Nearly seventy years after it was photographed standing in a Tamil Nadu temple, and almost six decades after it entered the collection of Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum, the 16th-century bronze image of the Vaishnava saint-poet Thirumangai Alvar has finally returned to its rightful place of worship in India. 

The formal handover to India took place on 3 March 2026 at the High Commission of India in London, where representatives of the Ashmolean Museum formally transferred the bronze back to the country of origin.  For the museum, it marked the conclusion of more than six years of dialogue.  For the community from which the murti disappeared, however, the significance is different. 

This is not simply the restitution of a Renaissance-era work of art. It is the return of a sacred image intended to resume its role inside the temple where it was first placed and its story began with just a photograph. 

On 4 June 1957, the bronze depicting one of the most revered among the twelve Alvar saints of the Vaishnavite tradition is recorded in situ at the  the Sundaraperumal Kovil, Vishnu Temple, Sri Sundara, near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu in the photographic archives maintained by the Institut Français de Pondichéry and the École française d’Extrême-Orient, commonly referred to as the IFP-EFEO archives. These collections were created in the 1950s to document the religious art and architecture of southern India, often recording temple sculptures, bronzes, buildings, paintings, and ritual objects long before anyone imagined that the photographs might later serve as evidence in cultural property investigations.  In this case, the photograph ultimately became exactly that.

At some point after the photograph was taken, but before 1967 when the object came up for auction, the murti disappeared from the temple and was smuggled out of India.   It was not the only bronze to go missing. Tamil Nadu’s Idol Wing CID would later determine that original metal images of Kalinganarthana Krishna, Vishnu, and Sridevi had also been removed, each replaced with modern replicas.  For decades, the substitutes remained in the temple, displayed and worshipped in the places once occupied by the originals.

That substitution helps explain one of the most striking features of the case: there was no contemporary theft report.  The original object had not simply vanished leaving an empty pedestal.  A replacement stood in its place. This deception effectively concealed the loss, allowing the genuine bronzes to move into the international market while successive generations of worshippers encountered replicas without necessarily knowing that a theft had occurred.

By 1967, the Thirumangai Alvar bronze had surfaced in London.  That year, the Ashmolean acquired the sculpture through Sotheby’s. The auction catalogue identified the consignor as the private collector Dr J. R. Belmont (1886–1981). What the provenance did not explain was how Belmont had acquired the bronze, when it had entered his collection, or how an object demonstrably present in a Tamil Nadu temple in 1957 had reached the European art market less than a decade later. 

The Ashmolean for its part has indicated that it has no information explaining how the sculpture entered Belmont’s collection.

For more than fifty years after its acquisition, the bronze remained at Oxford.
It measures approximately 57.5 centimetres high, is solid cast bronze, and depicts Thirumangai Alvar, one of the celebrated poet-saints of the South Indian Sri Vaishnava tradition.  In a museum setting it could readily be understood as an important example of 16th-century Tamil bronze casting. In its temple setting, however, it had another identity altogether.   It was not simply sculpture but a consecrated religious image associated with continuing devotional practice.

According to the Ashmolean, an independent French scholar contacted the museum after researching the IFP-EFEO photographic archives.  Among those photographs was the 1957 image showing what appeared to be the museum's Thirumangai Alvar bronze standing in the Sundaraperumal Kovil temple.  The researcher had identified not only this image but a number of other temple objects documented in the photographic archive that had subsequently appeared in European and American collections.

The importance of the match was immediate. A museum provenance beginning with a European collector could no longer stand comfortably beside photographic evidence demonstrating that the object had been inside an Indian temple only ten years before the Ashmolean acquired it.

Significantly, the museum did not wait for India to submit a restitution demand.
On 16 December 2019, the Ashmolean wrote to the Indian High Commission in London, explained the new provenance evidence, and asked for any additional information, including police documentation, that might assist in establishing what had happened to the sculpture.  The museum also indicated that it was prepared to discuss possible repatriation.  The Indian High Commissioner acknowledged the approach later that month and forwarded the information to the relevant authorities in India.

That correspondence set in motion an investigation on the other side of the world.  On 11 February 2020, an executive officer from the temple filed a police complaint stating that the Thirumangai Alvar then present at the temple was a modern replacement.  Until that point, according to the Ashmolean, there had been no earlier police report or news account documenting the theft of this, or the other original bronzes.  The Tamil Nadu Idol Wing CID opened an investigation, comparing the surviving replica, archival photographs, and the object then present in the museum collection in Oxford.

