The Art Conservation Department of Buffalo State College has been awarded two grants from the Leo and Karen Gutmann Foundation.

The newly established foundation, created under the will of Karen Gutmann, provides educational institutions with financial assistance for scholarships and grant awards to financially needy full-time graduate students in art history, archaeology and the technology and conservation of works of art.

The grants awarded to Buffalo State will provide $298,400 over 20 months for the department's resident master of art degree student during the first two years of their three years of degree studies. The funds will be used to help students cover the considerable costs of tuition, fees, books and housing.

The department's graduate program, which opened in 1970, is one of four degree-granting art conservation programs in North America. During their program years, students first study the traditional areas of objects, paper and paintings conservation. They later specialize in either one of these three areas, or in a more recently established one, such as photograph, book or ethnographic and archaeological materials conservation. Their program years conclude with a final 12-month internship in their chosen specialty.

Most of the department's 280 graduates are employed in museum conservation laboratories in this country and abroad, many holding senior posts. Employers include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum.