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Making a market for “The Art of Nepal”: Tracing the flow of Nepali cultural property into the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2024

Alisha Sijapati*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Nepal
Erin L. Thompson
Affiliation:
John Jay College, City University of New York
*
Corresponding author: Alisha Sijapati; Email: ethompson@jjay.cuny.edu
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Abstract

A growing number of institutions that hold cultural heritage artifacts are now considering voluntary repatriations in which they choose to return an artifact despite unfilled gaps in their knowledge of its ownership history. But how are institutions to judge whether it is more probable that such gaps conceal theft and illicit export or are innocuous? Attempting to answer this question for Nepal, we examine published and archival records to trace the history of the growth in collecting of Nepali cultural heritage in the United States, with special attention to a 1964 exhibition at New York’s Asia Society Gallery, “The Art of Nepal,” and the activity of the New York dealers Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck. We conclude that the majority of Nepali heritage items in America entered after Nepal prohibited their export.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Cultural Property Society

IntroductionFootnote 1

Nepal prohibited the export of artifacts “of historical, archeological or artistic interest” in 1956.Footnote 2 Despite this, thousands of historical and sacred artifacts were taken from the country’s shrines, monasteries, and homes during a wave of thefts that began in the late 1960s and reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s. These artifacts were smuggled out of the country and entered museums and private collections around the world. Both the existence and mechanisms of this period of looting and smuggling have been discussed by scholars and journalists.Footnote 3 Many factors came together to shape this phenomenon, including the changing status of travel restrictions within Nepal, Western awareness of the country as a site of mountaineering and “hippie trail” counter-culture lifestyle, and the spread of interest in the West in Eastern “spirituality,” culture, and aesthetics. Further examinations of the causes for Western interest in collecting Nepali cultural property. But in this article, we will instead address the limited but still crucial question of timing. Was this the first significant period in which Nepali cultural property entered the art market or merely a period of greater than usual export?

In pursuit of answers, we researched the history of the collecting of historical Nepali cultural artifacts in the United States. As we will demonstrate, only a few such artifacts can be proven to have entered the United States before the 1960s. Then, in 1964, New York’s Asia Society held an exhibition, “The Art of Nepal,” at its Asia House Gallery. We will argue that this exhibition and its catalog, The Art of Nepal (1964), introduced influential collectors and dealers to this heritage – and each other – and established a scholarly framework for interpreting, dating, and authenticating its artifacts. In so doing, it helped fuel a rapid rise in the demand for Nepali artifacts in America.

The question of timing has special legal importance. Some categories of artifacts, like objects from ancient Egypt or Greece, were licitly collected for millennia before the passage of modern laws intended to establish state ownership and curb export. Other types of artifacts became popular among foreign collectors only after their legal protection. Our research leads us to conclude that most Nepali cultural artifacts in the United States belong to the latter category. They probably left Nepal after the country’s 1956 ban on unpermitted exports. Many left after 1970 when the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property began to spur increased scrutiny of accessions to ensure they had not been stolen or smuggled out of their country of origin.Footnote 4

Our specific findings about the subsequent history of the artifacts displayed in “The Art of Nepal” will be of interest to scholars of Nepali heritage. However, since this more specialized information is not the focus of the article, we have confined it to the footnotes. Rather, we hope to provide a case study of the way historians can uncover changes in the history of demand for certain types of cultural property. As an example of the way such research can change our understanding of specific artifacts and collections, we will examine the activity of the New York City-based dealers Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck. Finally, we will conclude by arguing that this type of historical research can play a crucial role in repatriation decisions, especially in the emerging category of “voluntary” or “ethical” repatriations, where possessors of disputed cultural property decide to act based on the probability of whether a gap in an artifact’s ownership history included a licit or an illicit transfer.

“The Art of Nepal” as a snapshot of market activity

Our research into published sources such as museum catalogs found evidence of only a small number of Nepali artifacts in the United States through the mid-twentieth century. This accords with the existing consensus that relatively few Nepali cultural artifacts entered the global art market before the mid-twentieth century, generally after they had been brought to India by pilgrims or other travelers. (We leave aside the category of art made by Nepali artists for patrons in Tibet since these pieces are distinguishable by stylistic characteristics, and are generally considered to belong to the Tibetan cultural tradition rather than Nepal’s own, which entered the modern art market at different historical moments.)

But while public holdings can be researched relatively easily thanks to museums’ provision of information, evidence of Nepali artifacts in private collections and the hands of dealers is more difficult to accumulate. This lack of information about private collections and dealers’ stocks prevented us from being certain that there really were only a few Nepali cultural artifacts in the United States before the mid-twentieth century. Fortunately, we can turn to another potent but often overlooked source of information: the archival records associated with exhibitions. (Auction catalogs are another useful source to illuminate private holdings but our systematic investigation of such catalogs is, so far, only in the beginning stages; we will simply note that our nascent research in this area has so far confirmed our findings based on other sources.)

Exhibition records can provide snapshots of the state of the market for specific categories of artifacts. If these records reveal that the market is thriving, with collectors and dealers already possessing many such artifacts, the probability increases that a particular artifact was acquired from this market rather than as a more direct result of theft or illicit export from its country of origin. If, by contrast, sales are sporadic and the presence of such artifacts is rare, we argue that the likelihood of a licit source for a newly appearing artifact is lower. As we will now argue, based on the archival records for “The Art of Nepal,” the likelihood of undocumented, illicit transfers in the ownership history of Nepali cultural artifacts before their appearance in the United States in the 1960s and afterward is very high.