This identification also led investigators beyond the Thirumangai Alvar.  In 2022, Tamil Nadu police announced that they had traced the three other bronzes believed to have disappeared from the same temple during the same period.  

At that time, the Kalinganarthana Krishna was identified at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (Avery Brundage collection).

The Vishnu was sold at Sotheby’s London and later made its way to the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas via dealer Ben Heller.

Qnd lastly the Sridevi, was identified in circulation on the market through Hills Auction Gallery in Florida. 

The case was therefore no longer about a single questionable museum acquisition. It pointed towards the systematic removal of a group of sacred bronzes from one living temple, their replacement with copies, and their subsequent dispersal through the international art market.

On 3 March 2020, the Indian High Commissioner formally requested the return of the Thirumangai Alvar.  Then came delays. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted plans for Ashmolean staff to travel to India to continue their own provenance investigation. That visit eventually took place in July 2022, when Ashmolean representatives met officers from the Tamil Nadu Idol Wing, officials of the Archaeological Survey of India, representatives of the French Institute, temple authorities, and other specialists.   At the request of the ASI, the museum also commissioned metallurgical analysis of the bronze to assist with the investigation.

The institutional process proved almost as lengthy as the provenance research.
The Ashmolean’s Board of Visitors supported the Indian claim, and on 11 March 2024, the Council of the University of Oxford approved the object's proposed return. Because the University of Oxford is legally a charity, however, the decision also required authorisation from the Charity Commission for England and Wales before the museum could relinquish ownership.  That approval was finally granted in December 2024.

Finally, on 3 March 2026, the bronze was handed over at the High Commission of India in London in the presence of the Director of the Ashmolean, Dr Xa Sturgis, CBE, and Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrus, Head of the Museum’s Department of Eastern Art.

The Indian High Commission placed emphasis on something often obscured when sacred objects are discussed principally in terms of ownership, valuation, or museum acquisition.  In welcoming the Ashmolean’s decision, it stressed that returning the bronze would allow it to resume its original purpose as an object of worship at the Soundararaja Perumal Temple.  The restitution, the High Commission said, represented not merely the recovery of an artwork but the restoration of an icon to its religious community.

For decades the Thirumangai Alvar had been transformed by the international art market from a temple deity into an antiquity.  It acquired a collector’s provenance, an auction history, an accession number, and a place within one of Britain’s most distinguished museums.  What disappeared from that paper history was the community from which the object had been removed.  The 1957 photograph, laying in an archive, put the community back into the provenance.

It also demonstrates the growing importance of historical photographic archives in cultural property investigations. In cases where thefts went unreported, inventories were poor, or replicas were deliberately substituted for originals, archival photography can provide evidence that conventional police records cannot.   A photograph may establish that a specific object existed in a specific temple at a specific date, allowing investigators to compare casting flaws, inscriptions, proportions, surface details, damage, and other individual characteristics against objects that later surfaced on the market.

Speaking with Vijay Kumar of the India Pride Project, whose work contributed to the identification of the stolen bronzes, he emphasised that the return of the Thirumangai Alvar should be seen as only the beginning of a broader restitution effort. As he put it: 

For Saint Thirumangai Alvar, however, his long journey through theft, substitution, trafficking, private collecting, auction, museum acquisition, and international negotiation has finally helped him come home. 

Let's hope his stolen companions soon follow. 

An 18th-century murti of the Hindu goddess Annapurna, which was stolen from India over a century ago, will be returning home soon from Canada. Upon the discovery that one of the idols in their collection had been stolen from a shrine in Varanasi, India, the Mackenzie Art Gallery at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan reached out to officials in India to discuss restitution. 

The statue has been in the university’s possession since 1936 when it was donated by Norman MacKenzie, the namesake of the university's gallery. The sculpture remained unquestioned until 2019 when artist Divya Mehra was invited to host a solo exhibition at the Gallery. 

While doing research for her exhibition at the MacKenzie Art Gallery at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Divya Mehra discovered the statue’s illicit origin. Her exhibition, entitled, From India to Canada and Back to India (There Is Nothing I Can Possess Which You Cannot Take Away), "unravels the West’s obsession with simultaneously defining and consuming the histories and identities of other cultures. In this collection of reproduced, misclassified, staged, and stolen cultural property, Mehra deftly and playfully navigates complex networks of colonial entitlement, popular culture, art history, sacred objects, exotic adventurism, and novelty."

It was through her research in the university archives that she discovered the notes from Norman MacKenzie’s trip to India in 1913 which revealed that the idol had been stolen from a small sanctuary along the Ganges, procured indirectly at the behest of MacKenzie. At the time the sculpture was accessioned into the museum's art collection the idol was misclassified as a representation of the god Vishnu and continued to be labelled as such until Mehra began her research. 

