The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian has repatriated three ancient bronze statues, once stolen, to India.
The three bronze statues, which are more than a millennium old, were “Somaskanda” (12th century), “Saint Sundarar with Paravai” (date unknown), and “Shiva Nataraja” (circa 990). For many centuries, the statues were located in temples or carried out during temple processions in southern India, before being stolen.
The National Museum of Asian Art, located in Washington, D.C., said that the statues were found to be sold to the museum by dealers who were since found guilty of smuggling artifacts (though the museum did not name them). The repatriation was a result of an investigation that started in 2023, when the museum joined hands with the French Institute of Pondicherry to find the origin of these works. Photo archives eventually showed that the statues were photographed in the temples of Tamil Nadu between 1956-59.
Chase F. Robinson (Director, National Museum of Asian Art) said: “The National Museum of Asian Art is committed to stewarding cultural heritage responsibly and advancing transparency in our collection. Because we aim to understand the objects in our collection in their full complexity, we carry out a robust program of research that seeks to trace not just how they came to the museum, but the history of their origins and movements across time.”
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This is the second major repatriation that the National Museum of Asian Art did in recent weeks. In December, the museum returned two statues to Cambodia. One of them depicted Hindu deities (10th century) while the other one depicted a Buddhist deity. They were stolen from the country during the Cambodian civil war in the 1950s.
