Conservators should be happy. They are chic enough to lead off, “Rome is Dead, Long Live Rome”, a story by Andrea Whittle in the December 2019 issue of W Magazine (a women's fashion magazine, featuring stories about style through the lens of culture, fashion, art, celebrity and film) which looks at the phenomenon of young Romans in the creative industries who decide to stay in Rome rather than move to London, Milan or elsewhere. Of course, the conservators from the Merlini Studio who are featured are young, long haired, and conventionally pretty. That’s probably a plus for the people who come through the studio in group tours to “watch restorers swab years of yellowed varnish off of oil paintings the size of Fiat 500s”. #conservation in the news