Virginia Burton

The Richmond Times-Dispatch remembers the Met’s curator of Egyptian Art:

“‘Ginny’ learned that “if you don’t show fear, that can get you out of situations,” said her friend, Louise Friday of Urbanna. “She once thought two guides were getting ready to rob her, so she quickly jumped up and said, ‘Let’s go!’ and forcefully dissuaded them.”

A woman who had stayed in the cliffs of Petra and taught herself to read hieroglyphics, Ms. Burton, who died Sunday at 90 in a Richmond nursing home, said the pièce de résistance of her career was overseeing the transfer of the Temple of Dendur from Egypt.

The temple was given to the United States by Egypt in 1965 and allotted to the museum in 1967. Installation was completed in 1978 in the Sackler Wing, which was built around the temple as it was being reassembled.

[ . . . ]In those days, artifacts were where one found them. “She said that while she was in Cairo that only one black marketeer [outfit] would talk to her, because they liked her. She said unfortunately she had to deal with them and see what they brought. She would get a message to go to a specific place and room in Cairo. A person would come and spread something in front of her,” Friday said.

Retired Curator Virginia Burton Dies at 90 (Richmond Times-Dispatch)