Preservation, Facilities,
& Historical Collections
Mount Auburn is committe d to pre se rving the Cemetery’s many man-made
features within the landscape, as well as the records and objects in our historical collections
that help us to better understand and interpret the story of this nationally significant historic
landscape.
During the past fiscal year:
• With funds from our Institute of Museum and Library Services (MA-30-13-0533-13) grant,
Historical Collections staff published an 82-page book titled The Art of Commemoration and
America’s First Rural Cemetery: Mount Auburn’s Significant Monument Collection.
• The monument for Medford shipbuilder Thatcher Magoun, one of our most significant
and a favorite of staff and visitors, was conserved by cleaning the fragile marble of atmospheric
soiling and biological growth and treating with a consolidant to slow deterioration of the
surface.
• Monuments in the Harvard Lot were reset and repointed in preparation for major landscape
improvements.
• Conservation of the Merriam monument, located beside Story Chapel, was completed
with funding from a private donor.
• With funding from an Innovation Grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
Cultural Heritage Imaging was hired to document a limited number of threatened
monuments. Eroding headstones were photographed using Reflectance Transformation
Imaging to document fading inscriptions, while photogrammetry was used to generate
three dimensional models of monuments.
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