The origins of “The Art of Nepal”

Understanding the archival records for “The Art of Nepal” requires an introduction to the exhibition’s history. This history began in the spring of 1960 when King Mahendra of Nepal visited both the Asia House Gallery and the home of John D. Rockefeller III during a diplomatic trip to the United States.Footnote 5 Rockefeller had founded the Asia Society in 1956 and remained a major funder for the exhibitions held at its gallery. He and the king discussed the possibility of Nepal lending artifacts for an exhibition there.Footnote 6

Rockefeller was reminded of this idea a year later by the planners of the upcoming New York World’s Fair, who wanted Mahendra to sponsor a Nepali pavilion at the fair.Footnote 7 Since neither Nepal nor the US government proved willing to provide the funds required for a pavilion, the Asia House Gallery instead presented “The Art of Nepal,” which ran during the fair, from May to August 1964.Footnote 8

Planning began in earnest in April 1961, when George Montgomery, director of the gallery, asked Nepal’s representative in the United Nations for permission to send “a representative to Nepal, who might choose twenty to thirty objects of extremely high quality” for the exhibition.Footnote 9 Nearly a year later, Montgomery wrote to Stella Kramrisch, a specialist in the art of India, to invite her to curate the exhibition.Footnote 10 Kramrisch accepted the post.Footnote 11 She received a fee of $1,000 to select artifacts and write the exhibition catalog.Footnote 12

Although the archive does not tell us how Montgomery came to consider Kramrisch for the position of curator, the choice was obvious. Born in 1896, Kramrisch received her PhD from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Vienna in 1919.Footnote 13 She then taught Indian Art in India from 1922 until 1950, when she took a position as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and curator at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art. Kramrisch’s Reference Kramrisch and Glaser1929 encyclopedia article on Nepali art was one of the few attempts at a systematic study of this topic.Footnote 14

“The Art of Nepal” featured the first loans of artwork from Nepal to an American institution.Footnote 15 Unfortunately, the archives do not offer much information about how these particular six works were chosen or about Kramrisch’s 1962 trip to Nepal to select them, other than that she met with King Mahendra, “who was most sympathetic and who promised Miss Kramrisch his support in obtaining these loans.”Footnote 16

These six loans directly from Nepal were not enough to support an entire exhibition. Kramrisch informed Montgomery in July 1962 that she planned to obtain more loans from museums in India and England, along with “museums and private collections in the USA.”Footnote 17 Leaving aside some comparative Chinese and Tibetan artifacts, the American loans for “The Art of Nepal” would comprise 28 artifacts from museums, 14 artifacts from dealers, and 15 artifacts lent by 10 named private collectors. The exhibition also included anonymous loans of Nepali artifacts, but the exhibition’s archival records reveal that these all came from the collection of Kramrisch herself.Footnote 18

The collector Erwin D. Swann, who contributed a single artifact (cat. 35), was a donor to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kramrisch thus probably knew him. But the archives show that it was the staff of the Asia House Gallery who took on what would prove to be the daunting project of finding other Nepali artifacts possessed by American museums, dealers, and collectors. Gordon Bailey Washburn, who inherited the nascent “Art of Nepal” project when he became the Gallery’s director in 1961, together with his deputy director Virginia Field, took on the bulk of the work of tracking down artifacts to present to Kramrisch so she could make her selection.

Washburn, who had been the director of the Albright-Knox Gallery of Buffalo, New York from 1931 to 1942, probably recalled that Heeramaneck had lent several Nepali artifacts to a 1937 exhibition at the Albright-Knox(discussed below). Washburn was on first-name terms with both the Heeramanecks, as is shown by the December 1963 letter in which he first requested a loan of a single artifact (cat. 75) for “The Art of Nepal.”Footnote 19 The Heeramanecks ultimately lent 12 artifacts (9 Nepali and 3 comparatives) and also directed Washburn to another lender, a Cincinnati private collector named John Warrington who was a repeat customer of the Heeramaneck Galleries.Footnote 20

Finding other lenders took far more effort. On August 1, 1963, Washburn sent Kramrisch a letter outlining his procedure for tracking down other Nepali antiquities in the United States. He had obtained “an Index of Nepalese Art in the U.S.A., which is part of a larger piece of investigation prepared for publication by the Asia Society by Barbara Wriston at the Art Institute of Chicago.”Footnote 21 (Unfortunately, the archive does not preserve a copy of this Index and we could not locate it elsewhere.) Secondly, Washburn had “sent four of our American art magazines requests to publish a line asking for information about Nepalese material.” Finally, Washburn was sending a letter “to all the smaller museums in the country in the hopes of turning something up that we wouldn’t otherwise hear about.”

Once Washburn learned that a museum or person possessed Nepali artifacts, he asked them to provide a complete list of what they held, with photographs if they had them.Footnote 22 The archives thus contain a much more comprehensive list of Nepali artifacts in America than does the exhibition’s catalog. Thanks both to Washburn’s efforts to discover potential sources of loans and the preservation of the resulting correspondence in the archives, we can uncover a remarkably rich picture of just what Nepali cultural material was available in the United States in 1964.

The archives contain correspondence with owners offering artifacts that Kramrisch did not want; we will refer to these offers as “rejected.” In other cases, an initial request for a loan was made but then countermanded. The files do not specify the reasons why Kramrisch changed her mind but sometimes they are obvious, as when a higher-quality version of the same subject was obtained from another lender. We have adopted the terminology on the exhibition checklist, which labels these objects as “out.”Footnote 23

Nepali cultural artifacts in American museums before 1964

Although “The Art of Nepal” was not the first special exhibition of cultural artifacts from Nepal, it had only a few predecessors. In 1935, the College Art Association published a catalog of a “Loan Exhibition of Early Indian Sculptures, Paintings and Bronzes,” which included three loans from Heeramaneck: a sixteenth-century Vasudhara Mandala painting, a ninth-century Bodhisattva sculpture, and a fifteenth- to sixteenth-century gilded bronze bull.Footnote 24 Heeramaneck lent the same Bodhisattva and bull to the 1937 exhibition of “Master Bronzes Selected from Museums and Collections in America” at the Albright-Knox .Footnote 25 Heeramaneck then lent two Nepali artifacts to a 1950 exhibition, “The Art of Greater India,” held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA): a tenth- to eleventh-century Avalokiteshvara and the Vasudhara Mandala painting from the 1934 Catalogue. Footnote 26 The 1950 exhibition also included four additional Nepali pieces associated with Heeramaneck. First, the gilded bull reappeared as Warrington’s property.Footnote 27 Warrington lent two more Nepali sculptures he had purchased from Heeramaneck, a sixteenth-century dakini and an eleventh- to twelfth-century Tara.Footnote 28 Finally, the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition also lent a twelfth-century Vasudhara sculpture (42.1) they had purchased from Heeramaneck in 1942.

