David Bowie at the Wende Museum + Culver City Discoveries

Check out a show about David Bowie's 1973 trip to the USSR at the Wende Museum in Culver City and while you're there, explore other unique spots in a fast-changing part of LA.

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I visited the Wende Museum of the Cold War for the first time two weeks ago, and am so glad to know about this gem of a museum. I met a friend to see David Bowie in the Soviet Union, an intimate glimpse into a trip across Russia that Bowie took by train in 1973 with his friend photographer Geoff MacCormack. After a Ziggy Stardust concert in Japan, the two traveled back to England on the Trans-Siberian Express. Bowie was wary of air travel so the friends took a week to cross Siberia with new cameras purchased in Japan. Bowie was not a global superstar yet, so the photos Geoff captured are unguarded and endearing. The trip was effectively under the radar, but the men were highly attuned to what they were seeing. It’s not clear how much they were really allowed to be filming, so there is a rebel mood to the show. My favorite item is a seven minute film clip from Bowie’s “The Long Way Home” showing peasant villages, May Day military exercises, and the barren landscape. The show transported me back through time, and would make a nice Father’s Day outing.

MacCormack’s recently published book of photographs organized after Bowie’s death in 2016.

The Wende is one of LA’s many special small museums. It started as a private archive designed to preserve items that might have vanished after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Since then, the institution has morphed into a sophisticated cultural center and archive of the Cold War with a mission to “explore social, political, and cultural change”. Alongside gallery spaces, visitors can walk through ceiling-high bookshelves and cabinets with carefully labeled boxes of archived items; a full staff and visiting scholars use the resources throughout the year.