Twisted Preservation Blog

  • What would your historic house museum look like?

    What would your historic house museum look like?

    It is impossible to target just one state, one emotional moment in which we can draw a “period of interpretation”.  As my videos (below) show, I am constantly changing my living environment, changing my emotional state, adding and subtracting experiences to what defines me –     How would you tell your story? Which era? Read more

  • Preservation, Demolition, Destruction, Decay and Death

    Photographs used for educational and non-commercial purposes only.   This is a new thread of investigation – In what ways does “preservation” help us avoid death?  How does the purity of our preservation efforts directly reflect personal feelings of loss?  Our world is in a continuous process of demolition (Pruitt Igo Housing demolition), destruction (ISIS Read more

  • The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums: Evaluation Methodology for Historic House Museums

    The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums: Evaluation Methodology for Historic House Museums

    The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums: Evaluation Methodology for Historic House Museums Franklin Vagnone, Deborah Ryan, and Olivia Cothren ‘‘Don’t you want to preserve old things?’’ ‘‘Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants.’’ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned Read more

  • “You are an idiot!”

    Moments before my lecture began, I snapped a picture of the crowd at the Thomas Cole Historic Site. This past weekend I was asked to give two public lectures in upstate New York. One was at Clermont Historic House in Germantown, NY and the other at the Thomas Cole Historic site in the nearby town Read more

  • Contemporary Art Happenings in Historic House Museums

    Contemporary Art Happenings in Historic House Museums

    Contemporary Art Happenings in Historic House Museums. F. Vagnone Presentation given at the Thomas Cole Historic Site, Catskill, NY Read more

  • The destruction of the sacred

    The destruction of the sacred

    I watched the screen in disgust as the crowd began to tear apart the tree. They ripped off whole limbs with their hands and women grabbed leaves and began to stuff them inside of their jacket pockets. The mob grew larger and eventually the assault on the tree resulted in the bare trunk being pulled Read more