As the titles of the 1935 and 1950 exhibitions demonstrate, at this time Nepal’s artistic history was often seen as merely a regional variation of the culture of “Greater India.” It was not until 1960 that an exhibition concentrated more fully on Nepal itself. This was “The Art of Nepal and Tibet,” curated by Kramrisch for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. However, this exhibition was small and dominated by Tibetan objects.Footnote 29 Then, in 1963, the University of Oregon’s art museum hosted an exhibition of Nepali art from the collection of Thomas O. Ballinger, a professor who collected the objects while he served in the Peace Corps in Nepal from 1956–58.Footnote 30 However, only 4 of these 61 artifacts are dated to earlier than the eighteenth century, and even the dating of these four was questionable.Footnote 31 Importantly for the Asia Society’s eventual claim that “The Art of Nepal” was the first exhibition of its kind, neither the 1960 nor 1963 exhibitions garnered much attention from either journalists or scholars.

Thanks to the letter Washburn sent to American museum directors in July 1963, asking for their assistance in “preparing the first major exhibition of Nepalese Art ever to have been held in America,” we can confirm the relatively low number of Nepali artifacts in these museums at the time.Footnote 32 Washburn explained he was writing because he thought “there may be a number of important and interesting paintings and sculptures in American collections, both public and private, that have not come to our attention.” Therefore, Washburn asked his correspondents if their museums had any Nepali art or if they were “acquainted with the whereabouts of pieces of special interest.”

Twenty-seven American museums replied that they had no pieces or only “rather meager” ones (as the Art Institute of Chicago wrote). Another twelve American museums lent Nepali artifacts to the “The Art of Nepal.” Most contributed only a single object: Denver Art Museum (cat. 99);Footnote 33 De Young Museum, San Francisco (cat. 65); Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art of Kansas City (cat. 23); Boston Museum of Fine Arts (cat. 94); and the Stanford University Art Gallery (cat. 5). The Brooklyn Museum lent two artifacts (cats. 10 and 34), as did the Cincinnati Art Museum (cats. 19 and 63). The Metropolitan Museum lent two (cats. 62 and 81) and had one out.Footnote 34 The Seattle Art Museum also lent two pieces (18 and 28) and had one out.Footnote 35 The Philadelphia Museum of Art lent one piece (cat. 17) and had three outs.Footnote 36 The Newark Museum lent two (cats. 39 and 48) along with a comparative Chinese piece (cat. 71). The Cleveland Museum made the largest contribution of all the museums, with eight Nepali loans (cats. 6, 25, 32, 45, 46, 53, 77, and 96), one comparison (cat. 91), and one out.Footnote 37 Two other museums contributed only comparative materials: the Detroit Art Institute (cat. 79) and the University of Pennsylvania Museum (cat. 33). A few other museums offered pieces too late in the planning process to be accepted.Footnote 38

Our analysis of the archival sources for “The Art of Nepal” along with other published sources on museum collections indicates that only around 50 historical Nepali cultural artifacts entered American museums before 1964. (This is opposed to the ethnographic collections of Nepali cultural artifacts then present in several American museums, including the Smithsonian’s Anthropology Collection, the Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History. These artifacts were purchased when new or relatively recently made.)

Nepali cultural artifacts in American private collections before 1964

Knowing the number of artifacts of a specific category of cultural property held by museums does not reveal how many are in private hands. In some cases, where demand and supply are both high, private collectors hold many times the number of artifacts as museums. In other cases, for example when the supply is restricted to official channels or when the artifacts offer more scholarly than aesthetic interest, museums might hold more than collectors. Fortunately, Washburn’s efforts mean we do not have to guess for Nepali artifacts, which it appears were of limited interest to private collectors in the United States before 1964.

Washburn’s 1963 letter to museums asked if they could direct him to any private collectors of Nepali artifacts. Some responses specified that their museum staff knew of no collectors.Footnote 39 Other replies directed Washburn to relevant collectors; this correspondence seems to have been how he learned of the collections of Carol Plumer and Donal Hord who were mentioned, respectively, in responses from the University of Michigan’s art museum and the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego.Footnote 40 The Denver Art Museum also referred Washburn to the Denver dealer Medill Sarkisian, to whom Washburn wrote asking if he had anything to loan, but there is no evidence of a reply.Footnote 41

Ultimately, 11 private collectors lent Nepali objects to “The Art of Nepal.” Four of them lent only a single artifact: George Bickford (cat. 4Footnote 42 ), LeRoy Davidson (cat. 73Footnote 43 ), Alfonso Ossorio (cat. 29Footnote 44 ), and Erwin Swann (cat. 35Footnote 45 ). The Philadelphia collector Richard C. Bull lent a comparative Chinese sculpture (cat. 70) and had one Nepali out.Footnote 46 Hord, a San Diego sculptor who collected Asian art, lent one object (cat. 56Footnote 47 ) and had one rejected.Footnote 48 Plumer lent one piece (59Footnote 49 ) and had one rejected.Footnote 50

