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India shall soon get its art work from Australia’s National Gallery. The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) will remove 14 works from its Asian art collection and then return them to the Indian government.
Worth a combined $3m, 13 of the objects were purchased between 2002 and 2010 from Art of the Past, the now-infamous New York gallery run by the Indian origin dealer and an alleged antiquities smuggler. One came from the late New York art dealer William Wolff in 1989.
India had raised demand to get them back in 2014. They comprise six stone or bronze sculptures, most dating back to the 11th or 12th century, as well as a brass processional standard, or alam from Hyderabad dated 1851. There is a painted invitation scroll, or vijnaptipatra, from Rajasthan dated around 1835, and six photographs.
NGA director, Nick Mitzevich, confirmed the gallery had in-principle agreement from the Indian government through the Indian high commission that they welcomed and would receive the works.
“The physical handover will be negotiated over the next couple of months, giving consideration to Covid and the ability to travel, as to whether it’s realistic to have it in India or Canberra,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate, and the institution is sorry for this development. We are doing all we can to avoid any future missteps of this kind,” Mitzevich said. This is the fourth time the NGA has returned to India looted or illegally exported works purchased from smugglers.
In early 2014 revelations emerged that Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), one of the 21 works the gallery acquired from Art of the Past, had been looted from a temple in Tamil Nadu in southern India.
The 11th- or 12th-century Chola-period bronze, purchased in 2008 for $5.6m, was returned to India by then-prime minister Tony Abbott in September 2014, along with a sculpture Kapoor had sold to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Two years later, the NGA returned Goddess Pratyangira, a 12th-century stone sculpture from Tamil Nadu and Worshippers of the Buddha, a third century limestone sculpture from Andhra Pradesh.
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And in 2019, the NGA repatriated a pair of 15th-century stone door guardians, or dvarapala, from Tamil Nadu, and a sixth- to eighth-century stone sculpture, the serpent king, or Nagaraja, from either Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh.
Mitzevich said the measure was a positive step in resolving a difficult and unfortunate period in the gallery’s collecting history.
“With these developments, provenance decision-making will be determined by an evidence-based approach evaluated on the balance of probabilities, anchored in robust legal and ethical decision-making principles and considerations,” he said.
