Was the novelist prescient or had he heard about the opening of the conservation program?

For many years I have been compiling a bibliography of works of fiction which in some manner deal with conservation and restoration. Quite often these works are mysteries that feature conservators whose lives are quite removed from the reality of the conservators I know. The protagonist of Georges Perec’s “Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere” is a conservator turned forger turned murderer whose life is likewise quite removed (I hope) from that of  the average conservator. However, one detail in the description of his training in conservation stunned me: “Gaspard Winckler, trained at the Ecole du Louvre, holding a diploma in Painting Conservation from New York University and  the Metropolitan Museum, New York,…”
While the novel was not published until 2012—decades after Perec’s death–it is believed that he wrote the final version  in 1959 just before he left France for a job in Tunisia. In 1959, the NYU conservation program was just forming its first class of students. Unless Perec was prescient, the program must have been well advertised internationally.