Prince Aschwin of Lippe-Biesterfeld (identified as Aschwin Lippe in the catalog), a curator of Chinese painting and Indian sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, lent two pieces (cats. 27Footnote 51 and 64Footnote 52 ) from his private collection and had three rejected.Footnote 53 John Warrington lent two (cats. 44 and 54Footnote 54 ) with one outFootnote 55 and one rejected.Footnote 56 Samuel Eilenberg lent four artifacts (cats. 22,Footnote 57 57,Footnote 58 58,Footnote 59 107Footnote 60 ) and had another three rejected.Footnote 61

Kramrisch herself lent 20 artifacts to the exhibition, of which 17 were Nepali (cats. 2, 3, 16, 31, 43, 55, 67, 68, 74, 84, 85, 88, 89, 100, 102, 105, and 106) and three were comparative pieces (cats. 83, 86, and 87), along with five outs,Footnote 62 at least one piece that was rejected (on whose authority is unclear),Footnote 63 and a painting which seems to have hung in the exhibition, although it was offered too late to be in the catalog.Footnote 64 Kramrisch wished to include so much of her own collection in the exhibition that an exasperated Washburn wrote that he was trying to get her “to cut her own loans in order to reduce the material a little. Asia House Gallery isn’t very big!”Footnote 65

A further five private collectors had all their loan offers rejected, including a bronze of an undescribed subject belonging to Cedric Marks of New York,Footnote 66 an unspecified number of artifacts offered by Professor Jane Mahler of Barnard College in New York,Footnote 67 and a fragment from the private collection of the Metropolitan Museum curator James Biddle.Footnote 68 None of the six artifacts offered from Ballinger’s collection, presumably among those displayed in the 1960 University of Oregon exhibition, were accepted.Footnote 69 Kramrisch even turned down a painting offered by the Rockefellers themselves, although on the reasonable grounds that it was a modern copy of an older type.Footnote 70 And while a letter of Kramrisch’s mentions that she is eager to see “the figure… Mr. Rockefeller has in his office,” this artwork does not again appear in the archive.Footnote 71

Nepali cultural artifacts held by American dealers before 1964

A 1934 Catalogue of the Heeramaneck Collection of Early Indian Sculptures, Paintings, Bronzes, and Textiles includes only two Nepali artifacts: a sixteenth-century Vasudhara Mandala painting and a twelfth-century copper Vasudhara.Footnote 72 This catalog, along with Heeramaneck’s loans to exhibitions discussed above, reveals he possessed at least seven Nepali artifacts before “The Art of Nepal,” including two manuscripts, which he sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1938 and 1955.Footnote 73

The Heeramanecks were the largest lenders to “The Art of Nepal” besides Kramrisch herself. They lent 12 artifacts that were included in the exhibition, of which nine were Nepali (cats. 7,Footnote 74 8,Footnote 75 13,Footnote 76 15,Footnote 77 41,Footnote 78 42,Footnote 79 52,Footnote 80 75,Footnote 81 92Footnote 82 ), while the others were comparative East Indian or Tibetan artifacts (cats. 76, 78, and 104). They also offered at least four out artifacts.Footnote 83

Heeramaneck was “one of the primary suppliers of Asian art” to both museums and private collectors in America from the opening of his New York gallery in 1928 until his death in 1971.Footnote 84 But there is little sign that Nepali artifacts were of particular interest to either Heeramaneck or his clients for the first 30 or so years of his activity. Instead, we see evidence of only a small number of Nepali objects passing through his hands in this period.

The available evidence suggests that other American dealers also had few Nepali artifacts before 1964. Three other dealers offered loans to “The Art of Nepal.” William Wolff lent the least, with only one piece (cat. 51Footnote 85 ). J.J. Klejman lent three pieces (cats. 24,Footnote 86 37,Footnote 87 and 66Footnote 88 ) and had one (or possibly more) rejected.Footnote 89 Klejman also lent another large sculpture that was noted in a review of the exhibition but was not included in the catalog.Footnote 90 Another New York dealer, Mathias Komor, had his offer of a “large severed head of the late 17th Century”Footnote 91 and a “little Hanuman” rejected.Footnote 92

The state of the market for art from Nepal in the United States before “The Art of Nepal”

In the end, Washburn and Field’s comprehensive efforts revealed only a little more than 60 Nepali artifacts outside museums in America. These were held by 15 private collectors and only three dealers besides Alice and Nasli Heeramaneck. Given our broader understanding of trends in the collecting history of Nepali cultural objects, it is not especially surprising to see confirmation that, in 1964, with Nepal having been open to Western visitors for less than 15 years, and interest in the country’s art, culture, and religion still far from widespread, only a very few Americans were interested in collecting Nepali artifacts.

Indeed, even the most interested of these collectors had relatively small collections. For example, Eilenberg, who contributed the most of any private collector besides Kramrisch to “The Art of Nepal,” seems to have had only seven Nepali artifacts in 1964. Eilenberg, a mathematics professor at Columbia University, was an avid collector of Indian art who purchased examples of art from surrounding cultures to analyze his Indian pieces.Footnote 93 He began collecting art in 1953, during a stay at a research institute in Bombay and made several trips back, as well as buying from New York dealers including Heeramaneck.

Comparing Kramrisch’s loans to “The Art of Nepal” and her Reference Kramrisch1960 Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition with a 1965 insurance inventory taken of her collections, we estimate that in 1965 Kramrisch possessed around 35 Nepali artifacts.Footnote 94 By contrast, she owned over 350 pieces of art from India.Footnote 95 It remains unclear when and where Kramrisch obtained her Nepali pieces but, as her first trip to Nepal was in 1962, it seems reasonable to guess that most of her collection was purchased then or during the years she spent living in India.Footnote 96

All available evidence supports the interpretation that the American collectors and dealers who possessed Nepali artifacts before 1964 had gathered them incidentally to their main focus, which seems usually to have been the arts of India.

