Image: The bronze statue (Tang Jo-hung/Ashmolean Museum)
The Ashmolean Museum has been given the go-ahead to return a bronze artwork, which was acquired in 1967 before its provenance was identified.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales has authorised the return of an Indian Bronze – currently held by The Ashmolean museum – to India.
The Ashmolean, Britain’s first public museum, has contacted the Indian High Commission in London and is currently awaiting a response on the next steps, it said.
Last March the Council of the University of Oxford supported a claim from the Indian High Commission for the return of the 16th-century bronze sculpture of Saint Tirumankai Alvar.
The museum was first made aware of the item’s provenance in November 2019, when an independent scholar brought new research to its attention.
The object was acquired by the Ashmolean at Sothebys in 1967, but archives of the Institut Français de Pondichery and the Ecole française d’Extrême Orient (IFP-EFEO) appears to show the same bronze in the temple of Shri Soundarrajaperumal Kovil in Tamil Nadu in 1957.
The Ashmolean was informed that the bronze is one of a number of objects in collections in Europe and the United States identified by this researcher through the IFP-EFEO archive.
Although there was no claim against the object, the Museum brought the matter to the attention of the Indian High Commission in December 2019, requesting any further information ,including possible police records, that would help establish the object’s provenance.
The Museum received a formal claim for the bronze in March 2020.
In order to complete ‘due-diligence’ investigations and build a more accurate provenance for the object, a member of Ashmolean staff had planned to visit India in May 2020.
Delayed by the pandemic, the journey took place in July 2022 when the Ashmolean’s Curator of Indian Art met police officers from the Idol Wing and senior officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the French Institute, Shri Nagaswamy Temple (Icon Centre), and Shri Soundararaja Perumal Temple.
Further information on the specifics of the return are expected to be announced by the museum this year.
