Biography on the remarkable career of Bud Goldstone

Mr. Goldstone won a B. S. in Aeronautical Engineering with a structures major and mathematics minor in February 1948 from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Previously he had performed undergraduate engineering work at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. He successfully completed graduate courses in aerospace technology, engineering dynamics and advanced materials at the University of Southern California and University of California, Los Angeles. He was elected a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC); named a Fellow of the Institute for American Engineering Education, and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and as a member of the Western Association for Art Conservation and the Folk Art Society of America. In December 2002, he won the 2002 Lecture Grant from the Foundation for the AIC for a series of 2002/2003 conservation presentations on the Watts Towers. Mr. .Goldstone has been recognized for his technical efforts: in 1979 by Boeing Aircraft as “Engineer of the Year”; in 2000 by the California Community Foundation; in 1987 by the City of Los Angeles; in 2000 by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission; and in 2000 by the Folk Art Society of America.  He holds a certified small business rating No.37060 in California. His successful efforts to preserve the Watts Towers led to publication of The Los Angeles Watts Towers, Bud Goldstone and Arloa Paquin Goldstone, by the J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Conservation Institute in 1997 and in 2003.

During a 32-year career in aircraft and space vehicle work he contributed his skills in design, stress analysis, test and report writing for companies from St. Louis to Downey. He admits his most exciting work was with North American Aviation from 1957 to 1981 was on the Apollo and Space Shuttle Programs for NASA. Bud’s art conservation achievements include the life-saving proof load test in 1959 on the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia, described in Structure in Sculpture by Daniel Schodek in 1993. Implementation of his aerodynamic and stress analysis-recommendations in the 1980s helped free Alexander Calder’s only wind and water-driven mobile, “Hello Girls”. The mobile had almost destroyed itself from wind forces, and had been in storage for 20-years near its home in an 80-foot diameter pool in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard.

Goldstone performed damage assessment in Mexico on the large outdoor surrealistic designs of millionaire Edward James, “Las Pozas”, in Xilitla, Mexico; the California State monument, Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village in Simi Valley, CA; the California State monument, Art Beall's Nitt Witt Ridge in Cambria, CA; and on Jeff Mc Clintock's The Orange Show in Houston, Texas. He has lived in Southern California since 1948, currently with wife, Arloa, and son, Chester.

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