Last year, the Thai government sent a letter to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco asking for the return of four ancient bronze statues representing Buddhist spiritual figures, including buddhas and bodhisattvas. "We did some preliminary research on these," said Natasha Reichle, associate curator of Southeast Asian art at the museum. "It wasn't too hard to reach the conclusion that they had been looted."
They were snatched some 60 years ago during a major art heist and are now on their way back to Thailand; but not before, they are chronicled by the museum in how they came to be part its collection in the exhibition Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities. This initiative reflects a growing trend of museums confronting uncomfortable realities.
"I hope audiences do not perceive the return of these items as a loss in any sense," Reichle said, adding that the exhibition touches upon very complex issues involving cultural heritage, ownership, and restitution. "And I hope this leads to developing relationships with Southeast Asian countries based on equity and partnership."
These statues were part of a larger collection, taken from the remains of a temple ne in a remote area of northeastern Thailand, sometime in the mid-1960s,” Reichle said.
The looted statues were sold by a London art dealer to museums and private collectors around the world. Four of these statues were given as a major donation to the Asian Art Museum.
Reichle noted that even then, her institution had reservations about the dubious origins. "In the emails, you can see their worries about the legality of this whole thing, but they mostly brushed it off, put it aside, and went ahead anyway. Until about ten years ago, many Western museums didn’t think twice about prettmuchch the matters of provenance regarding looted artworks in their collections, let alone addressed or fixed them.
Museums were largely, 'We are the experts, we have the knowledge, and we will talk about the issues we have studied in various cultures,' said Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.
Rising requests from foreign officials for the return of stolen artifacts, along with major media and government inquiries in the U.S. into some of these cases, have altered public perception of museums and affected the very values held by the museums themselves. Many museums are now reconsidering their traditional role as universal guardians of the world's heritage and culture.
Museums now play a greater role in the wider public perception, according to Stephen Murphy, senior lecturer in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London, whose research is in looted Southeast Asian art. He noted: "People are asking questions such as, 'Why do you possess all this material from various cultures globally? And what is the process through which you acquired it?'"
This is why, according to Murphy, museums are now having more open conversations with the nations and communities from where artifacts were removed—and also with the visitors who come to those museums.
Murphy said, "People really want to know how things came into their collections. I think if museums were open about this, they could help visitors understand better the problems that museums face.
Many museums, including the Asian Art Museum, do not have the financial resources or staff to trace provenance issues fully. Also, it is often a difficult task to decide which government or organization has the right to claim these artifacts.
It takes a long time to find the answers to these questions. Many museums have thousands of objects, only some of which can be seen by the public. The rest may be in storage, waiting for a chance to be used in research.
Also, some museums worry that the countries that ask for these items might not be able to take good care of them.
Museums focus on the preservation and research of cultural heritage, as per Merritt of the American Alliance of Museums.
"We believe it is very important for the public to know that there is a stewardship of these vast collections belonging to the public and that it takes a lot of work to keep them."
One of the institutions, openly within such conflicting influences, is the Asian Art Museum.
An exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., tells the story of the sculptures taken during a British raid on Nigeria's Benin City in the late 1800s. In 2022, the Smithsonian returned 29 artifacts known as "Benin Bronzes" from its collection and borrowed nine from the Nigerian government for this exhibition.
The Return of the 50 Ancient Mesoamerican Artifacts to Mexico and Other Countries A Public Event Hosted by the Museum of Food and Drink in New York City Recently, Public Event in Anticipation Of. “This is truly a celebration of how we are reinterpreting history from the view point of those who created it, rather than focusing solely on those who altered it,” said curatorial director Catherine Piccoli.
American ideas about repatriation have drawn global museum interest. Udomluck Hoontrakul, from Thammasat University’s Thammasat Museum of Anthropology in Thailand, admired how the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco engages its audience in these topics.
"This helps the audiences get a better understanding of the larger picture that goes with the purchase of these items," Hoontrakul said. "It also brings to light the violence and exploitation that goes hand in hand with illegal trafficking in cultural property."