The state of the market for art from Nepal in the United States after “The Art of Nepal”

The Art of Nepal was a scholarly success. It is still generally understood as the first comprehensive (if brief) history of the sculpture and painting of Nepal.Footnote 97 Fittingly for an introduction of the topic to Western audiences, the catalog contains a glossary for unfamiliar religious and mythological terms, descriptions of manufacturing techniques and iconography, and even a historical and political overview from Nepal from its origins to the present. Scholarly reviews of The Art of Nepal praised its “extremely useful… iconographical and stylistic analyses of the individual objects” and agreed that its greatest importance was in the chronology it laid out for Nepali sculpture.Footnote 98 Already in 1965, Douglas Barrett published an article dating a new British Museum acquisition from Nepal using Kramrisch’s chronology.Footnote 99

The exhibition itself received favorable reviews, which repeatedly claimed it was the first to show Nepal’s cultural heritage to Americans. For example, the New York Times Magazine (May 3, 1964) called the exhibition the “first comprehensive collection ever assembled” of the art of Nepal, which, after being “[c]ut off for centuries by the Himalayas,” was now “at last unveiling its legendary art treasures.” Similarly, the New York World Telegram & Sun (May 24, 1964) described the exhibition as “the world’s first comprehensive show” of Nepal’s “little known” artistic heritage, since “[t]he King of Nepal, under whose patronage the exhibit is presented, has permitted the various treasures to leave their native country for the first time.”

The media’s emphasis on the novelty of the exhibition sometimes went to incredible extremes. One reviewer claimed that Nepalis “were truly grateful” for Kramrisch’s 1962 visit to the country because they were so cut off from the rest of the world that “until she came, they had no idea what was great art and what was not.”Footnote 100 “The Art of Nepal” is thus given credit for revealing Nepali art not only to foreigners but to Nepalis themselves.

Asia House Gallery staff counted 15,243 visitors to “The Art of Nepal.”Footnote 101 Washburn’s letters reveal he was disappointed in this turnout, and a column in the New York Times published during the show’s last month called it “the most neglected exhibition in town,” at least compared to the crowds coming to the World’s Fair to see Michelangelo’s Pieta in the Vatican Pavilion.Footnote 102 The columnist bemoaned the difficulties of attracting audiences to unfamiliar artworks like the sculpture of Avalokiteshvara, lent from Nepal. Noting that the Avalokiteshvara is “a stumper both linguistically and philosophically,” the columnist facetiously recommended that the Asia House change its strategy and advertise the exhibition with the slogan “see Hindu gods in frenzied sexual embraces!”

But the long-term impact of “The Art of Nepal” would far outweigh its visitor count. The dealers who lent to the exhibition saw nearly immediate returns when they sold some of their loans shortly after the exhibition closed. Indeed, some of the reviews for “The Art of Nepal” had effectively served as advertisements, such as when the Art Times described the “inscrutable smile” and “slim cross-legged but graceful pose” of a “marvelous piece … loaned by Mr. J.J. Klejman of New York City” (May/June 1964). Heeramaneck sold a fourteenth- to fifteenth-century gilt bronze Krishna (cat. 41) to a private collector in 1965.Footnote 103 In the same year, Wolff sold his loan, a sixteenth-century gilt bronze Lokeshvara, to the Brooklyn-based art collectors Robert and Bernice Dickes.Footnote 104

The dealers were not the only ones to sell their loans. Kramrisch also sold at least four objects she had lent to “The Art of Nepal” (cat. 55,Footnote 105 74,Footnote 106 87,Footnote 107 102Footnote 108 ). We think it probable that she also sold another six of her loans (cat. 3, 31, 67, 68, 100, and 105–6) whose present location we could not identify.Footnote 109

The sales description for one of these artifacts (cat. 87) contains the unnamed Pennsylvanian collectors’ memory of purchasing the piece from Kramrisch, whom they met in 1970 through a mutual friend, the Philadelphia-based sculptor Bernard Brenner:

We … met Stella at Bernie’s. Our conversation led to the art of the Himalayas. Stella said she had in mind a specific mandala that she thought would especially please us: Nairatmya. We met her again – this time with the Nairatmya mandala in hand and we were fascinated – eventually purchasing it from her. Our friendship grew … [and] she said we should visit her and see her collection. Along with the Brenners, we visited Stella at her home for dinner. Her collection of woodcuts, large and small sculpture[s], tapestries and oils was indeed worldwide and timeless. We became so absorbed in conversation she realized that she’d forgotten to turn the oven on for the dinner rolls! Stella was having exhibits at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Art Museum. At the latter (in 1978), she requested to show the Nairatmya mandala as part of the Himalayan Art Exhibition.Footnote 110 We complied of course. At this exhibit I purchased a tiny Ganesha sculpture.Footnote 111

The Art of Nepal has remained a touchstone for auctions. For example, when the sculpture Wolff sold to the Dickes was auctioned at Bonhams New York in 2015, the lot description mentioned that this “graceful sculpture was first published in 1964 by Stella Kramrisch in her groundbreaking exhibition catalogue, The Art of Nepal.” The catalog has also been regularly cited in auction listings as a comparative for artifacts.Footnote 112

“The Art of Nepal” came at a time when many coinciding cultural and political factors were causing a growth in American awareness of and appreciation for Nepali cultural property. Only in a few cases can we see that the exhibition itself was the key causal factor in the formation of a new collection. But those cases are notable. For example, Jack Zimmerman visited the exhibition, “fell in love,” and “instantly formed an intense desire to possess some examples of the elegantly cast gods and goddesses for which the artists of Nepal are justly famed.”Footnote 113 Before this eventful visit, Zimmerman had not collected art of any type but he soon persuaded his wife Muriel to join him in launching what would become a large collection of Nepali early paintings and metal sculptures.Footnote 114 Additionally, Christian Humann seems to have only begun adding Nepali objects to his “Pan-Asian Collection” in the late 1960s or the 1970s.Footnote 115 Norton Simon and John and Berthe Ford also became major collectors of Nepali artifacts, beginning in the 1970s.Footnote 116

