The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC, is sending back three ancient bronze sculptures to the Indian government after detailed research showed they were taken illegally from their original locations, The Washington Post reported citing the museum officials.
The artworks include a 12th-century “Somaskanda,” which depicts Shiva with his wife, a 16th-century sculpture titled “Saint Sundarar With Paravai,” and a bronze “Shiva Nataraja,” a dancing form of Shiva, made around AD 990. Statues of Shiva Nataraja, in particular, have long been prime targets for theft and smuggling.
Shiva Nataraja to stay on display for now
The Smithsonian’s Shiva Nataraja will not immediately leave public view. Instead, it will stay on long-term loan and be displayed with information explaining how and why it is being returned to India.
“The return of these sculptures, the result of proactive research, reflects our dedication to ethical museum practice,” museum director Chase F. Robinson said in a statement. Speaking to The Post, Robinson added that the museum believes the full histories of these objects “are really interesting and compelling stories, and we are increasingly integrating them into our galleries and as a feature of our exhibitions.”
Before 2022, the Smithsonian only returned items if they were clearly proven to have been obtained illegally. The updated policy allows museums to return objects based on ethical concerns as well and to work with communities of origin on how objects should be cared for, the report mentioned.
Review of South Asian collection led to decision
The decision to return the Indian bronzes is legally grounded and comes from a thorough review of the museum’s South Asian collection. “Historically, museums are much better at aestheticizing the object than contextualizing the object,” Robinson told WP.
Referring to one of the Smithsonian’s early collectors, he added, “Charles Lang Freer was a fantastic collector. He really wasn’t interested in the social context, religious context, ritual context,” before noting that “there has been a change of course in museology of the last generation or two. Increasingly one finds exhibitions and galleries devoted to trying to recontextualize.”
Because of its size and age – nearly 180 years – the Smithsonian has long faced calls to return items in its collection. In late 2022, the National Museum of African Art returned 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria.
How two sculptures were traced to Tamil Nadu temples
“Somaskanda” and “Saint Sundarar With Paravai” entered the museum as part of a donation by Arthur M. Sackler in 1987. Later, the museum received a tip that photographs of the statues existed in the archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry.
A curator visited the archives and found images showing the sculptures in temples in Tamil Nadu during the 1950s. These “in situ” photographs are legally accepted in India as proof of theft, Robinson said, and they “confirm the sculptures’ unauthorized removal from India,” the museum told WP.
Criminal case exposed smuggling network
The “Shiva Nataraja” followed a different path. It was acquired in 2002 from the Doris Wiener Gallery in New York, which later became infamous. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said Wiener took “shopping trips” across South Asia “to select stolen antiquities that would later be smuggled into New York.” In 2021, her daughter Nancy, who worked in the gallery, pleaded guilty to trafficking stolen artworks and falsifying provenance records.
Museum researchers tried to verify the documents provided for the Shiva Nataraja but found major gaps. The gallery listed as the source did not exist and neither did the street address mentioned. Like the other bronzes, this statue also appeared in 1950s photographs taken inside a Tamil Nadu temple, the report said.
This was not the only stolen Shiva Nataraja linked to the Wiener gallery. Another was returned by the Asia Society in 2021. “There’s a huge network of extraction, we could call it, that’s particularly focused on these Shiva Natarajas,” Kaimal told WP.