collections of furniture, flags and banners, commemorative plates, Communist folk art, menus, family albums, and design items. The museum recently acquired a significant collection of Hungarian Cold War era artworks and artifacts[7] and Russian hippie materials from the 1960s and 1970s.[8]

Beyond the Wall: Art and artifacts from the GDR

In 2011, The Albanian Human Rights Project deposited its archive at the Wende Museum, which includes more than 70 filmed historical witness interviews with survivors of the Albanian communist purges, many of whom lived in prisons and forced labor camps for up to several decades.[9] The Wende Museum owns eleven original segments of the Berlin Wall, including ten pieces installed in front of 5900 Wilshire Boulevard, the longest stretch of the Wall outside Germany.[10] The eleventh, painted by Berlin-based artist Thierry Noir, stands in front of the museum's headquarters in Culver City.[11]

The museum's East German collections are the subject of a major Taschen publication, Beyond the Wall: Art and Artifacts from the GDR/ Jenseits der Mauer. Kunst und Alltagsgegenstände aus der DDR (Cologne: TASCHEN, 2014).[12] In 2019, Taschen published a smaller second edition of the book, The East German Handbook, featuring text in both English and German.[13]

The museum's collections have been exhibited, or are currently on display, in a number of other museums and institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Imperial War Museum (London),[14] Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum (Independence, MO), Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (Simi Valley, CA), Gerald Ford Presidential Library (Ann Arbor, MI), the Goethe Institute (Washington, D.C.), the International Spy Museum (Washington, D.C.), the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences (Los Angeles),[15] the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles),[16] and the El Segundo Museum of Art (El Segundo, CA).[17]

The museum’s public programming provides resources and opportunities for individuals to interpret the past and to discover the global implications of the Cold War today. The museum uses the Cold War as a lens to examine contemporary life and creative expression, and to draw parallels between the past and the present day.

Ten pieces of the original Berlin Wall at 5900 Wilshire Boulevard

Highlighted exhibitions

Installation image of Deconstructing Perestroika, 2012

Competing Utopias exhibition at the VDL Research House, 2014

Across/ The Wall was organized in conjunction with the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk in 2011. The exhibition featured 21 high-resolution reproductions of Soviet era portraits exhibited on the exterior wall of a parking garage.

Deconstructing Perestroika (January 28 - May 6, 2012) was organized in collaboration with the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition featured 24 original, hand-painted poster designs by 13 artists in response to Mikhail Gorbachev's transformative policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in the late 1980s.[20] In 2013, the exhibit traveled to the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San Jose State University.

Competing Utopias was organized in collaboration with the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences from July 13 to September 13, 2014. The exhibition was an experimental installation of East German modernist interior design objects from the Wende Museum’s collection within the VDL Research House, an iconic mid-century example of California architecture by Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra.[21][22] Face to Face (June 12, 2015 - September 18, 2015) featured a broad selection of painted and photographed portraits from the Soviet Union, Cold War era Hungary and East Germany, highlighting the diversity within socialist Eastern Europe.[23]

Cold War Spaces (November 19, 2017 - April 29, 2018) was the museum's inaugural exhibition at the Armory site. The exhibition explored Cold War era Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union through the physical and ideological spatial relations and divisions of the time.[24][25]

War of Nerves: Psychological Landscapes of the Cold War (September 20 - January 13, 2019) was organized in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection (London). The exhibition looked at the Cold War as “a war of the mind”, exploring the mutual suspicion, fear and mistrust between the Soviet Bloc and the West.[26]

Upside-Down Propaganda: The Art of North Korean Defector Sun Mu (February 10 - June 2, 2019) was the first U.S. museum exhibition of North Korean dissident artist Sun Mu. The exhibition featured paintings in the style of propaganda posters that satirically portrayed the politics of North Korea.[27][28]

The entrance to the Wende Museum

In November 2012, the City Council of Culver City voted unanimously to approve a 75-year lease of the former United States National Guard Armory building in Culver City as the permanent location of the Wende Museum.[29][30] The Armory building was originally constructed by the National Guard in 1949 as the Cold War began to escalate, and was decommissioned in March 2011. Following renovations, the Wende Museum opened to the public at the Armory site in November 2017.[31] The one-acre campus is designed in a spirit of transparency and open access to Cold War secrets.[32]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wende Museum.

• Official Website

• Wende Museum at Google Cultural Institute