Some existing collectors associated with “The Art of Nepal” also began to turn more of their attention to Nepal after the exhibition, including John D. Rockefeller III. Rockefeller had begun collecting Asian art in 1951, but for nearly a decade he generally followed his father’s taste for collecting porcelains from China, Japan, and Korea.Footnote 117 Rockefeller began to collect more seriously and on a larger scale in 1963, when he asked Sherman Lee to advise him on his collection.Footnote 118 We could find no reason to believe that Rockefeller owned any Nepali artifacts other than the single painting and sculpture he offered to “The Art of Nepal” until after the exhibition, when he began to purchase the spectacular Nepali sculptures he eventually donated to the Asia Society. Notably, he acquired these from three of the lending dealers. Klejman sold him a thirteenth-century gilt copper seated bodhisattva in 1966 (Asia Society 1979.49) and an eighth- to ninth-century gilt copper Avalokiteshvara in 1968 (1992.3). Wolff sold him a thirteenth- to fourteenth-century bronze Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in 1967 (1979.51) and a tenth- to eleventh-century copper Uma-Maheshvara in 1969 (1979.48). And Rockefeller purchased a tenth-century stone Uma-Maheshvara (1992.2) and a sixteenth- to seventeenth-century gilt copper Avalokiteshvara (1979.50) from the Heeramaneck Galleries in 1969, as well as a tenth- to eleventh-century gilt copper Avalokiteshvara in an unrecorded year (1979.47).

Eilenberg also appears to have dramatically increased his purchases of Nepali art. By 1986, he possessed around 100 bronze sculptures from Nepal.Footnote 119 In 1987, he donated 26 Nepali antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum, including two of his four loans to “The Art of Nepal” (cats. 57 and 58) and at least two of the three artifacts Kramrisch had rejected.

Another way of measuring the upswing in the acquisition of Nepali art in the United States in the later 1960s and early 1970s is by comparing the contents and donor list of “The Art of Nepal” with a subsequent Asia House Gallery exhibition, “Nepal: Where the Gods are Young,” curated by Pratapaditya Pal. Pal wrote in his catalog for this 1975 exhibition that “Nepal and its culture were hardly known in the West” at the time of “The Art of Nepal.” Yet only a decade later, when he began to organize his exhibition, Pal “was amazed to find how wide the selection was, even when I limited myself to American collections.” Pal attributed this change to “The Art of Nepal,” which “inspired so many new private collectors of Nepali art.”Footnote 120 In a 1977 oral history interview, Washburn made a similar comparison between the two exhibitions, pointing out that between them “people had begun to collect. Museums had begun to collect.”Footnote 121

Pal’s exhibition featured 97 works of Nepali art. All were borrowed from American collections, and not a single one had appeared in “The Art of Nepal.”Footnote 122 All the new collectors discussed above lent to Pal’s Reference Pal1975 exhibition, as did Douglas J. Bennet, Jr., Edwin Binney III, Mrs. George H. Bunting, Stephen T. Eckert, Ben Heller, Eric D. Morse, Frank W. Neustatter, Dorothy Payer, James D. Thornton, Claus Virch, Paul F. Walter, and the American scholar Mary Slusser (who was the source of most of the anonymous loans in the exhibition).Footnote 123 In 1963, the LACMA’s curator of Oriental Art replied to Washburn that “I regret to say we have no examples of Nepalese Art”; Pal could now take advantage of the LACMA’s Himalayan collections, acquired from the Heeramanecks beginning in 1966.Footnote 124

Other museums had, as Washburn noted, also “begun to collect.” A systematic examination of the patterns, sources, and motivations for these acquisitions will be crucial for understanding the history of the presence of Nepali cultural heritage in the United States, and we hope other researchers will undertake it.

After “The Art of Nepal,” the few existing dealers who had previously sold Nepali artifacts increased their activity. New dealers also entered the field to serve new collectors. One was Doris Wiener, a New Yorker now notorious for dealing in smuggled South Asian heritage. Although Wiener was invited to “The Art of Nepal” preview, she does not seem to have had anything to offer to the exhibition.Footnote 125 Indeed, Washburn later recalled that Wiener “scarcely knew anything” about Nepali art at the time.Footnote 126 But she rapidly educated herself and made major sales, including selling at least two sculptures that are now in the Metropolitan Museum.Footnote 127 Wiener seems to have connected herself with Kramrisch since Slusser wrote a note on a clipping of an advertisement for Wiener’s “Ancient and Primitive Art” Gallery, recording that Wiener and Kramrisch were together in Kathmandu, probably in 1967.Footnote 128

Pal himself noted the shift in the market. In a 1969 letter to Slusser, Pal reported on a recent trip, when it seemed to him “that there are more exciting and early Nepali bronzes in New York than anywhere else in the world.”Footnote 129

Understanding the Heeramaneck Collection

We hope we have made a convincing case that most Nepali cultural artifacts now in the United States entered after 1964. To demonstrate the importance of this conclusion for understanding the probable route to market of any individual artifact, we will now analyze the Heeramanecks’ dealings in Nepali cultural property.

Nasli Heeramaneck was born in 1902 in Bombay to a Parsi family of textile mill owners and gem dealers.Footnote 130 His father opened a gallery selling Chinese porcelain in New Delhi. After managing this gallery, then opening one of his own in Paris to sell Indian art, Heeramaneck came to New York in December 1927 with, he claimed, “$75 in his pocket and a trunkful of treasures.”Footnote 131 His wife, Alice Heeramaneck, an American painter and photographer, soon became his partner in collecting and dealing in the New York gallery he opened in April 1928.Footnote 132

Between 1966 and 1980, either together or by Alice alone after Nasli’s death in 1971, the Heeramanecks sold or donated thousands of Indian and Himalayan artworks to the LACMA, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Seattle Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and many private collectors.Footnote 133 Although nearly all these transfers occurred after 1970, the Heeramanecks rarely provided any information that might help museums determine when these artifacts left their countries and whether they did so licitly. The histories of these artifacts remain blank between the likely period of their manufacture, as diagnosed by connoisseurship or read from inscriptions, and the date on which the Heeramanecks sold them.

