Amid growing calls for restitution, why the Smithsonian will return three bronzes to India

Earlier this month, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA), US, announced its decision to return three bronze sculptures — Shiva Nataraja (Chola period, ca. 990), Somaskanda (Chola period, 12th century) and Saint Sundarar with Paravai (Vijayanagar period, 16th century) — to the Government of India. The artefacts, according to the museum, had been “removed illegally from temple settings”. The step comes against the backdrop of repatriation efforts globally to return looted or illicitly trafficked cultural artefacts to Asian nations, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, among others. In 2024, 297 antiques, in terracotta, stone and metal, were returned to India by the US. Two of the three bronzes will make the journey back home, while the Shiva Nataraja will remain on a long-term loan to the museum. Here’s a closer look at the objects and the provenance research that made the return possible. The three bronzes and their iconography All three sculptures were originally sacred objects traditionally carried in temple processions, and exemplify the rich artistry of South Indian bronze casting. According to NMAA, the Shiva Nataraja belonged to the Sri Bhava Aushadesvara Temple in Tamil Nadu’s (undivided) Thanjavur district, and depicts Lord Shiva “as the Lord of the Dance, engaged in the dynamic, victorious ‘dance of bliss’ (ananda tandava)”. The Somaskanda traces its origins to the Visvanatha Temple in Tamil Nadu’s Mannargudi. The idol features Lord Shiva sitting with his consort, Uma or Parvati. Their son Skanda either sits in or dances around them in some renditions. Interestingly, the sculpture in the NMAA collection is missing Skanda. Emma Natalya Stein, a curator of Southeast Asian Art at NMAA, explains that as a separately cast, smaller figure, Skanda is often first to get separated from the Somaskanda bronzes. By 1959, when the NMAA Somaskanda was photographed in the temple in Alattur, the Skanda had already gone missing. “One of the most important things we learned through the research process is that divine bronzes, even if broken and buried, can be reinstalled in temples after being unearthed. Before this research, scholars assumed that evidence of burial meant a bronze image was not in a temple when it left India. Now we know that is not necessarily true,” she said. The third sculpture depicts Saint Sundarar and his wife, Paravai, both ardent devotees of Lord Shiva. It was originally housed at the Shiva Temple in Veerasolapuram village, Tamil Nadu. According to NMAA, the couple was responsible for preaching the worship of Shiva in eighth-century southern India and was therefore revered. “For most of the year, an image such as this is kept in its own shrine in a large temple. Once a year during an elaborate puja, it is washed with holy water, then with milk, yogurt, honey, sandalwood paste, and ashes before being dressed in ceremonial robes,” noted NMAA. How did they enter the museum’s collection? The three bronzes, which have been part of the NMAA’s “existing collections” for decades, came on the provenance team’s radar after an ongoing systematic review raised discrepancies in their respective paper trails, notes Nancy Karrels, the Associate Director of Provenance and Object Histories, NMAA. “The three bronzes came in at a time when the museum’s collecting policies were not as strict as they are now, and that’s why they all needed to be reviewed. If they arrived today, we would have to have documentary evidence that they left their country of origin legally. We use the 1970 UNESCO Convention to make sure that the export – the time or year that it occurred – is compliant with those country laws,” Karrels told The Indian Express. “We also look at colonial and geopolitical contexts to ascertain whether an object could have possibly followed the required laws to exit the country: export certificates, consent from the seller and the entire provenance trail tracing all the previous owners to the point where it left the country.” As the museum sought to put the paperwork for the bronzes in place, a collaboration with the Photo Archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry in 2023 confirmed their presence in temples in Tamil Nadu between 1956 and 1959. Subsequently, the Archaeological Survey of India reviewed the findings, and confirmed that the sculptures had been removed in violation of Indian laws. “We don’t have evidence of how and when they left the temples in Tamil Nadu. We only know that they were photographed in situ in the temples in the 1950s and that they appeared on the American market or in American collections, but we don’t know what happened before that; just that they have gone through the hands of some suspect dealers who have been known to deal in stolen antiquities,” says Karrels. The Shiva Nataraja came to NMAA in 2002, when the museum purchased it from Doris Wiener Gallery, New York, that had the artefact since 1973. It is the story of how the gallery acquired it that is sketchy. Documentation shows that it was purchased from a Rajrama gallery in London. “The museum has since determined that Doris Wiener supplied false information: Rajrama Gallery did not exist,” NMAA website notes. Both Somaskanda and Saint Sundarar and Paravai came to the Smithsonian as donations from American psychiatrist Arthur M Sackler in 1987. While he acquired ‘Saint Sundarar and Paravai’ from New Yorker dealer William H. Wolff, the whereabouts of Somaskanda before Sackler and after being photographed in Tamil Nadu are unclear. Why is the Smithsonian returning them? “The National Museum of Asian Art is committed to stewarding cultural heritage responsibly and advancing transparency in our collection. The return of these sculptures, the result of rigorous research, shows our commitment to ethical museum practice,” Chase F. Robinson, the museum’s director, said in a statement. Having made their first restitution in 2002, NMAA has been at it longer than most museums in the US with what Karrels describes thus: “awareness that cultural heritage has been transferred, especially in the past 200 years, not always with the consent of the local communities and museum collections have not always been formed with the same ethical standards that we would apply today”. What do these restitution efforts mean for India? NMAA’s provenance research and subsequent restitution are both the ethical thing to do and open up opportunities for international collaboration. A government takes back the title of an object that rightfully belongs to them, but the object remains on site at the museum, attracting a wider, more international audience. For instance, the recent repatriation of three sculptures to Cambodia, with one on loan to NMAA like the Shiva Nataraja, opened doors to a five-year project to collaborate with Cambodia for an exhibition to be held at the museum in 2031. This is an opportunity to share its cultural heritage, which Karrels admits wouldn’t have been possible without the “collaboration and the cooperation that was built through the repatriation process”.