The class society may be alive and well, but there’s one place where poets and artists quietly rub elbows with the elite of the business world. Cemeteries are the world's libraries, full of fascinating tomes waiting to be discovered. In this provocative and edgy series, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider takes us to visit some of the world’s most interesting and visually compelling cemeteries, uncovering fascinating stories, curious angles, quirky traits, and artistic appeal.

Green-Wood Cemetery - Brooklyn, NY
Discover the essence of the “Big Apple” in an unusual place. Located atop the highest hill in Brooklyn with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building in view, Green-Wood is the final resting place for some of New York’s most luminous - and notorious - figures.  You’ll find the Brooks Brothers, F.A.O Schwartz, the Tiffanys, and a mobster or two. It’s also home to magnificent 19th century art and architecture. Before the Metropolitan Museum of Art was built, Green-Wood was the place to go for sculpture. In addition to the towering gothic gates, there are classical and even Egyptian style mausoleums, sculpture by great artists like John Moffet and the bucolic landscape that made Green-Wood so famous.

St. Louis #1 & Metairie Cemetery – New Orleans, LA
In this episode of Dead Art, we travel to New Orleans, a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We’ll take a tour through two of the city’s most famous cemeteries and see how they fared. Tiny St. Louis #1, the oldest surviving cemetery in the Big Easy, is a crumbling, romantic maze of tombs built above the ground. Here, bodies are stacked to save space, and vaults are recycled so that one family tomb can hold entire generations. Here folk art tombs share space with mysterious markings on the grave of a voodoo queen. We’ll take our own trip to the Italian mausoleum featured in Easy Rider. Across town, 150-acre Metairie Cemetery, once a famous racetrack, is now a spectacular rural haven of elaborate stone tombs representing art and architectural styles inspired by the ancient world. Cops and civil war soldiers, musicians, madams and millionaires rivalled to adorn their mausoleums with sculpture so enticing that it eventually caused a scandal in the art world.