Playground of the Autocrats: Presentation and Interview with Artist Anne Bobroff-Hajal in partnership with the Wende Museum

Friday, November 13, 12:00 PST/3:00 EST, FREE

Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BRrXj1L2RxOGGw8ldAqbcA

Join the Museum of Russian Icons, in partnership with the Wende Museum, for a look at the current exhibition Playground of the Autocrats: Works by Anne Bobroff-Hajal. Bobroff-Hajal has drawn on animation techniques, icons, and formats such as graphic novels to tell stories of Russian geography and history.  In each comical yet deadly-serious polyptych, she paints hundreds of 3 inch high portraits of people—from slaves and serfs to nobles and autocrats—at moments of intense struggle to achieve their goals within their particular social system and time.  Explore her work in a 30-minute presentation, followed by an interview with Wende’s chief curator Joes Segal. A live Q+A with the audience will conclude the program.

Wende Museum

Headquartered in a renovated National Guard Armory in Culver City, the Wende Museum is a cultural laboratory that pairs unparalleled collections from the Cold War era with contemporary artists, filmmakers, musicians, scholars, and others to create something new and transformative.

Anne Bobroff-Hajal‘s art has been widely exhibited. Most recently, Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies had a solo exhibit of her art about Russia titled Peasants, Clans, and Effervescent Absolutists! A richly-illustrated 110-page digital catalog, Darling Godsonny: Ivan the Terrible Advises the Infant Stalin, about her art, artistic process, and its Russian history content accompanied the Columbia exhibit. Bobroff-Hajal earned a Ph.D. in Russian history for which she conducted extensive research in the Soviet Union.

Joes Segal, PhD, is the chief curator and director of programming at the Wende Museum and has published widely on art and politics, German history, and Cold War cultural history. He has organized twenty-three exhibitions with the Wende Museum as well as numerous programs, such as the ongoing weekly interview series Cold War Spaces.