When  Mehra recognized that the clearly female sculpture was not Vishnu, she consulted with Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah, curator of South Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum who revealed that the deity depicted was in fact Annapurna, also known as the Queen of Benares and Hindu goddess of food and nourishment. Upon the discovery of the illicit origins of the artefact the artist approached John Hampton, interim CEO and Executive Director of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, regarding restitution.  The university then took the steps to reach out to the High Commission of India to discuss the sacred object's return. 

The proactive and voluntary repatriation of an artefact is quite unusual in the museum world, with repatriation often taking years of legal discussions and cultural diplomacy between the cultural institution and the aggrieved nation. Mr. Ajay Bisaria, High Commissioner of India commented that "the move to voluntarily repatriate such cultural treasures shows the maturity and depth of India-Canada relations".

The repatriation ceremony was held virtually on November 19th, with attendees from the High Commission of India, Global Affairs Canada, Canada Border Services Agency, the University of Regina, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery. Dr. Thomas Chase, Interim President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Regina stated during the ceremony that "as a university we have a responsibility to right historical wrongs and help overcome the damaging legacy of colonialism wherever possible...repatriating this statue does not atone for the wrong that was done a century ago, but it is an appropriate and important act today. I am thankful to the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Indian High Commission, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their roles in making it possible."

The university and gallery have affirmed that as a result of the discovery of the illicit provenance of the Annapurna idol they will be conducting a full review of the rest of their collection.  Alex King, the Curator for the University’s art collection commented that "the repatriation of the Annapurna is part of a global, long-overdue conversation in which museums seek to address harmful and continuing imperial legacies built into, sometimes, the very foundations of their collections. As stewards of cultural heritage, our responsibility to act respectfully and ethically is fundamental, as is the willingness to look critically at our own institutional histories."

This is undoubtably a step in the right direction for cultural restitution, but it is also a reflection of how little is known about museum collections.  Founder of the India Pride Project S. Vijay Kumar commented that "while the recent restitution is a welcome move it is pertinent to point out that a very distinct feminine sculpture holding a ladle and a bowl was displayed in an academic Institution since the mid-1930’s as a Vishnu. It shows how little of displaced Indian art in Canada has been properly studied. Further that the paperwork attested to its dodgy provenance was within the University archives shows the importance of reviewing provenance and due diligence not just for current acquisitions but for the past as well.  Museums in Canada have in general a very poor record in displaying collections let alone disclosing provenance publicly on their web sites and this is despite high profile cases linked to Subhash Kapoor and even prior that to the Pathur nataraja in 1980s.  We hope this good trend catches on and other public museums engage experts into researching provenance or as a start put the available provenance online."

As this Annapurna returns to India her space in the museum collection will be filled by a new piece by Mehra titled 'There is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away (Not Vishnu: New ways of Darsána)'. She spoke with ARCA about the new piece explaining that "the work is a small bag of sand — purchased at a Hollywood prop store (rich in Indiana Jones memorabilia) and artificially aged with coffee, and dye —weighing the equivalent (2.4 lbs.) of the stolen stone goddess of Annapurna that is no longer a part of the collection. The bag sits upon an altar constructed as if for a film set, in front of a ‘Jungle Vine’ painted backdrop. The work is based on a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark — where Indian Jones steals an idol off of a pedestal from an ancient temple. He leaves a bag of sand with what he guesses to be the weight of the stolen idol." The new piece is a reversal of the gap left in the cultural heritage by the antiquarians of the past, the bag of sand now being left at the museums as the statue returns to the place it was stolen. It can also be seen as a commentary on the idolization in the modern world for characters such as Indiana Jones, who treated the cultural heritage of other countries as prized objects to acquire, careless of the value it held to the people it was stolen from. 

By: Lynette Turnblom 

Bibliography 

Annapoorna Virtual Repatriation Ceremony. 2020. “Annapoorna Virtual Repatriation Ceremony.” YouTube. November 20, 2020. https://youtu.be/q769-baqiaA.

Hampton, John G. 2020. “Divya Mehra: From India to Canada and Back to India (There Is Nothing I Can Possess Which You Cannot Take Away).” MacKenzie Art Gallery. 2020. https://mackenzie.art/experience/exhibition/divya-mehra-from-india-to-canada-and-back-to-india-there-is-nothing-i-can-possess-which-you-cannot-take-away/.

