NORTHRIDGE : Getty Gift Will Help CSUN Arts Programs

A $1-million gift from the J. Paul Getty Trust to Cal State Northridge will help the university rebuild and restore visual arts programs that were hit hard by the January earthquake.

“Cal State Northridge has had a leading art history department for years, as well as a strong fine arts department,” said Getty Trust President Harold Williams.

“It is vital to the future of our city that CSUN not only recover from the losses but to continue to build the quality for programs that we have come to expect,” he said.

Half the money will go directly to the School of the Arts, where it will be used to buy equipment for a new visual arts computer lab and for studio arts courses, such as painting and ceramics.

The Getty gift will also help purchase audiovisual equipment to outfit a new lecture room for the School of the Arts, said Philip Handler, dean of the school.

Several other departments of the university will share the remaining $500,000 donated to the school.

The University Library, the School of Communication, Health and Human Services and the School of Humanities will use the money for their own programs relating to the visual arts, according to CSUN officials.

The school’s art collection, which was partially housed in the badly damaged Oviatt Library, will also benefit from the gift. With the Getty funds, the university will frame and mount many artworks it owns in a manner that will better ensure their long-term preservation, Handler explained.

Among the pieces in the collection is a series of oils, pastels and prints by Swiss-born artist Hans Burkhardt, who taught at CSUN in the 1960s and 1970s. Burkhardt was renowned for his expressionistic depictions of war.

The Oviatt Library’s special collections archives received $340,000 from the Getty Trust. Those funds will be used in restoring and conserving CSUN’s historical collections, and making them available to the public, said Sue Curzon, dean of the university’s Oviatt Library.

Curzon said CSUN’s vast array of musical scores and recordings by female composers will also be catalogued with funds from the Getty Trust. The university’s collection is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the country.

Robert Marshall, a CSUN archivist, said he is especially looking forward to being able to transcribe taped oral histories recounted by women who worked on the docks of Los Angeles decades ago.