Did you know that the Department of Art and Art History at UC Davis had one of the first museum studies and art conservation programs in the US and the first program on the west coast?

In January 1964 UC President Clark Kerr approved the creation of the Laboratory for Research in Fine Arts and Museology as “a unique center for the study of techniques in the arts, with reference to materials, construction, and restoration” that would “establish the Davis Campus as an important center for this kind of graduate instruction.” The Laboratory was the joint initiative of Charles Muskavitch (d. 2001), the first art conservator in California, and Joseph A. Baird (d. 1992), the first art history professor at UC Davis, and was one of the earliest museum studies and art conservation training programs in North America.

To learn more about the Laboratory, come to Seth Hindin’s lecture “Art Conservation Between Theory and Practice: The UC Davis Laboratory in Fine Arts and Museology, 1964-1978″ Tuesday, November 19, 2013 at 4:10 pm, Everson 157.