The retired LACMA curator Pratapaditya Pal proposed one theory for what occurred during these gaps in his 2019 essay, “Nasli Heeramaneck: The Consummate Collector and Connoisseur,” which implies that the Heeramanecks’ artifacts left their countries of origin before 1970. Pal was first introduced to the Heeramanecks in the summer of 1964 when he came to New York to see “The Art of Nepal.”Footnote 134 For Pal, the Heeramanecks’ Upper East Side townhouse was “virtually a museum, with every nook and cranny, every chest of drawers and cupboard, as well as the attic and basement filled with art objects from almost every country of continental Asia.”Footnote 135 Although he spent several days there, Pal recalled that he could only “only scratch the surface”Footnote 136 of the collection “squirreled away”Footnote 137 in the Heeramanecks’ house on this first visit.

A few years later, in 1966, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts displayed a collection of 283 Indian, Nepali, and Tibetan artifacts lent by the Heeramanecks.Footnote 138 The museum purchased 93 of these, while the LACMA purchased the others as well as 93 additional pieces that Heeramaneck supplied “to replace those that stayed” in Boston.Footnote 139 In connection with this purchase, the LACMA hired Pal as a curator for its new department of Indian art.Footnote 140

Nasli Heeramaneck sold what Pal describes as “a second comprehensive collection of Indian and Himalayan art” to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts shortly before his death.Footnote 141 In 1973, Alice Heeramaneck sold a collection of Islamic art to the LACMA.Footnote 142 Three years later, she sold the LACMA a collection of a thousand pieces of “ancient art from Iran, the Caucasus, et cetera,” at the same time donating another 600 items “in Nasli’s memory.”Footnote 143

Yet, Pal claimed that five major sales in a single decade “did not exhaust the Heeramaneck treasure chest.” In the later 1970s, Pal:

… got another call from Alice about yet another collection – this time of Himalayan and Indian art – that she had to dispose of as she needed money. So on my next trip to New York I visited her and was astonished by the size and quality of what I thought would be the “remainder.” I could hardly believe that all these objects, including sizable Indian stone sculptures, were tucked away in closets in that narrow four-story townhouse.Footnote 144

Apart from Indian art, during this visit Pal saw “Himalayan artworks galore, including caches of early illuminated Buddhist manuscripts, bronzes, and cloth paintings from both Nepal and Tibet.”Footnote 145 Pal helped arrange for the sale of this collection to a LACMA donor. Then, in 1979, Pal asked Alice Heeramaneck if she had any more artifacts left for the National Gallery of Canada. Pal “was not sanguine,” but “lo and behold, she asked me to come to New York and, abracadabra, produced yet another substantial collection of the arts of India and the Himalayas.”Footnote 146

Where did these artifacts come from, and when? Pal claimed that Heeramaneck made his final trip to India in 1964.Footnote 147 And, while Pal admitted that Alice herself had purchased “some” of the artifacts she sold after Nasli’s death “mostly from local sources,” this was the exception since Pal argued that “the majority had been hoarded away by Nasli.”Footnote 148 Pal insinuated that Alice was no longer capable of acquiring art by 1964, since she “already suffered from partial paralysis, rarely ventured outside, was high-strung, and opinionated about art, and had been in that condition for some time.”Footnote 149 Pal painted a picture of Nasli and an “irritable” Alice at odds, with their relationship marked by “constant bickering.”Footnote 150 Since Alice thought Nasli’s purchases were “profligate,”Footnote 151 Pal insisted that “so afraid was Nasli of annoying her that he would stealthily show me objects he had acquired unbeknownst to her and would make me promise not to tell her what he was showing.”Footnote 152

In Pal’s telling, Alice found most of the artifacts she sold or donated after Nasli’s death in their home’s closets, basement, and attic. Trapped in a house of treasures, Alice was capable of nothing more than slowly unearthing the antiquities hoarded away by her dead husband. If this understanding of the timing of the Heeramanecks’ artifacts is correct, it would mean that most, if not all, left their countries of origin before 1970. Thus, these artifacts would not give rise to the increased scrutiny that a post-1970 accession would trigger.

However, this interpretation of the Heeramanecks’ activity is contradicted by the available evidence. The Heeramanecks’ loans of a small number of Nepali artifacts to multiple exhibitions from 1934 to “The Art of Nepal” show they were major players in the market for such artifacts in the United States – but also that this market was quite limited. The fact that the same artifacts reappeared as loans to exhibitions held years apart indicates their limited success in selling the few Nepali pieces they had accumulated. Since dealers are generally eager to increase the value of their objects by lending them to exhibitions, which marks the pieces as authentic and of high quality, it would simply make no sense for the Heeramanecks to offer only the same handful of artifacts as loans if their townhouse was indeed filled with many others.

It is true that Nasli Heeramaneck is remembered for making major purchases of categories of artifacts that were not yet in demand by collectors. For example, he purchased the Riccardi collection of Tibetan paintings when it could not find a buyer, as well as substantial numbers of Luristan bronzes when they first appeared on the market.Footnote 153 However, in these cases, Heeramaneck worked hard to educate collectors and spur demand so that he could profit from his investment. There is no evidence that the Heeramaneck devoted any such effort to marketing Nepali artifacts before 1964.

