Intersections: The Architecture of Victor Adegbite and Charles Polónyi in Ghana

On view at the The Wende Museum, Culver City, CA on November 6, 2025 to April 12, 2026, Intersections explores how architecture shaped the ambitions of newly independent Ghana during the 1960s. 

The exhibition centers on two encounters. The first was the collaboration between Ghanaian architect Victor Adegbite and Hungarian architect Charles Polónyi who, in the wake of Ghana’s independence (1957), designed housing schemes that responded to Ghana’s needs, means, and aspirations. Archival documents, analytical drawings, and contemporary photographs by Ghanaian photographer Eric Don-Arthur show how Adegbite’s and Polónyi’s buildings continue to structure life in Accra today. The second encounter takes place in the exhibition space between two archives, preserved by the architects’ daughters in the United States and Hungary. They reveal how the history of modern architecture is made possible by personal acts of memory and care. 

The exhibition is curated by Michael Dziwornu and Łukasz Stanek, in collaboration with Dana Salama.

Other contributions to the work include:

• Design: Dana Salama
• Archival research: Michael Dziwornu and Łukasz Stanek
• Model fabrication: Brianna Westbrook
• Contemporary Photography: Eric Don-Arthur
• Film Concept and Interviews: Sarah Cheema
• Film Production: Clara Ribot
• Taubman College student researchers: Arushi Chopra, Bam Davis, Sylvan Perlmutter, Dana Salama, Brianna Westbrook 
• Assistant researchers at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Accra, Ghana: Fred Fosu Agyarko, Albert Kudedor, Belinda Agyei

Archives:

• Private archive of the Adegbite Family, USA
• Private archive of the Polónyi Family, Hungary, safeguarded by the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monuments Protection Documentation Center, Budapest Hungary
• Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Accra, Ghana
• Information Service Department, Accra, Ghana
• Special thanks to: Alvina Adegbite, Valerie Adegbite-Calloway, and Anna Kántorné-Polónyi.