On Friday, the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced that it will return an 800-year-old temple strut to Nepal.
Temple struts are intricately carved pieces that usually depict a god or mythological scene, and are located at the top of temples. The strut in question once belonged to the Ratneshwar Temple in Lalitpur, a city near the capital Kathmandu. Carved in the shape of the divine tree or yakshi, the strut was one of the six that were looted from the 13th-century temple in 1975.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) first came under the possession of the strut in 2000, as part of the 79 artifacts that were donated by Australian-British collector Alex Biancardi. In recent years, Biancardi became infamous due to the longtime association with disgraced antiquity dealer, Douglas Latchford. Though the convicted smuggler died in 2020, investigations into Latchford’s dealings have continued to reveal more smuggled items over the years, like the 70 stolen gold coins that were repatriated to Colombia in February this year.
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Director Michael Brand revealed that AGNSW was first made aware of the temple strut in 2001, when some scholars made the connection between the strut and the Ratneshwar Temple. However, it took the gallery some time to confirm that the strut was indeed ‘illegally removed’ and actually belonged to the temple. Right now, the temple strut will be returned to Nepali officials at the Patan Museum in Kathmandu on Tuesday. It is not yet clear if the strut will be returned to the temple (a replica of the strut was installed there in 1992) or given to a museum.
