# Wende Museum

The Wende is an art museum, cultural center, and archive in Culver City, California.

## Mission

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 dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Embracing a spirit of continual transformation as part of its mission, the Wende aspires to reach beyond the conventional walls of a museum, placing equal value on international scholarship, community engagement, digital access, and creative experimentation.
Founded in 2002, the Wende Museum holds one of the largest collections of art and artifacts from the Cold War era, which serves as a foundation for programs that illuminate political and cultural changes of the past, offer opportunities to make sense of a changing present, and inspire active participation in personal and social change for a better future.
The Wende aims to explore and inspire change through
* collecting, preserving, and providing open access to artwork, artifacts, archives, films, and personal histories that reflect underrepresented stories of the Cold War era (1945–1991);
* promoting rigorous scholarship, educating students, and stimulating general interest through lectures, symposia, publications, and providing access to digitized collections;
* presenting experimental exhibitions and interdisciplinary programming inspired by the collection;
* facilitating creative collaborations with contemporary artists and designers;
* partnering with other nonprofit organizations; and
* providing community services such as wellness programs, opportunities for civic engagement, and family-friendly activities.

## Public Programs and Community Engagement

Initially a collections-focused institution primarily accessed by researchers, the Wende has transformed into a 21st-century cultural organization that brings together art and history in dynamic community programming for all ages. In 2024, the Wende opened the three-story Glorya Kaufman Community Center, where the Wende and partner nonprofits offer cultural and educational programs to the community at no cost to participants. The Glorya Kaufman Community Center was named one of the “8 Best New Architecture Projects in L.A. for 2024.”
Programming highlights at the Wende Museum, the Wende’s Glorya Kaufman Community Center, and online include
* Multidisciplinary exhibitions
* Panel discussions and lectures
* Music, dance, and theatrical performances
* School tours
* Family Day activities for all ages
* Online discussion series
In 2024, the Wende participated in Getty’s PST Art: Art and Science Collide with the exhibition Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency. The Wende also participated in Getty’s PST Art Climate Impact Program.

## Collections

The Wende's collections are a resource for learning about the vanishing cultural, political, and artistic histories of the former East Bloc countries, the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. The Wende supports emerging fields of aesthetic and academic study in visual and material culture studies as well as cultural history.
The collection ranges from consumer products (e.g., computers, radios, records, toiletries, foodstuff) to works of modern and contemporary 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. The museum contains large collections of furniture, flags and banners, commemorative plates, communist folk art, menus, family albums, and design items. In recent years, the museum has acquired significant collections related to Soviet Jewry and the Refusenik movement, Hungarian Cold War era artworks and artifacts, Russian hippie materials from the 1960s and 1970s, Polish Solidarity materials, Soviet demilitarization albums, and artifacts from the now-shuttered KGB Espionage Museum. The Wende also holds significant oral history collections, including the Wende’s own Historical Witness Project and the archive of the Albanian Human Rights Project.
The museum's East German collections are the subject of the books, Beyond the Wall: Art and Artifacts from the GDR/ Jenseits der Mauer. Kunst und Alltagsgegenstände aus der DDR (TASCHEN, 2014) and The East German Handbook (TASCHEN, 2019).
The museum's collections have been exhibited in a number of other museums and institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Prada Foundation (Milan), Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), Imperial War Museum (London), Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum (Independence, MO), Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (Simi Valley, CA), Gerald Ford Presidential Library (Ann Arbor, MI), and the International Spy Museum (Washington, D.C.).

## Organizational history

The Wende Museum was founded in 2002 by Justinian Jampol, a native of Los Angeles and scholar of modern European history.
The museum was housed for more than a decade in an office park. 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 on Culver Boulevard as the permanent location of the Wende Museum. The Armory building was originally constructed 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, designed in a spirit of transparency.
The Wende's one-acre campus includes the Wende Museum, gardens, and Glorya Kaufman Community Center. In the garden is a former East German guardhouse that once monitored and controlled access to the Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN), the state-run, monopoly news agency of the German Democratic Republic. The guardhouse now plays host to installations that explore how a site of control can be reimagined by contemporary artists as a tool for critically examining our contemporary relationship to open communication and state power.