It may be June, but it is worth checking out these articles published in May

May 2014 was the month for newspaper articles about outdoor monument preservation projects. The New York Times published two articles about monument cleaning projects—“For ‘Cleopatra’s Needle”, a Cleaning Meant to Last”, by Lisa W. Foderaro in the May 8, 2014 issue and “Outlasting Dynasties, Now Emerging From Soot”, by Edward Wong in the May 18th issue. Foderaro, writing at the start of a several month long project to clean the obelisk which is a Central Park landmark, notes that the lasers being used to remove surface deposits will be much more gentle on the stone than the scrapers used when the monument was last cleaned in 1881. Wong, writing at the end of a multi-year project to clean the statues in the Yungang Grottoes and remove the sources of air pollution that were destroying them, notes that this project is seen as a model for future preservation projects in other parts of China. Both projects incorporated extensive visual documentation. A third article published in May 2014—“Scanning a Slice of Queens”, by Nicholas Hirshon (The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2014)– describes the use of 3-D laser scanners to document the dire condition of the New York State Pavilion, a relic of the 1964 World’s Fair.