CULVER CITY - A small museum in Culver City that's only open one day a week announced Sunday it is adding a large chunk of the Berlin Wall to its collection of artifacts about fallen Eastern European Communist governments.

The Wende Museum, located in an office complex will unveil the wall's slab at a reception Friday.

The 2.6-ton slab of the former Berlin Wall was painted by Thierry Noir, a famous West Berlin artist who decorated scores of wall sections during West Berlin's enforced isolation. It will open an exhibit called "Facing The Wall: Living With The Berlin Wall," an exhibit that details the horrors, death and isolation caused by the partition of Germany and its capital city by Communists in 1963.

The museum has reconstructed the infamous Checkpoint Charlie - the gate in Berlin used by diplomats to cross from the three free sectors of the city through the wall that prevented East Germans from leaving. The museum also has possession of logs kept by machine-gun-toting border guards at the checkpoint.

The slab will join thousands of other artifacts on display and in storage at the Wende Museum, including secret police files and torture equipment. Museum officials said their mission is to preserve and maintain evidence about the oppression that the Soviet Bloc imposed on tens of millions of people during the Cold War.

The small museum only is open Fridays or by appointment.