Open Talks 2025, Icom Demhist
Parallel Narratives and One-Night Stands
How do you fit a hundred stories into one house museum?
Easy. You don’t. But you try anyway.
And then you join a bunch of other house museum professionals who are also trying.
This year’s Demhist Open Talks went beyond expectations. Again.
The 2025 theme? Parallel Narratives in House Museums.
A dream (and a headache) for all of us obsessed with layers, voices, and the weird poetry of domestic spaces.
How much can you tell before it becomes noise?
How do you interpret the unspoken, the hidden, the uncomfortable?
What do you do with stories that contradict each other?
Day one Open Talks 2025
Enter Franklin Vagnone.
The keynote speaker. The heritology anti-hero. Twisted Preservation mastermind.
If you don’t know his work, stop everything and check out his blog.
Franklin gave us Allegorical Interpretation: When Houses Roam, a talk that was part poetic provocation, part confessional essay, and fully unforgettable.
He reminded us: houses aren’t frozen in time. They roam. They remember. They contradict.
Just like people do.
He shared his own story: a man who spent the first half of his life married to a woman (and father of three), and the second half married to a man.
He opened up about his experimental life museum, where objects are marked with raw, emotional significance.
And yes – he’s the guy doing One Night Stands with house museums – including the legendary Gamble House. (Jealous? Absolutely.)
He writes about those overnight stays as emotional, intimate encounters. Honest. Awkward. Human.
Other highlights? So many.
- Gabriela Steinitz introduced the Trude Sojka House Museum in Ecuador – a deeply moving space dedicated to a Holocaust survivor and artist, now cared for by a new generation of women artists in her family.
- Paulo de Freitas Costa (Ema Klabin House Museum, Brazil) shared work on domestic labour and neglected perspectives, rethinking identity, memory, and work in the home.
- Joanna Sieracka (Józef Piłsudski Museum, Poland) talked about bridging public history and intimate narratives, connecting national memory with the private sphere of a historic manor.
And then came the virtual tours – house museum nerd porn, basically.
- Maria Gravovscaia brought Pushkin’s house in Moldova to life. (I mean, Eugene Onegin is basically the blueprint for poetic angst. Sign me up.)
- Mario Nascimento showed us the charming Casa Veva de Lima.
House museum games
We even played a game: Which house museum would you have a one-night stand with?
Answers included Frida Kahlo House, Lope de Vega House, Van Gogh Museum…
Me? I went full rock ‘n’ roll: Graceland, of course.
Day two Open Talks 2025
It started with fresh provocations:
- Angelica Policeno Fabbri (Museum of Carlism, Spain) explored political tension and complexity in domestic collections.
- Elena Sánchez Cortina presented the School of Saint Ignatius Loyola Vizcaínas in Mexico City – a place of devotion, memory, and education since 1767. (Note to self: next time in Mexico, go.)
More video tours followed, more presentations, more proof that house museums are alive – and thinking.
- Belén Navazo Hourcade & Ingrid Sandell Bull-Njaa took us through three Norwegian gems – Ledaal, Breidablikk, and Holmeegenes – with a fresh narrative approach that felt both intimate and innovative.
- Then it was my turn:
I presented Parallel Narratives in Prešeren’s Birth House in Vrba – the story of two men born under the same roof:
the rebellious poet France Prešeren and the devoted bishop Anton Vovk.
Opposites, coexisting. Like the creaking floorboards and the heavy silence of that house.
And then, two final gems:
- Hillary Walker (Sleeper-McCann House, USA) reflected on queering historic interpretation and two decades of evolving narratives.
- Jenny Seeman & Jennifer Wise shared the hidden Indigenous histories behind Craigdarroch Castle – voices long overlooked, finally heard.
Final thought
What can I say?
These weren’t just PowerPoint slides.
They were declarations of love – for truth, for people, for the messy heritage that lives in our house museums.
We may be nerds.
But oh, we’re passionate house museums nerds.
P.S. Check out last years’s Open Talks .
Soundtrack: The Cure – All I Ever Am
Obsessed with choices made for sure
In ignorance of history
House museums are never just about one past.
They’re about all the selves we once were – and still carry.
The ghosts. The dreams. The beliefs we held.
Reflections of time and memory.
And all for fear of what I’ll find
If I just stop
And sometimes – in a quiet room with worn floorboards and a window to the orchard –
we catch a glimpse of all we ever were.
We try to show everything in our house museums.
And still – it feels like it’s never enough.
But all I ever am
Is somehow never quite all I am now
Never quite enough.
But somehow – still here.
More Information on Parallel Narratives in House Museums Open Talks 2025 Icom Demhist
Official website: Demhist / Open Talks 2025 ICOM DEMHIST
Photos: Matjaž Koman / House Museum Nerd
Text: Matjaž Koman / House Museum Nerd
This post is part of the Ultimate House Museum Guide for Nerds – a personal project exploring the beauty, strangeness and magic of house museums around the world.