Category: Recommended

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Brazil’s Bloody Bundles

In the early 1960s, Brazil’s left-leaning president João Goulart made many powerful enemies with his attempts to reduce the exploitative practices of multinational companies, in favour of improving education and labour standards for the Brazilian people. Meanwhile, the US administrations of Kennedy and Johnson were anxious to see Goulart establishing diplomatic relations with Cold War enemies such as China and Cuba, and began to consider … Continue reading Brazil’s Bloody Bundles

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Recommended: Zimmerli Art Museum

New Jersey is the unlikely home of the world’s largest collection of Nonconformist Soviet art. Since 1991 the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, has hosted Norton T. Dodge’s incomparable collection of underground art, smuggled out of the USSR between the Khrushchev Thaw and Glasnost. The incredible story of the economics professor who became the saviour of unofficial Soviet art is the subject … Continue reading Recommended: Zimmerli Art Museum

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Recommended: Cold War Bunkers – East and West

Recently the public got its first glance inside Albania’s most important Cold War era bunker, located just outside the Albanian capital of Tirana. Built 100m below ground between 1972 and 1978, the top secret complex boasts 106 rooms over five storeys. It also features a bedroom with red satin sheets for former communist dictator Enver Hoxha, as the bunker was intended to house the government … Continue reading Recommended: Cold War Bunkers – East and West

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Recommended: Moscow’s Graveyard for Soviet Monuments

The so-called New Tretyakov, the Krymsky Val branch of Moscow’s premier art museum, is a treat in itself for the Cold War enthusiast. Housing the gallery’s collection of 20th century art, it contains many iconic Russian paintings and sculptures, from revolutionary abstraction to Socialist Realism. But for something altogether more quirky, visitors should venture outside. The fact you are there invited to connect to the … Continue reading Recommended: Moscow’s Graveyard for Soviet Monuments

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Recommended: International Spy Museum

When visiting the (American) nation’s capital, there’s a one stop shop to discover everything you never knew you wanted to know about espionage. Since 2002 the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC has been home to the largest collection of spycraft ever placed on public display. Along winding corridors the museum takes a look at the long history of spying – Sun Tzu to Casanova, … Continue reading Recommended: International Spy Museum

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Recommended: Goldfinger’s House

In the affluent London neighbourhood of Hampstead, a trip to a historic building brings to light the story behind a famous fictional Cold War baddie. 2 Willow Road was the family home of the Hungarian-born architect, Ernö Goldfinger. But the modernist design of his 1939 building proved unpopular with other Hampstead residents, including author Ian Fleming. The creator of James Bond objected to the demolition … Continue reading Recommended: Goldfinger’s House

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Recommended: Soviet Ghosts

British photographer Rebecca Litchfield recently journeyed across the wreckage of the former Soviet Union to gather a timeless record of this secretive lost empire. Her haunting photographs have now been published in the book Soviet Ghosts. Across thirteen countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain, Litchfield has captured the tattered ruins of forgotten towns, military bases and prisons, and abandoned monuments to the glory … Continue reading Recommended: Soviet Ghosts

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Recommended: Cold War Camera

Cold War Camera is an exciting new collaborative project that explores photography’s role in mediating the Cold War. Under the supervision of professors Thy Phu and Andrea Noble, it aims to go beyond the standard iconography of the mushroom cloud, surveillance footage and news reports to explore the wider visual culture of the Cold War as captured on camera. The project focuses on transnational connections … Continue reading Recommended: Cold War Camera

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Recommended: When The War Was Cold

The Cold War wasn’t just a source of inspiration for visual artists. Its influence can also be heard in many iconic pop songs of the era: from the nuclear paranoia of Two Tribes by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Sting’s Russians; to a plea for reconciliation in Billy Joel’s Leningrad and the pop parody of Back In The USSR by The Beatles. When The War Was Cold is … Continue reading Recommended: When The War Was Cold

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