July 2023

2003 Villa Aurora fellow Veronika Kellndorfer's site-specific exhibition Dialogue with Silver Lake. Metabolism of Architecture at the Neutra VDL House explores the idea that architecture serves as a preservation of history. After the opening on June 3, 2023, tours of the exhibition can be booked on Saturdays.

Based on the idea that history is stored in buildings, Veronika Kellndorfer captures traces of time in architecture and transfers them into an expanded concept of the pictorial idea. She investigates how the past manifests itself in buildings and how these traces can be transformed into images of architectural spaces. Her work raises essential questions concerning representation and the capacity of art to create accurate and evocative images of architecture. After a research stay in the Neutra VDL House in March 2022, Kellndorfer has produced a collection of new works that respond to the site's context, history, and design.

Join the Holocaust Museum LA for a special screening of Martha Liebermann: A Stolen Life, a film about a woman's courageous escape from Nazi Germany. The screening is part of the Teicholz Film Series.

Berlin, 1943. Martha Liebermann could have never imagined being forced to leave her beloved homeland at the age of 85. As a Jewish woman, however, she is faced with the decision of her life: should the bourgeois widow of the world-famous and highly revered painter Max Liebermann continue to hope for an exit permit from the Nazis, or flee to Switzerland with the help of Hanna Solf and her resistance group? Martha knows that her previous fame and fortune will not protect her from deportation to the concentration camp for much longer. With a heavy heart, she decides to leave her beloved homeland illegally and thus leave her deceased husband’s works to the Nazis.

While Hanna and her friends are preparing to flee, Gestapo commissioner Rudolf Teubner sets a deceitful trap for the Solf group, which also puts Martha’s housekeeper Luise Wagner in serious danger. In order to save Luise and her other helpers, Martha makes an extremely courageous decision…

Journalist Tom Teicholz is joined by Jordanna Gessler, Vice President of Education and Exhibits at Holocaust Museum LA, Professor Helga Schrekenberger, Holocaust scholar and Chair of the German and Russian Department at the University of Vermont, and Dr. Holli Levitsky, Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University, in a conversation about the film.

This film is provided by Menemsha Films and directed by Stefan Bühling, with a screenplay from Marco Rossi, and produced by Regina Ziegler and Tillman Geithe. The film will be released in theaters in the US and Canada in early 2024.