Sydney Burney

Sydney Burney
Residence	London, England
Occupation	art dealer

Sydney Burney CBE, OBE (1876/77 - January 1951) was a British art and antiquities dealer and collector based in London.^[1] He was responsible for organizing an exhibition of African art in 1933^[2] in which African art was depicted as equal to the art of other cultures.^[3] He donated a limestone Etruscan urn to the British Museum.^[4]

Questionable Artifacts

Burney owned the crystal skull, later known as the Mitchell-Hedges skull, which was later sold by his son at auction at Sotheby's.^[5] He sold an artifact known as the Burney Relief, later called "Queen of the Night," when it was acquired by the British Museum in 2003. The authenticity of this artifact has been questioned on stylistic grounds.^[6]

External links

• British Museum database

References

1. Sydney Burney Collection. Sculptures Collected by Sydney Burney. OCLC 17308928.
2. Getsy, David (ed.). Sculpture And The Pursuit Of A Modern Ideal In Britain.
3. Clarke, Dora (April 1935). "Negro Art: Sculpture from West Africa". Journal of the Royal African Society. Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society. 34 (135): 129–137.
4. Pryce, F. N. (1933). "An Etruscan Urn". The British Museum Quarterly. British Museum. 7 (4): 124–125. doi:10.2307/4421485. JSTOR 4421485.
5. Digby, Adrian (July 1936). "Comments on the Morphological Comparison of Two Crystal Skulls". Man. London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 36: 107–109. doi:10.2307/2789342. ISSN 0025-1496. JSTOR 2789342. OCLC 42646610.
6. Albenda, Pauline (Apr–Jun 2005). "The "Queen of the Night" Plaque: A Revisit". Journal of the American Oriental Society. American Oriental Society. 125 (2): 171–190.