“Statue from the University of Regina’s Art Collection Officially Repatriated to India in Virtual Repatriation Ceremony | Communications and Marketing, University of Regina.” 2020. Uregina.Ca. November 19, 2020. https://www.uregina.ca/external/communications/feature-stories/current/2020/11-19.html. 

“Statue from the University of Regina’s Art Collection to Be Returned to India Following Virtual Repatriation Ceremony.” 2020. MacKenzie Art Gallery. November 24, 2020. https://mackenzie.art/statue-from-the-university-of-reginas-art-collection-to-be-returned-to-india-following-virtual-repatriation-ceremony/.

Way back in February 1998 thieves arrived at the Baroli Temples Complex on the outskirts of Rawatbhata taluk, one of the earliest temple complexes in Rajasthan.  Once there, they set to work removing an elegantly carved sculpture of Nataraj, a depiction of the Hindu god Shiva as Lord of the Dance, from an ornamental niche attached to the thousand-year-old beehive-shaped Ghatesvara Mahadeva Temple, the most prominent and the largest of the eight temples located at the sacred site.  

A well-organized group of thieves known for targeting objects from temples or other cultural sites in India, the culprits used a jackhammer and deftly removed the statue from its centuries-old resting place.  It was then brought to Vaman Narayan Ghiya, a middleman, known to purchase stolen or looted objects from a network of intermediaries.  Ghiya had the ability to smuggle artworks out of India through a network of companies in Mumbai, Delhi, and Switzerland. 

The Nataraj in situ at the Ghatesvara Mahadeva Temple

The extent of Ghiya's three decades of operation in the illicit art biz was such that at the time of his arrest five years later, in June 2003, law enforcement officers discovered hundreds of photographs of ancient Indian sculptures, many of which depicted idols recently pried away from temple walls as well as sixty-eight glossy auction catalogues from auction powerhouses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London and New York.

But the villagers near the Baroli Temples Complex were so outraged by the theft that it is believed Ghiya quickly commissioned a replica and ordered his henchmen to leave it near the Rawatbhata Police Station police where it originally was at first mistaken to be the original. Worried that it might be stolen again, the new Nataraj was not returned to the Ghatesvara Mahadeva Temple and was instead stored with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is an Indian government agency attached to the Ministry of Culture responsible for archaeological research.

During interrogation, where Ghiya was asked to flag the pieces he was involved moving, he marked nearly 700.  One, the original Nataraj, had been smuggled to England, sold to an unnamed dealer and then purchased by John"Kas" Kasmin, a British art dealer and collector.

Identified with the dealer in 2005, Kasmin agreed to return the sculpture which was still in his possession and handed it over to the Indian High Commission that same year. Since then, it has sat, in London, waiting to come home, until this week. Inspected by the ASI in 2017 in London it was, at last, confirmed that the London sculpture was indeed the original looted Natarajs and arrangements began to finally send this idol home. 


If you would like to read more about the rape of India's idols, ARCA suggests Peter Watson's  book and the BBC programme “Sotheby’s, The Inside Story”.  It goes into extensive detail explaining the work of the Rajasthan police and the investigation opened by the superintendent of police, Shri Anand Srivastava titled Operation Black Hole. 

Yogini Vrishanana

In a tale that began as a follow up to a funding initiative, I was scheduled to be in the Netherlands this past March to meet with folks at Maastricht University who ARCA was collaborating with on an EU funded Horizon 2020 grant proposal designed to address the critical issues involved the illicit trafficking of antiquities (which, by the way, we were later not awarded).  "The European Fine Arts Fair," or more simply by its art market acronym, TEFAF.  Part of the impetus for meeting in the Netherlands was that I was already in Maastricht, as each year, since 1988, the city has played host to an annual art, antiques, and design fair at the MECC which is organized by The European Fine Art Foundation called

I was at TEFAF to keep an eye open for looted antiquities which might be on sale with fabricated provenances — artworks from the ancient past which have no legitimate pedigree as they have been looted directly from the ground.  Illicit antiquities like these have a propensity for eventually bubbling up into auction house and trade fair sales as their illicit excavation from archaeologically rich sites means that they will not appear in any for-fee stolen art database searches as there is no way to report a previously unknown object as missing.  Once a looted object gains a plausible fabricated provenance, it only takes a few purchases and a publication in one or two glossy exhibition catalogs, to give a looted object a superficial patina of legitimacy.

I was not expecting to find an object stolen from a museum as these types of thefts are routinely registered with police, as well as with art market theft databases.  Searching services, conducted by Art Loss Register, are also incorporated into the vetting of objects for sale at TEFAF in both their New York and Maastricht sales events and are designed to reduce or resolve art-related ownership disputes.

