According to an article in The New York Times (“A Summer Internship at a Place Where Most People Stay for Good”, by Winnie Hu, July 30, 2013), this summer, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York offered paid internships to four graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania historic preservation program. The students have been conserving a few of the 1,316 mausoleums on the cemetery’s grounds. As part of their preparation, the students took a four hour class on how to climb scaffolding. How many interns in other fields learn a skill like that?
(On a personal note: One of the students is quoted as saying that she came to find the cemetery quiet and soothing. Towards the beginning of my career, I worked on a study of the effects of acid rain on building stone. My job was to go to Veterans’ Cemeteries and measure tombstones— the chosen monument for the study. After an initial discomfort at being in cemeteries, I too came to enjoy the quiet and calm.)
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation