via Channel NewsAsia, 09 September 2022: An op-ed by Museum Studies lecturer Dr Yunci Cai commenting on how looted artefacts end up in the collections of museums, with a note about recent cases at the Asian Civilisations Museum.
In Singapore, reports emerged in August that a 386-year-old religious artefact allegedly stolen from Nepal was in the possession of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) in Singapore. The reports alleged that the gold-copper statue depicting a Hindu deity was originally from the Neel Barahi temple and was stolen in 1999 from the house of a caretaker.
ACM said in response to media queries that the item was acquired in 2015 in accordance with the National Heritage Board’s established procedures on acquisition. It added that the item was not listed in the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of looted art.
This is not the first time the ACM has been embroiled in controversy over allegedly illicitly trafficked artefacts.
In 2015, ACM returned a 11th-century Chola bronze sculpture allegedly stolen from India, to the Indian authorities. ACM had purchased the sculpture – depicting a Hindu goddess – in 2007 for US$650,000 from a defunct New York gallery accused of an extensive antiquities-smuggling operation masterminded by the now disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor.
Source: Commentary: Museums need to be wary they don’t fuel black market for illicit cultural objects
