Art Institute of Chicago Returns Sacred Buddha Statue to Nepal

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) announced yesterday that it has returned the 12th-century stone sculpture “Buddha Sheltered by the Serpent Kind Muchalinda” to its country of origin, Nepal. Since intensifying its provenance research focus in 2020, the museum has recently taken steps to repatriate several cultural objects in its collection, such as a 12th-century fragment of a pilaster to Thailand, which had previously been misattributed to Cambodia, last summer.

The Buddha statue was first identified by the online heritage activist group Lost Arts of Nepal in 2021 as matching a statue stolen from Guita Tole in Patan, Kathmandu. 

The sacred statue is part of Nepal’s rich living heritage, which encompasses historical sites, cultural practices, and religious traditions that continue to play an active role in the daily lives of its people despite the ongoing threat of looting.     

The AIC obtained the statue in 2014 from Marilynn Alsdorf, who together with her husband James was celebrated for their extensive Asian art collection. This provenance information is notably missing from the artifact’s collection entry on the museum website. The Alsdorf collection has recently come under scrutiny: An extensive report co-published by ProPublica and Crain’s Chicago Business alleged that several objects donated to the Art Institute of Chicago by the Alsdorf couple had been looted from Nepal. Other objects donated by the Alsdorfs to major US museums have already been repatriated. 

According to the museum’s press release, the statue had already been “on regular view in museum galleries and featured in landmark exhibitions” since 1997, despite the fact that unauthorized removal, trade, and export of cultural objects has been illegal under Nepali law since 1956. 

In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, an AIC spokesperson said that “the museum is committed to prioritizing provenance research across departments and is dedicated to researching each object in its collection.” 

“This work is complex and can take significant time, but this latest return is a demonstration of our commitment to take action when we learn new information,” the spokesperson said.

Last December, the AIC appointed Jacques Schuhmacher as its first-ever executive director of provenance research. In the press release about the Nepali sculpture’s return, Schuhmacher mentions “proactive outreach and collaboration with countries and communities” and “partnership with our colleagues from Nepal.” 

The statement does not credit the online sleuths who identified the statue early on, or the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, which has been instrumental in holding US museums accountable for the origins of their Nepali collections. 

“The outstanding provenance research team of AIC must visit Nepal so that they can understand all Nepalese antiquities are stolen from places of worship,” a representative for Lost Arts of Nepal told Hyperallergic.

Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at John Jay College and a Hyperallergic contributor, said museums should “acknowledge the larger problem instead of congratulating themselves for tiny fixes.” 

“How can a museum pat itself on the back for ‘strategic and rigorous research’ when it is depending on the unpaid, uncredited work of source country researchers and when dozens of artifacts from the same red flag sources remain apparently unexamined in its collection?” Thompson told Hyperallergic.

Several Nepali objects remain in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, including an inscribed gilt-copper necklace from Kathmandu’s Taleju Temple. The Taleju necklace, a gift from the Alsdorf Foundation, was first identified as having been looted from Kathmandu in 2021, and since then, activists have raised significant public awareness and support for its repatriation.