Mount Rushmore

Simon Barcham Green <simongreen [at] aol__com> writes

>N.J. Bud Goldstone <budgoldstone [at] yahoo__com> writes
>
>>I do believe we may lose chunks of our one-of-a-kind mountain
>>sculpture Mt. Rushmore to an unsafe "cleaning" operation. I don't
>>know why high pressure wound up as the selected method other than it
>>may have been the low bid, but my database says cleaning off lichen
>>and mold should be done with a simple, cheap wash job. What was the
>>the scientific backup that showed a blast was the way to go? Anyone
>>know?
>
>I don't know the answer to Bud Goldstone but I wondered why lichen
>and mold are considered a problem on a mountain sized sculpture.

This is an interesting subject and I think it brings us to a number
of discussions about the desires of the public and curators as to
their regard for viewing objects. Caple aptly describes this problem
in his book, and Goeffry Wallis discusses some of the pressures and
strategies that people in private practice face in this regard in
his article in the 1988 UKIC 30th anniversary Conference. But these
treatments are not unusual and the goals and effects are present in
most recent articles, e.g. Frey, Reis and Barov's "An evaluation of
biocides for control of the biodeterioration of artifacts at Hearst
Castle" 10th Triennial Meeting, 1993, and the book edited by Melanie
Jones and Rachael Wakefield carries this further in the context of
natural weathering, decay due to pollution and other factors. I
would like to see an evaluation by those involved which related the
development of goals. AIC 2006?

Niccolo Caldararo
Conservation Art Service


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:7
                  Distributed: Thursday, July 21, 2005
                        Message Id: cdl-19-7-012
                                  ***