But on Thursday, 15 March 2018 around lunchtime, I pressed the send button on my smartphone application and passed a high resolution photo of a suspicious object I had seen at the stand of one of the international art dealers.  The photo sent was of a Post-Gupta, seated Buddha in the Bhumisparsha Mudra pose, a delicate bronze with his right hand as a pendant over the right knee and with the palm of his left hand facing upward.  The person I sent the photo to was Vijay Kumar, the cofounder of India Pride Project.  

IPP has been responsible for identifying countless Indian treasures stolen and smuggled overseas, some of which have been found in prestigious museums around the globe.  Less than 2 hours later, and with careful comparison with  images obtained through a retired ASI employee, Dr. Sachindra S Biswas, Kumar and I were fairly confident we had a match.  

The following morning, Friday, 16 March 2018 and after multiple cross checks, between the photos of the object I took and those of the ASI, I contacted Martin Finkelnberg, Head of the Art and Antiques Crime Unit of the Netherlands National Police Force, INTERPOL, UNESCO and the Indian authorities and presented everyone with the supporting evidence of our identification.   In our opinion, as well as the opinion of two external experts, we felt confident, to the best of our abilities, that the object for sale at TEFAF in March 2018 was an exact match to one of 14 objects stolen from the Nalanda Archaeological Museum of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Nalanda, Bihar, India on August 22, 1961.

Despite its theft, the stolen Buddha was pictured in Ulrich Von Schroeder's book "Into-Tibetan Bronzes," a book published in Hong Kong in 1981.  By that time the object had already been satisfactorily laundered into the licit market and was  listed as part of a private collection in London.  

Based on the preponderance of evidence we presented, the Dutch police force acted immediately and sent officers to pay a visit to the dealer's representative on site at TEFAF for the last day of the Dutch fair.  The manager of the stand reported to the Dutch police that the firm was holding the object for a consignor who resided outside of the Netherlands.  

Working cooperatively with law enforcement, the dealer agreed to be in touch with the Buddha's current owner as well as New Scotland Yard, London's Metropolitan Police upon their return to London where an investigation could be taken up by the UK authorities.  ARCA and India Pride Project, in turn, passed all the evidence we had obtained on to Detective Constable Sophie Hayes, of New Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Unit. 

Once in London, Constable Hayes began her own necessary due diligence in order to ensure that our impressions were correct.  After reviewing the documentation we had provided to the London police, Hayes contacted France Desmarais of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).  

Desmarais arranged for a neutral external expert opinion on the Buddha currently held in the UK by the antiquities dealer for the consignor.  This evaluation was conducted for evidence of authenticity as well as in comparison to the evidence provided by ARCA and India Pride Project related to the theft in Nalanda, Bihar 57 years ago. 

ICOM's expert found the bronze in question to be authentic, and a match to one of the 14 objects stolen in 1961.

To understand how experts authenticate ancient art of this type it is important to understand that bronzes produced in the later medieval period (circa 12th century) in eastern India were made using the “lost wax” method.  This is a process where a wax model is made which can be used only once, as the wax melts away when the molten bronze is poured into the mould. For this reason, each bronze Buddha made using the lost wax method is unique, and while other Buddhas may have a similar appearances or poses, no two will be exactly alike as each object has to be made from its own individual wax mold. 

Completing this confirmation check took some time, as the number of post-Gupta era experts is limited and authentication is not something experts working in the museum community perform without careful consideration and thoughtful examination.  I'd like to personally thank both the anonymized expert and Ms. Desmarais for their time and expert assistance regarding the origins of this bronze. 

With ICOM's confirmation in hand, the Met's Art and Antiquities Squad worked to convince the current owner of the Buddha, who, along with the dealer had been cooperative throughout the investigation, to voluntarily relinquish the object back to its home country.   Today, it was handed over to Indian High Commissioner to the UK, YK Sinha during a ceremony this morning at the Gandhi Hall, India House, Aldwych in London, timed to coincide with India’s Independence Day.

Speaking with Vijay this morning hee stated "this is a great demonstration of inter governmental and activist groups and also the need for proper documentation. We hope this is just the beginning in finding closure to this case as we are still after the rest of the stolen artifacts. Hope the museums in America are looking at this with interest. "

While I, like Vijay am overjoyed that this stolen Buddha is finally going home, another similar to it, identified in February and stolen during the same theft, still sits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California.  The question remains, if the US-based museum will be as forthcoming as this collector and UK dealer.  Both of whom did the right thing by cooperating during the investigation and eventually returning the stolen object back to India voluntarily.  

By:  Lynda Albertson