This month sees the closure of the British Museum’s chronicle of Germany, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Germany: Memories of a Nation is an ambitious retrospective, attempting to tell 600 years of history through objects in a single room. The country’s difficult Cold War history, divided between the Soviet-backed German Democratic Republic and the Westernised Federal Republic of Germany, is just the latest in a series of complex and traumatic episodes in its search for nationhood.

Reviews have been decidedly mixed, but if you want to form you own opinion Germany: Memories of a Nation remains open at the British Museum until 25 January 2015. The exhibition also accompanies an eponymous 30-part BBC radio series on German history presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor, which you can listen to from the comfort of your own home.

If you’re on the other side of the Atlantic this month, Yevgeniy Fiks has a new exhibition in New York, hot on the heels of his curatorial triumph in Monument to Cold War History.

Until 17 January 2015 the James Gallery at CUNY is presenting a display of the Russian-born artist’s own paintings and installations entitled The Lenin Museum, focusing on the fascinating issue of homophobia as a Cold War weapon.

Image: Yevgeniy Fiks, Untitled (The Lenin Museum), 2014. Mixed media, 7′ 10″ x 5′ 8″ x 4′ 6″. Photo: Julia Sherman. Courtesy Yevgeniy Fiks.