The Architecural Conservation Laboratory and Research Center of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation in the Graduate School of Fine Arts has received a federal grant of $800,000 to study and conserve the Native American cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. The dwellings are among the most significant and renowned of ancestral pueblo sites. The funding will allow Penn to continue its historical and scientific research and fieldwork, including digital documentation of masonry conditions, environmental monitoring, and conservation treatments for the stone and earthen structures.

The money is the largest single grant awarded to GSFA in recent years.