A death

Ursus Dix, who had been a paintings conservator in Canada for twenty
years, died in Jonquieres, France on December 20 at the age of 75.

Interested in art and art technique from childhood--his father was
the German Expressionist painter Otto Dix--Ursus studied at the
Doerner Institute in Germany. He worked in Germany and England until
he and his wife Eva came to Canada in 1965 where he worked at the
National Gallery in Ottawa. In 1973 Ursus went to work for the
Canadian Conservation Institute and was sent to Vancouver as Chief
of the new Pacific Conservation Centre. When CCI recentralized in
1979 Ursus returned to the National Gallery of Canada and in 1973
retired and with Eva moved to Jonquieres to, among other things,
look after his father's estate. He was bicycling when he died in a
traffic accident.

Ursus supervised five conservators and a number of conservation
interns in Vancouver where his style was much more
leadership-by-example than bossing. He was, then and since, a
colleague and friend.  He was fastidious in his work and everything
else and probably never uttered a word which hadn't been well
considered. One needed to be alert in conversation, and perhaps dig
a bit, to discover how interesting a life had been lived by so
reserved a man.

Barry M. Byers


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:46
                 Distributed: Friday, January 31, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-46-001
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