(More) Stolen Artifacts at The Met
This should come as no shock to anyone, but the reputation of The Met continues to erode as they keep repatriating artifacts and objects to their countries of origin, claiming not to be aware of the nefarious ways in which they arrived at the museum in the first place.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
I’m sure almost everyone is familiar with The Met in New York City. Beautiful old museum filled with art and antiquities from all around the world. But it wasn’t always that way. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was established in New York in 1870 and opened at the current site in 1880, way after other famous museums in London and Paris. The museum started out by purchasing a lot of 174 paintings. So, the original directors of the museum felt like they were playing catch-up.
Even in the 1960s, the museum still felt like it was behind its international counterparts and the museum’s leadership, under then-Director Thomas Hoving, “aggressively sought major acquisitions and took a casual approach to, and even at times embraced, antiquities smuggling as a mainstay of the museum’s sourcing” (Woodman et al, 2023). Basically, the Met went on a shopping spree in the next decades and filled the galleries and warehouses with art and antiquities from all over the world. Hoving wrote, “Not a single decade of any civilization that took root on earth is not represented by some worthy piece. The Met has it all” (Woodman et al, 2023).
I think it’s pretty obvious here that a lot of The Met’s collection was gained through kinda shady means. Over the years, there have been various instances where the museum has voluntarily repatriated items and other times when authorities have seized them. Here’s what The Met had to say about their collection: “The Met is committed to the responsible collecting of art and goes to great lengths to ensure that all works entering the collection meet the laws and strict policies in place at the time of acquisition. Additionally, as laws and guidelines on collecting have changed over time, so have the museum’s policies and procedures. The Met also continually researches the history of works in the collection – often in collaboration with colleagues in countries around the world – and has a long track record of acting on new information as appropriate” (Woodman et al, 2023). Mhm.
Artifacts from Nepal and India
As I’m sure you can imagine, there have been lots of instances of repatriation over the years but today we’re going to be focusing specifically on items taken from Nepal and India.
On November 13, 2023 the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, announced that 15 items have been returned to India. Some of these artifacts include “Rattle in the Form of a Crouching Grotesque Yaksha (Male Nature Spirit) (1st century BCE), a terracotta figure gifted by Kapoor; Celestial dancer (Devata) (mid-11th century CE); and Svetambara Enthroned Jina with Attendant Yaksha and Yakshi (second half of the 11th century CE); among other terracotta, copper, and stone artifacts” (Michael, 2023).
In their statement, Bragg’s office said, “while prying the delicately carved statue from the temple pillar it once adorned, looters cleaved the Celestial Dancer into two halves to facilitate its smuggling and illicit sale” (Schrader, 2024). The two halves of the sculpture were illegally imported into the USA by an antiquities dealer named Subhash Kapoor in 1992. Once it arrived in the country the sculpture was reassembled and donated to The Met where it stayed until it was seized by authorities in 2023.
As part of the international investigation into Kapoor, dubbed Operation Hidden Idol, The Met cooperated as Kapoor was charged with trafficking over $140 million in stolen works from India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and others. He owned Manhatten gallery Art of the Past, which was raided by authorities in 2012. In 2011 Kapoor was detained by Interpol and deported to India where he was sentenced to 10 years in a Tamil Nadu prison. In 2022, US authorities linked him definitively to more then 2,600 stolen items. The US is working on extraditing him so he can face charges in the States as well.
Now, at least, there has been a step in the right direction of repatriation and holding people accountable for looting and stealing priceless artifacts and religious items from many different countries. But, there’s still a long way to go.
Works Cited
Michael, Taylor. “Met Museum Repatriates 15 Objects to India”. Hyperallergic. 2023. https://hyperallergic.com/met-museum-repatriates-15-objects-to-india/
Schrader, Adam. “Manhatten DA Returns $10 Million Worth of Stolen Artifacts to India”. ArtNet. 2024. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/subhash-kapoor-nancy-wiener-looted-artifacts-returned-to-india-2570723
Woodman, Spencer, Malia Politzer, Delphine Reuter, and Namrata Sharma. “”The Stuff Was Illegally Dug Up”: New York’s Met Museum Sees Reputation Erode Over Collection Practices”. The Guardian. 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/mar/20/new-york-metropolitan-museum-collection-artifacts-theft