Art Gallery of SA returns stolen Dancing Siva statue to India

A bronze statue stolen from an Indian temple nearly 40 years ago that ended up in the Art Gallery of South Australia has been returned to its rightful owners.

A bronze sculpture of Dancing Siva from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection has been returned to India after it was found to have been stolen.

A Dancing Siva statue from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection has finally been returned to India, a year after it was found to have been reported stolen from a temple there in 1982.

The 100kg, 16th century bronze was a gift from one of the Art Gallery’s main benefactors, the late Diana Ramsay, in 2001 to mark the 20th anniversary of its fundraising foundation, which provided the balance of the $435,747 purchase price.

The gallery’s Asian art senior curator James Bennett made two visits to India, in 2016 and 2017, to determine the statue’s origins.

Its investigation came after three similar works worth $6 million, purchased by the National Gallery of Australia’s then-director Ron Radford from alleged antiquities trafficker and former New York dealer Subhash Kapoor, were found to be stolen and repatriated to India.

The Art Gallery of SA has returned the bronze Dancing Siva from its collection to India.

Mr Radford was also the Art Gallery of SA’s director when its Dancing Siva was purchased through London art dealers Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch, acting on behalf of an unnamed Greek collector who claimed to have bought it in the 1970s.

At the time, Mr Radford described it as “the only complete early Indian Dancing Siva in an Australian public collection” and “one of the finest sculptures in the Gallery from any culture’’.

However, a photo taken in 1958 and uncovered by Mr Bennett showed the statue — which was not reported missing until 1982 but may have been looted earlier — in a temple at the city of Nellai in Tamil Nadu.

The Art Gallery contacted authorities in Tamil Nadu last year, but only received an official request for the statue’s repatriation from the Indian high commission in February.

This week, Mr Bennett and AGSA registrar Jan Robison accompanied the work back to New Delhi, where it was handed back in a small ceremony held by the Archaeological Society of India.

Art Gallery of SA Asian art curator James Bennett with its past exhibition Beneath the Winds

India’s high commissioner to Australia, Dr A.M. Gondane, thanked the AGSA team for its “extensive efforts” in repatriating the Siva Nataraja, or Dancing Siva, idol.

“This is a very propitious beginning of co-operation between AGSA and the Government of India which will open new vistas in near future,” Dr Gondane said.

The Art Gallery’s new director, Rhana Devenport, said there was no indication of other provenance concerns with art works in its collection, but research was ongoing.

“AGSA’s rigorous, ongoing and transparent research into its collection has revealed the correct provenance of the Siva Nataraja (Dancing Siva) which, as a result, was rightfully and formally returned to India,” Ms Devenport said.

In 2014, the Art Gallery listed 50 works with incomplete provenance — gaps in their ownership history — on its website, of which 24 were Asian antiquities and 26 European works.

Originally published as Art Gallery of SA returns stolen Dancing Siva statue to India