It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Andrea Rothe who served as Senior Conservator of Paintings at the Getty Museum for over twenty years. Born in Italy of German parents, he studied conservation in Florence and Vienna and was an assistant to the artist Oskar Kokoschka before becoming a private conservator for the Italian state. He worked on a number of important paintings at museums and churches across Italy, and eventually became head of the prominent paintings conservation studio housed at the Pitti Palace. Equally notable was his role in saving many paintings damaged in the Arno flooding (1966) as well as his presence at many professional conferences, which made him an international figure in the conservation field.

Christopher Clarkson, who died just before midnight on Thursday 30 March 2017 at the age of 79, was the pre-eminent conservator of medieval manuscripts and early printed books and a much-respected historian of book-binding and in particular of the structural history of bookbinding, specializing in the period from the birth of the codex to the early Renaissance.

Gustav Berger, paintings conservator known for his innovative approaches to our profession, died on March 5, 2006 at the age of 85. He was born in Vienna on July 28, 1920. He painted when he was young and had an exhibition of his paintings in Vienna when he was only 18 years old. He studied Civil Engineering at the Haifa Technical Institute served with the British Army from 1940 to 1946 and with the Israel Defense Forces from 1947-48. He was trained in photogrammetry and made maps from photographs in Israel.

Tony Werner, Keeper of the British Museum Research Laboratory, 1959-1975, and Chairman of the Pacific Regional Conservation center based at the Bernice P Bishop Museum in Honolulu, 1975 -1982, died in Hobart, Tasmania, on 21 January 2006 aged 94.