Our first US road trip took us from Raleigh to Washington D.C., where the team was welcomed by colleagues at the National Gallery of Art. We studied two works:  the Bust of Louis XIV and Pietro Tacca’s Crucifix. The former is one of the very few question marks of the project. An undocumented cast that some believe was cast in France rather than Rome. Stay tuned! We undertook studies of Pietro Tacca’s Crucifix in order to learn more about the techniques of a sculptor/founder who Bernini is known to have consulted about the casting of the Baldacchino. At the end of our two days in the NGA Conservation Labs we held a discussion with the whole department and especially esteemed colleagues Shelley Sturman and Dylan Smith, conservators whose expertise lies in the technical study of early modern bronzes, and C.D. Dickerson, Curator and Bernini specialist.