Our subdivision was surrounded by abandoned farms. I used to ride my bike along the eroded red dirt gullies determined to reach the gutted farmhouse and the massive barn and outbuildings. Thinking back, it was a dangerous but incredibly rich way to spend my time. This one particular farm looked like the residents just leftContinue reading “One-night Stand: A Complicated Utopia”
Category Archives: Frank Vagnone
Protecting What Matters
I have imagined how museum folks felt as they stood in the gallery halls of the Louvre, Uffizi, or Victoria & Albert Museum moments before they started to remove the artwork from the walls or began covering them with sandbags so that they could store them safely away from the threat of German bombs. IContinue reading “Protecting What Matters”
Visualizing a new form of organizational relationships and behaviors in non-profits
Samantha Smith: Reader/ Contributor, Watson Harlan: Contributor “L’amour est à réinventer. (Love must be reinvented)” Délire I: Foolish Virgin, The Infernal Bridegroom”, Arthur Rimbaud, Photographs used for educational and non-commercial purposes only. When Rimbaud stated, “Love must be reinvented”, he was speaking of how standard models of relationships and behaviors did not fit with his needsContinue reading “Visualizing a new form of organizational relationships and behaviors in non-profits”
One-night Stand: Burying the Lead
GETTING TO PASAQUANYou don’t just happen upon Pasaquan Estate, the built environment created by the visionary St. E.O.M. You really have to make a committed effort to get in a car and drive through the two-lane backroads of rural Georgia to find it. I knew that Georgia consisted of miles and miles of pine barrens,Continue reading “One-night Stand: Burying the Lead”
Systemic Bias & Racism of Preservation
Who Told Us That History Is Dead? It’s Very Much Alive, In Our Faces, and We Don’t Like It. As someone who has been privileged to help run history & preservation organizations for the last 30 years, I feel compelled to call out, from my limited experience, what I see as not only my own,Continue reading “Systemic Bias & Racism of Preservation”
The Usefulness of Things
I don’t suggest that this is the most professional way to experience museum collections, but I love getting lost in collections storage spaces. Although I am aware of various structural ways that collections are divided and assessed, I think breaking down those divisions can produce new realizations. I interact with libraries in a very similarContinue reading “The Usefulness of Things”
One-night Stand: Preserving the Pieces
This “One Night Stand” almost didn’t happen. As I sat across the table from Fabrice Duffand, International Delegate for the French preservation organization REMPART, and Pierre Housieaux, Director of Paris Historique, all I could understand was that the wonderfully French animated facial and body expressions and gesticulations meant that things were not going well. ItContinue reading “One-night Stand: Preserving the Pieces”
The Allusion of Answers
One of my most difficult memories as a student of architecture is when I presented a project to a room full of people and one of the critics stood up, walked over to my meticulously drawn images and ripped them off the wall and crumpled them into small balls of waste paper. I cried. ItContinue reading “The Allusion of Answers”
First Kiss
Eastland Mall was the core of my adolescent social life. The enormous regional, retail complex was, at the time, the largest mall of its type in the state of North Carolina. Its parking lot was so vast that shuttles were needed to transport Christmas shoppers from their cars to the mall entrance and back. ForContinue reading “First Kiss”
The Life Of Obsolete Actions
Who cares if I can make a chair without electric machinery? Oddly, I ask myself this question all of the time. As a member of the team at a living history site, where among other things, we do show people how to make things by hand and without machinery, other than as a novelty, whatContinue reading “The Life Of Obsolete Actions”
Twisted Preservation 