Home to Nepal from Australia

In November 2019, I arrived at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, where I had been attending a conference of CIMAM (the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art). I decided to explore the Art Gallery’s Asian section and the exhibition Walking with gods.

While I was not actively searching for any particular objects, one item caught my attention. I stopped in front of it and began reading the accompanying text. It was a 13th-century strut (tundal or tunala) featuring a tree deity (shalabhanjika or yakshi). What stood out for me about the text was its mention of the monument from which the object came. Most museums around the world typically display Nepali objects from the Kathmandu Valley without specifying their origins. I was intrigued that the text said, ‘The strut once formed part of the Sulima Ratnesvara (Ratneshwar) Temple in Nepal’, and was prompted to do my own research.

In Nepal, I began the process of developing my digital archive project, known as the Global Nepali Museum, which aims to showcase Nepali heritage and cultural objects displayed in various museums and institutions worldwide. Seeing and identifying the strut encouraged me to develop the portal on a different scale.

While researching the strut and the renovation project of Ratneshwar Temple, I came across a website, Asianart.com, with a section provided by the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust which included crucial details about struts from the temple. I also reached out to Lost Arts of Nepal, a Facebook page run by an activist, who confirmed that the object at the Art Gallery was from Ratneshwar Temple.

Having gathered information, including photographs taken before and after the removal of the struts, I sent an email in March 2021 to the Art Gallery’s senior curator of Asian art, Melanie Eastburn, with whom I was connected through an Australian curator friend. In the email, I introduced myself and the Global Nepali Museum project, and humbly requested the restitution of the strut by the Art Gallery. I expressed my willingness to cooperate and fulfil any requirements the Art Gallery might have.

This marked the beginning of an ongoing conversation between us regarding the return of the strut, exemplifying how repatriation claims can be handled effectively by museums. Despite representing a non-governmental organisation rather than an official Nepal government authority, I found that communication with the Art Gallery regarding the strut was the smoothest of all the cases I had encountered in my experience with the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, and I strongly believe that such discussions are crucial for any repatriations in the future. Our dialogue helped all the people involved understand the process, the complications, and our respective needs. Although the process took slightly over two years from my initial email, the Nepali Embassy in Canberra and the Australian Embassy in Kathmandu also maintained constant communication to support the return procedure.

In 2022, the Art Gallery officially deaccessioned the strut in preparation for its repatriation to Nepal. In 2023, I was delighted to receive an invitation from the Australian ambassador to Nepal, Felicity Volk, to attend the handover ceremony of the strut in Kathmandu. On 16 May 2023, Australia’s Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts personally handed over the strut to the community priest, in the presence of Department of Archaeology authorities, the Lalitpur city mayor and various Nepal government officials. Instead of simply delivering the strut to the Nepali Embassy in Australia, a government minister accompanied the handover, along with a museum director (the Art Gallery’s Michael Brand) and curator (Melanie Eastburn), adding a special significance for the people of Nepal and Nepal’s repatriation story. Witnessing the strut’s return to its hometown after nearly 50 years away, including over 20 years at the Art Gallery, was an incredibly emotional experience for me. Each time I reflect upon the strut, a profound sense of joy envelops me, knowing that it has finally returned to Nepal, and I am deeply grateful to the Art Gallery for diligently safeguarding and acting as a custodian for the strut throughout its time in the collection.

The Ratneshwar temple and its decorative features have always held immense significance in the daily lives of the locals as it has preserved their faith and beliefs. The local people felt they were the custodians of their courtyard temple because their day never started or ended without worshipping their deity. In the 1970s, when the temple’s struts were being targeted by thieves, a resident took it upon themselves to safeguard one of the struts by keeping it protected in their home for several years. When the temple restoration project began, the resident returned the strut to the restoration team. Subsequently, the team created replicas of all the struts, while the original returned by the local resident was sent to the Patan Museum for exhibition.

The return of a strut by the Art Gallery, which is now also on display in the Patan Museum, has instilled hope among the locals, as they believe that the other struts stolen from the temple will also find their way back home someday. The community now has the opportunity to behold this exquisitely carved object whenever they wish in the museum, which is very near the temple site.

For those unable to visit the Patan Museum and Ratneshwar Temple, they can always view the strut online at the Global Nepali Museum, which preserves all the references and metadata that were initially captured by the Art Gallery, ensuring that the strut’s significance and beauty can be appreciated by a wider audience.

Being a museum professional, my focus lies in the realms of preservation and conservation. Nevertheless, as a citizen of a culturally vibrant country where culture still thrives and is alive, I hold the firm belief that we should allow our gods and goddesses to fulfil their intended purpose. Resituating and placing them back where they belong will allow the deities to live and die with dignity. It is ok for them to undergo natural deterioration and weathering; the next generation will recreate their deities and give a continuity to their living culture.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales recognises the power and responsibility of leadership in the world of culture – in the accountability of our decisions to our artists, to our citizens and to the global arts community. As we grow in our understanding of the past, we are privileged to live in a more connected world, where collaboration is inherent in our work and in our relationships with both our professional colleagues and the many diaspora communities thriving in Australia. These connections inform our research and the understanding of the art of which we have assumed custodianship.

This beautifully carved 13th-century wooden strut was acquired by the Art Gallery in Sydney many years after it originally left Nepal. With the assistance of international colleagues, and through our own research, we have come to have a more complete understanding of its provenance. We now know it is one of 16 similar struts that were integral to the architecture of Patan’s Ratneshwar Temple, and was illegally removed in 1975. This particular strut depicts a yakshi, or tree goddess, with lush foliage above her head. It was through photographs of Ratneshwar Temple taken by the American anthropologist and archaeologist Mary Shepherd Slusser in the 1960s that we came to identify the original home of the architectural element that ended up in Sydney.

I first visited Nepal with my older brother when I was just 15 years old. During this brief visit, I met the architectural conservator John Sanday, who was then leading restoration work on the Hanuman Dhoka in Kathmandu’s Darbar Square. This experience made a huge impression on me. Two years later, when I was 17 years old, I returned to Nepal by myself for almost a month, revisiting the sacred sites of the Kathmandu Valley and trekking from Pokhara up towards Annapurna. These two trips changed my life and ultimately led to me studying the art of South Asia before becoming a curator and then an art museum director. And from that very first trip I gained an understanding of the importance of architectural conservation.

Now, so many years later, the repatriation of this beautiful carving made for the Ratneshwar Temple in the 13th century can be seen as a manifestation of the friendship between the Art Gallery of New South Wales and our Nepali archaeologist and museum colleagues, and a representation of the deep friendship between the peoples of Australia and Nepal.

See de-accessioning for further details about the voluntary return of this sculpture and provenance for information about a comprehensive provenance research project being undertaken by the Art Gallery.