A Monastery Project Backed by the Rubin Museum Is Realized, Drawing Activist Scrutiny

In Kathmandu, a region of Central Nepal located in the nation’s Bagmati Province, a local Buddhist monastery dating back to the 11th century is now publicly displaying previously undocumented artifacts from the region that it has long held. It now serves as a museum, and the first of its kind in the area.

The monastery project, which officially opened July 29, was funded by the Rubin Museum of Art in New York after the repatriation of two artifacts to Nepal. In January 2022, leadership at the Rubin announced that the museum—founded by private collectors in 2004 and focusing on art of the Himalayas—returned two ancient wooden sculptures to Nepal after researchers found that the pieces had been taken illegally from religious sites. Items returned from the Rubin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are on display in the Itumbaha monastery’s collection.

The opening of the museum drew attention from Nepali activists. A group of local repatriation advocates scrutinized the museum’s involvement in the project, viewing it as a means of diverting attention from other repatriation claims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Nepalese religious sites were the subject of looting; recent campaigns led by repatriation advocacy groups have sought to rectify this by bringing restitution claims for items with ties to vulnerable sites against museums in the United States.

In an interview with ARTnews, Rubin Museum executive director Jorrit Britschgi said that the initiative had come out of discussions with researchers on the ground in Nepal after the 2022 repatriation. Britschgi said initial talks centered around how the museum could lend support to the local context in Nepal. He posed questions to the museum’s board overseeing funding of what could come out of the repatriation. “What is important is for us not to assume this is what people need,” Britschgi said.

The museum was able to step in as a financial backer, and took on an “advisory role” in inventorying the monastery’s collection, he added, clarifying that the project was always envisioned as being community-led.

Members of the Itumbaha Conservation Society and the museology program of Lumbini Buddhist University documented the monastery’s collection, which spans 500 years, as part of the project with the idea to actualize a museum oriented to locals that would make the objects viewable year-round. Researchers involved in the project, among them Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, a scholar of Nepalese art and culture, had been eyeing the idea for the last decade.

During the 2022 repatriation claim, Britschgi said that the museum started to engage with conservationists and students “on the ground” to conduct research after the claim was filed, and worked with Nepali government officials overseeing cultural heritage projects to fill in provenance gaps. Talks with conservationists centered around the handling of an artifact collection that was meant to display and document objects with ritual purposes. Britschgi said he believes the documentation process of the monastery’s collection now being completed is “a huge gain” locally.

Challenges to Western concepts of presenting art, Britschghi added, also arose during the inventory of the collection. “We also learned from this project, about the sheer concept of a museum in the context of having a monastery that is an active part of lived culture. Those are interesting tensions and discussions around the needs also.”

Britschgi said the idea was to allocate some of the Rubin’s resources toward local research in a “mutual exchange” between researchers and not conceived to export the Rubin’s footprint internationally. In response to activists claims, the director said the museum is “accelerating efforts by bringing on outside experts,” on current restitution claims. “We are sensitive to the issues raised by those who have objected to the Rubin’s support of the Itumbaha Museum.”

The museum has supported Nepal’s art initiatives in the past. In 2022, the museum funded Nepal’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It was first time the country had exhibited in the Italian exhibition. Tsherin Sherpa, a trustee serving on the Rubin’s board who was involved in the Biennale project, defended the Itumbaha partnership. “This type of collaboration as a result of a restitution is meaningful, and helps the community raise awareness around their site.”

In a statement, Kayastha said the documentation process resulted in “discoveries” and emphasized the project was led in part by students aimed at “advancing” Nepal’s cultural sector. Another conservationist involved in the Itumbaha project, Pragya Ratna Shakya, said it should serve as a “model” for other museums involved in rectifying repatriation issues.

In a statement addressed to Britschgi, the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign called on the museum to disclose details of its investigations into current repatriation claims of objects in its collection. The group was critical of the role of private collecting in trafficking Nepali artifacts and of the project’s optics saying, “it cannot be a way to generate misplaced goodwill nor to divert attention from the responsibility of foreign collectors and museums on the matter of stolen heritage items from Kathmandu Valley.”

The museum said it has handed over research to Manhattan authorities concerning a current claim for a Nepali mask in its collection that is still awaiting repatriation. Provenance research is ongoing, the Rubin’s director told ARTnews, but still has its challenges. He sees approaching local researchers familiar with religious sites that were historically the subject of looting is a potential way forward. “We may not always have access to local knowledge. Not all the work can be done from a desk.”