Museum Repatriates Smuggled Artifacts to Nepal

News January 13, 2022

(Consulate General of Nepal, New York)
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Nepal Torana
(Consulate General of Nepal, New York)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to a New York Times report, the Rubin Museum of Art will repatriate to Nepal two wooden sculptures that were determined to have been smuggled from religious sites. The first is the upper section of a seventeenth-century wooden torana, or ornamental gateway, from the Yampi Mahavihara temple complex in Patan, which is located in the south-central Kathmandu Valley. The second, a fourteenth-century wooden carving of a female spirit, or apsara, bearing a garland, was part of an ornamental window at the Itum Bahal monastery in Kathmandu. Both objects had been purchased in private sales. “The proactive response and thoughtful collaboration from the Rubin have positively contributed to Nepal’s national efforts to recover the lost artifacts,” commented Bishnu Prasad Gautam, acting Consul General of Nepal. To read about an early Buddhist shrine in Nepal, go to “Buddhism, in the Beginning,” one of ARCHAEOLOGY’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2014.

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