Wende Museum

An earnest exhibition first compiled by a young, Cold War–obsessed academic, this small collection is somewhat appropriately located in a former National Guard Armory, making it feel like an undercover operation. There are Stasi artifacts here, along with propaganda posters, remnants of the East German counterculture and segments of the Berlin Wall. “Wende” is the German word for “turning point,” referring to the period from the fall of the Wall to reunification, though the museum focuses more closely on the Cold War period in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. So why is it in L.A.? According to founder Justinian Jampol, the geographic remove lends critical distance. Case in point: the Wende’s acquisition of East German ruler Erich Honecker’s personal papers, which Honecker requested be housed in a non-German institution.