Buffalo State College's Art Conservation has received a $75,000 grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The five-year grant, to be paid in equal annual installments of $15,000, will provide for advanced internships in fine arts conservation, and is a continuation of a previous five-year grant awarded to the college by the Kress Foundation.

"The Kress fellowships enable students to pursue various summer conservation experiences that would otherwise be unavailable to them," said F. Christopher Tahk, director of Art Conservation. Tahk noted that this summer Buffalo State students are studying archeological conservation in Greece and Peru; paintings conservation at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria; and book conservation in Montefiascone, Italy. He said that Kress grant funds also provide support for some third-year students' 12-month internships working under senior conservators in museum laboratories, including those at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.

"We are very grateful to the Kress Foundation for their generous support that will further strengthen and enrich the department's instructional program These experiences are important complements to the education and training that the students receive in the department and do much to better prepare them for their careers," Tahk added.

Buffalo State College's Art Conservation Department, one of only three such programs in the country offering advanced study leading to a graduate degree, offers concentrations in the conservation of paintings, art on paper and three-dimensional objects. Graduates of the program work nationally and internationally, and many hold senior positions in major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.