Weather's toll on statues and monuments
From The Sun's print editions:
Baltimore Sun reporter Candus Thomson offers this guest post:
A colleague wanted to know what kind of weather gives monuments, statues and fountains the biggest beat down.
For that, we turned to Barbara Wolanin, curator for the Architect of the Capitol since 1985, who oversaw the restoration of the bronze Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. Water, she says, is the enemy of all types of decorative structure. It either softens porous material, rusts metals such as bronze or seeps into cracks, where the cycle of freezing and thawing takes its toll.
Baltimore Sun file photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor
Comments
Just wanted to correct the statement, "...rusts metals such as bronze."
Bronze is nonferrous and does not rust. The copper in the bronze causes the metal to oxidize, which can result in a green - verdigris - appearance. The oxidized greening actually is protective of the bronze. The bronze does not break down, as seen with relics from the Bronze Age (10,000 BC) that still exist today!
Posted by: Denise Siegel | January 18, 2012 12:08 PM