The Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit announced the return of 20 looted antiquities collectively worth over $3 million to Nepal earlier this month, including works recovered through several investigations into antiquities smuggling operations linked to disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor.
Known as “one of the most prolific smugglers in the world,” Kapoor amassed a fortune by trafficking over 2,600 individual objects through his Madison Avenue gallery Art of the Past. In 2022, he and five of his conspirators were sentenced to 10 years in prison in India for stealing and illegally exporting 19 antique idols from a temple in the state of Tamil Nadu; his extradition to the US is still pending.
Among the objects that were returned to Nepal is a 15th-century religious painting depicting military governor Gaganshim Bharo with two of his wives, a 9th-century Buddha figure, and a statue of a Hindu deity. These works and two other portraits were flagged by the anonymous repatriation advocacy initiative Lost Arts of Nepal (LAN), which raises awareness about looted Nepali antiquities in public and private collections.
This year, authorities seized the statue of the Hindu goddess, thought to be Parvati or Lakshmi, from the estate of the late New York collector Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, according to the announcement. LAN identified the work in 2023 after matching it to a 1975 photograph taken at the Vishnu Devi Temple Complex in Kathmandu.
“The main purpose of these deities is to serve as an icon of faith, in which the divine resides among the common people,” a LAN representative told Hyperallergic.
“Our little efforts in restoring Nepalese idols of worship provides more satisfaction, pleasure and peace, when the centuries old rituals and practices of faith continue uninterrupted for future generations,” they added.
The US also returned a 9th-century black stone Buddha, which was originally stolen from a ceremonial monument known as a stupa in Bungamati village in the late 1970s and then trafficked to London, where it was sold to an American collector. After being put up for auction at Christie’s in 2015, the figure was donated to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) by alumni Mary Paul and Bruce Stubbs, who have also gifted several other works from India, Tanzania, and West Africa to the museum, according to its collection. In 2023, LAN identified the stolen statue based on photographs from a 1968 Danish expedition and a close-up image published in Lain Singh Bangdel’s Stolen Images of Nepal (1989).
“The museum is happy to return this sculpture, which was never on public view, to its rightful home in Nepal,” an UMMA spokesperson told Hyperallergic.
A LAN representative told Hyperallergic that most repatriations to Nepal have been recently made from the US. Earlier this month, the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) announced that it had returned a looted 12th-century stone sculpture to Nepal after it had been identified by LAP in 2021. Two years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City also returned two Nepali works.
Still, LAN said there is more work to be done.
“The Art Institute of Chicago, despite eight of our claims, has returned just one artifact recently,” the advocacy group’s representative said, adding that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has similarly not initiated any repatriations yet.
Hyperallergic has contacted AIC and LACMA for comment.
LAN also noted that they have lacked cooperation from private collectors and auction houses that have stolen antiquities in their possession.
“It is encouraging, but still many identified Nepalese stolen antiquities remain in US museums, auction houses, and private collections,” the representative said.
