The Wende Museum

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Exhibition room in the Wende Museum with a statue of Lenin

Wende Museum is a museum in the US Culver City , California , that specializes in the collection of relics of extinct Eastern Bloc countries from the era of the Cold War has specialized. The museum houses the world's largest collection of artifacts from the GDR . The museum's self-definition is: "The mission of the Wende Museum is to preserve Cold War art, culture, and history from the Soviet Bloc countries, inspire a broad understanding of the period, and explore its enduring legacy."

history

The founder and director of the museum is the historian Justinian Jampol , who was born in 1978. Jampol studied history at the University of Oxford , spent a year as an exchange student in Moscow and is a fan of the city of Berlin , which he visited several times. This awoke his interest in recent history, and when he visited Berlin, for example, he bought countless memorabilia at flea markets . When Jampol returned to the USA in 2001, he shipped two overseas containers with GDR memorabilia and stored them in a friend's warehouse. In 2002 he inherited a larger sum, bought a larger warehouse and set about systematically building up a museum collection and archive. Since 2004 the museum has been supported financially by the Arcadia Trust and the German publisher Benedikt Taschen . The book Beyond the Wall published by Taschen in 2014 . Art and everyday objects from the GDR via the museum were awarded first prize in the American Alliance of Museums' Museum Publications Design Competition in November 2015 .

In 2016 the move was made of turning the museum into a 1949-built former armory of the National Guard .

Collection, research and projects

The museum, which sees itself primarily as a research archive as well as an art and educational facility, houses over 100,000 artifacts , personal records and documents that document developments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991, such as media, design and art objects , furniture, textiles , Films, books and all kinds of everyday objects. This includes, for example, almost all editions of New Germany , Stasi wiretapping equipment as well as copies of the Sandman and around 2000 menus from the GDR. Ten segments of the museum's Berlin Wall can be seen on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles; an eleventh segment, designed by the Berlin-based artist Thierry Noir , stands in front of the museum in Culver City. The museum management and visitors find the numerous electrical household appliances and furniture made of colored plastic made in GDR particularly interesting .

The museum sees one of its outstanding tasks in saving unloved legacies from the Cold War era from destruction. In Latvia, for example, after the withdrawal of the Red Army, their files were to be burned, but are now stored in Los Angeles and are being evaluated. In other countries, such as Hungary , art from this period is labeled “inauthentic” and governments are trying to get rid of it.

Another important area of ​​work is the collaboration with curators and contemporary artists, who are given the opportunity to “rummage” in the museum in order to design exhibitions. One product of this collaboration was the installation English Magic by the artist Jeremy Deller at the Biennale di Venezia 2013, which, among other things, addressed the wealth of Russian oligarchs living in Great Britain . According to Jampol, an “exotic” project is that of Leipzig historian Leo Schmieding , who is researching hip-hop culture in the former Eastern Bloc.

Margot Honecker gave the museum the personal papers of her husband Erich from the time he was incarcerated in Berlin's Moabit prison (169 days in 1992), and according to the museum, followed the museum’s will not to leave these documents to any German archive.

The museum is open to the public on Fridays and on further days after registration.

Exhibitions (selection)

Segment of the Berlin Wall, installed by the Wende Museum in front of the 5900 Wilshire Boulevard skyscraper in Los Angeles
  • Facing the Wall: Living With the Berlin Wall . January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2016
  • GDR State Gifts . June 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011
  • Music of the Imagination: Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain . June 13 - November 8, 2013
  • American Musical Theater in the Soviet Bloc Countries . April 13, 2014 to February 28, 2015
  • Communism for Dinner: Commemorative Plates from The Wende Museum . March 13 - May 31, 2014
  • Face to face . June 12 - September 18, 2015

In addition, events such as readings, film evenings and lectures are organized.

literature

  • Justinian Jampol: Beyond the Wall. Art and everyday objects from the GDR. Taschen, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-8365-4885-4 (German / English).

Web links

Commons : The Wende Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Pilz: How I found the GDR again deep in the West. In: Welt.de . November 9, 2014, accessed November 10, 2015 .
  2. ↑ About Us. (No longer available online.) In: Wende Museum. Archived from the original on November 18, 2015 ; accessed on November 17, 2015 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Translation: "It is the task of the Wende Museum to preserve the art, culture and history of the Cold War from Eastern Bloc countries, to awaken a broad understanding of this period and to research its legacy." @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wendemuseum.com
  3. ↑ Hans J. Wendler: The wall on the Pacific. In: Tagesspiegel.de . November 9, 2012, accessed November 9, 2015 .
  4. ^ Grant Details - Arcadia. (No longer available online.) In: Arcadia. Archived from the original on November 24, 2015 ; Retrieved November 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arcadiafund.org.uk
  5. ^ Susanne Lenz: Wende-Museum near Los Angeles: The largest collection of GDR objects is in California. In: Berliner-Zeitung.de. November 17, 2014, accessed November 10, 2015 .
  6. ^ The Wende Museum: Wende Museum's 2015 Taschen Publication Wins. In: prnewswire.com. November 20, 2015, accessed November 24, 2015 .
  7. ^ Andrew Khouri: Culver City's Cold War museum is hoping for a victory. In: Los Angeles Times. November 11, 2012, accessed November 10, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Address of the Wende-Museum on www.google.com , accessed on August 11, 2018.
  9. ^ Berlin Wall Segments. In: Wende Museum. Retrieved November 11, 2015 .
  10. ↑ a b c Ute Thon: Wende Museum: Socialism is alive - in Los Angeles! (No longer available online.) In: Art - Das Kunstmagazin . November 9, 2014, archived from the original on November 9, 2015 ; Retrieved November 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de
  11. ↑ Jeremy Deller - English Magic. In: jeremydeller.org. Retrieved November 29, 2015 .
  12. ↑ The Wende Museum's collection causes controversy at the 55th Venice Biennale. (No longer available online.) In: presseportal.de. December 13, 2015, archived from the original on December 8, 2015 ; accessed on November 29, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.presseportal.de
  13. ↑ Erich Honecker's Personal Papers (1991–1994). In: Wende Museum. Retrieved November 10, 2015 .

Coordinates: 33 ° 59 ′ 27.3 "  N , 118 ° 22 ′ 56"  W.