The Art Conservation Department of Buffalo State College has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Leo and Karen Gutmann Foundation.

The grant, for the 2003-04 academic year, will be used to help resident master's students cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and housing during the first two years of their three years of degree studies.

Established under the will of Karen Gutmann, the foundation 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.

Last year, the Gutmann Foundation provided two grants totaling $298,400 to Buffalo State's Art Conservation Department to help master's students cover the cost of their educations.

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 archeological material conservation. Their program years conclude with a final 12-month internship in their chosen specialty.

The majority of the department's 300 graduates are employed in museum conservation laboratories in this country and abroad, many of them holding senior posts. Employers include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum.