central park conservancy (summer 2019 internship)

I had the pleasure of working with Matt Reiley and 4 other conservators (varying in age, experience, education)
to maintain and conserve the monuments found in Central Park.
In addition to the every-day maintenance, we also toured the conservation science branches of major institutions such as the Met,
and I got to apply the research I was doing with Professor David Grier ( Acoustic Holography ) to the monuments.
Here's a quick list of what I did (followed by a summary of the coolest things about each):

EVERYDAY MAINTENANCE - The everyday maintenance meant getting familiar with the methods used for outdoor cleaning (including coating, plaque clean-up, operating a boom-lift, etc...), as well as the technology often associated with documenting and reporting these clean-ups (cartegraph, etc...).
WELDING, FOUNDRY WORK - One of the bayonets was missing from the 107th Regiment Memorial, so we created a casting using silicone rubber and then created a shell around the rubber. We then melted roughly 50 pounds of bronze at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured the bronze into the shell in order to create a newly formed bronze bayonet. This was subsequently attached to the memorial!
ACOUSTIC HOLOGRAPHY - I was allowed to bring a few original and a few new tiles from Bethesda Terrace into Professor David Grier's lab, in order to run some acoustic scans. While the data was inconclusive, future work would involve utilizing the powers of acoustic holography to not only identify cracks not visible to the eye, but also "soft" spots, or spots that where cracks can form.