Cemetery preservationist training program — in the USA

Jewish Heritage Europe focuses, well, on Europe. It is often easy to forget — or not even realize — that analogous preservation challenges exist also in the United States and elsewhere, regarding Jewish and non-Jewish built heritage.

Cemeteries, cemetery maintenance and cemetery preservation constitute a specific case in point. Cemeteries in the United States as well as in other countries often lack adequate trained personnel to carry out essential care and preservation.  (The Association for Gravestone Studies provides resources regarding preservation practices.)

This summer, reports the arts news web site Hyperallergenic, a hands-on training program has been launched:

a two-year pilot program [has been] launched at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx to help care for its monuments and facilitate the training of young preservationists. The partnership between the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and Woodlawn Conservancy, in collaboration with the International Masonry Institute and Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, takes the form of an internship program with stone conservation training in the cemetery and jobs at its conclusion.

The announcement for the program states that

All participants will learn about the different stones used in the cemetery, from granites and limestone, to all the different types of marble, and how to analyze each stone and the best methods of cleaning and repairing them. In addition, they will attend classes about historic preservation, as well as safety procedures, which would be conducted by IMI. All participants who successfully complete the program will receive a certificate from IMI and WMF. […] Interns have been recruited from a pool of high school students going to schools that focus on the preservation trades.

The Woodlawn program has local scope — though it deals with a cemetery that has more than 1,300 mausoleums and monuments — but the students who complete the program will be expected to use their expertise elsewhere.

Susan Olsen, the Woodlawn cemetery’s director of historical services, told Hyperallergic: “Because of the volume, many cemeteries will restore only one or two monuments a year. For us, it’s the reality of the volume. We’ve got the largest collection of private mausoleums in America.” She added that it is “a great place to address historic building conservation on a small-scale,” with monuments in marble, granite, slate, and other stones, and a range of architectural eras that span mortar joints to modern caulking.

We ask out readers if they know of such programs in Europe, and how aspiring preservationists can apply or get involved — let us know in the comment section of this post.

Click to read the Hyperallergenic report

Click to read announcement and description of the project