A a fully-tenured professor at Sacramento State University, Kurt took advantage of the opportunity he was given after each seven years of teaching for a year off at reduced salary--a sabbatical. Being granted a sabbatical required submitting an application one year in advance, and this request was submitted in 1997 for the fall of 1998. His intention, as outlined in his request, was ambitious; "Historians are beset by vexing problems about any roles Alchemy may have played in prompting the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg's metallurgical innovation of casting moveable type. Yet, conventional art history is virtually silent about this, as about the nature of the ink used by early Western printers."
