The Wende Museum will host a lecture titled, “In Search of our Times: The History of Forgetting,” in which a conversation between panelists and a moderator and eventually audience members will take place regarding the significance of controversial and painful historical events and how our museums, archives, and libraries might overlook important pieces of history leading it to be forgotten on Jan. 12 at 2 p.m.
For the first half of the lecture, the conversation will start off with questions asked by the moderator, Joes Segal, chief curator and director of programming at the Wende Museum, and the responses by the panelists. The second half will consist of interactions between audience members and panelists in which audience members will be able to ask their own questions and spark a discussion from there.
“The idea is to get to the core of some of the discussion and political and cultural experiences we are having these days and offer a platform for artists and intellectuals to express their ideas and exchange their ideas with each other and the public,” Segal said in an interview.
The panelists will be Ellen DuBois, distinguished professor of History and Women’s Studies at UCLA; Choi Chatterjee, professor of History at CSULA, Steven Fisher, executive director of the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, and Ken Gonzales-Day, visual artist and Professor of Photography and Head of the Art Department at Scripps College.
“My first question would be, ‘From your own academic and artistic experience, how much of the past has been lost or misrepresented due to historical sources being neglected, ignored, or repressed,” Segal shared. “Another question is about how archives, libraries, and museums might contain biased selection of materials, and if that is the case, what is needed to present a new perspective?”
The reception begins at 2 p.m. in the outdoor garden area of the Wende Museum, in which free food and drinks will be provided. The lecture begins at 3 p.m. which it is estimated to end around 4:30 p.m., allowing 30 minutes of mingling and interaction to continue before the museum’s closure at 5 p.m.
The first 30 minutes of the lecture is scheduled to consist of a conversation between the moderator and the panelists. That discussion will then transition into a conversation between the audience members and panelists for another half hour.
The discussion is part of a panel series called the “Wende Conversations: A Discussion Series supported by Susan Horowitz and Rick Feldman.”
The discussion series came about as a result of the seemingly increasing polarized climate that exists in society, according to the Wende Museum website. “It seems impossible to find basic agreement on topics like immigration, climate change, gun control, science, truth, the news, or even the weather,” the website stated. “In these times of confusion and anger, the Wende Museum is inviting artists, writers, scholars, philosophers, journalists, politicians, and freethinkers to discuss what brought us here, and to open up new perspectives.”
All panel discussions are free to the public. The next discussion will take place on March 8 and is titled “Roads and Shortcuts to Utopia”. This panel will cover whether or not the concept of utopia and blueprints towards achieving it are obsolete or actually helpful towards building a better society.
For more information, visit the museum’s website at www.wendemuseum.org. The museum is located on 10808 Culver Blvd.