Since the Heeramaneck Galleries was founded to deal in the active and profitable field of Indian art, we find it reasonable to conclude that before 1964 they probably acquired a few pieces of Nepali art incidentally while purchasing in or from India. But we found no evidence that Nepali cultural heritage was a focus of their purchases or sales until they saw an opportunity to meet growing demand following “The Art of Nepal.” They were canny dealers who would not invest their funds in stockpiling artifacts they did not intend to sell. Instead, they acquired new stocks when they sensed new opportunities.

Nor does the evidence support Pal’s picture of Alice Heeramaneck as someone unlikely to acquire artifacts on her own. In his 1977 oral history interview, Washburn described her as a true partner in the Heeramaneck Galleries, whose “knowledge was immense” and who bought artifacts for the business even when Nasli was not present.Footnote 154 Complimenting this picture of an active, expert, and independent Alice, our preliminary researches revealed Alice transacting a Nepali artifact after Nasli’s death when she bought an eleventh- to twelfth-century Bodhisattva Padmapani Lokeshvara from Wiener in 1972 and then sold it to Humann in 1973.Footnote 155

We conclude that the most likely explanation for the Heeramanecks’ behavior is that until 1964 they possessed only the small number of Nepali artifacts that appear on various published and archival records. This means that the requirement to scrutinize artifacts acquired from the Heeramanecks after 1970 still stands.

Conclusion: Voluntary repatriations and “Small Leaps of Faith”

In 2021, a sacred sculpture stolen from a shrine in Patan, Nepal in 1984 was reinstalled after its repatriation by the Dallas Museum of Art.Footnote 156 A number of previous reclaimed artifacts had been kept in the National Museum but this was the first such return of a smuggled artifact to worship in Nepal. Activists working on the case formed the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign to locate other missing artifacts and help the Department of Archeology negotiate their return.Footnote 157 More than 100 artifacts have returned so far from a range of sources, including voluntary relinquishments from private collectors and museums as well as seizures by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.Footnote 158

Tracing the routes this lost heritage took is an important complement to Nepal’s eagerness to reclaim and recontextualize it. During his 1977 oral history interview about his time as the gallery’s director, Washburn contrasted his difficulty in finding enough Nepali artifacts to fill “The Art of Nepal” with the subsequent explosion in the number of Nepali artifacts in American museums and private collections. He found this contrast so striking that he mused “I wonder today whether America doesn’t own more Nepalese art than Nepal.”Footnote 159 Washburn was, of course, exaggerating. But it seems that his broader point about the timing of the influx of Nepali cultural property to America is correct.

We hope this article has helped to demonstrate that, unless they have documented pre-1964 ownership history, historic Nepali cultural artifacts now in the United States probably entered after 1964. We also argue that if such an artifact now in America has no ownership history before 1970, there is little reason to think that it left Nepal before 1970. Thus, these artifacts should be scrutinized by current holders who wish to meet the ethical and legal standards represented by the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

What if, despite the best efforts of researchers, the ownership history of these artifacts remains impossible to reconstruct fully? In this case, we argue that our findings about the probable illicit transfers of art from Nepal should prompt voluntary repatriations. We define a voluntary repatriation as one where the current owner of an artifact returns it to a source country or community despite there being no legal obligation to do so (or in circumstances where there is no indication that relevant authorities would compel this surrender). Although both the definition and advisability of voluntary repatriations are far from universally accepted, the idea seems to be moving toward the mainstream of the museum world, at least as an option worthy of consideration within larger discussions of deaccessioning and the fiduciary and ethical responsibilities of museums.Footnote 160

Victoria Reed, the head of provenance research for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, recently argued that because museums are “public, educational institutions,” it is reasonable to expect them “to go beyond the letter of the law” when repatriating cultural heritage artifacts.Footnote 161 Reed points out that even after accumulating “a solid foundation of research” on which to base such a decision, gaps in the ownership history of the artifact may remain since “thieves rarely leave a paper trail” or other definite evidence of their activities. Instead of waiting to find “a ‘smoking gun’ showing precisely when and how a work of art was taken in order to access the [repatriation] claim fairly,” Reed calls for museums to make “small leaps of faith” if the probability of a theft under the circumstances revealed by their research is high, even if it cannot be definitely proven.Footnote 162

Reed is aware of the difficulties of executing such an approach. For one, she points out that while the law concerning stolen property is relatively fixed, ethical considerations on when a collected artifact should be considered stolen are “constantly evolving.”Footnote 163 For example, should the descendants of a Jewish collector who sold artwork to raise money to pay the exit visa fees demanded by the Nazi regime be able to reclaim these artworks, or were these sales voluntary? Purchases made by colonial authorities are another currently contested issue, with similar difficulties drawing a line between voluntary sales and unfair transactions where communities received pittances for artifacts they did not want to lose from buyers they could not afford to refuse.

But there are situations in which Reed’s “small leaps of faith” should be used to bridge less complex gaps in provenance history. We argue that the voluntary repatriation for a cultural artifact with gaps in its ownership history should take place when 1) there is little to no probability that these gaps can be filled by further research and 2) it is more probable than not that the unknown transfers were illicit. In the case of Nepali cultural artifacts, we believe that all available evidence points to the probability of illicit transfers in the ownership history of items appearing on the American market after 1964. In the absence of evidence of legal transfer of such objects, we believe their repatriation to Nepal is justified. One place to start such repatriation considerations would be with the artifacts that passed through the hands of the Heeramanecks.

Footnotes

1 We gratefully acknowledge the archivists, curators, and other staffers who steward the collections we found so important for this project: The Rockefeller Archive Center, the archives of the Smithsonian National Asian Art Museum, and the National Anthropological Archives. We have received information about individual artworks discussed in this article from too many people to acknowledge but wish to offer special thanks to Robin Taylor for helping to find comparative images to identify one especially elusive artifact, as well as Sonya Rhie Mace and Joanna Gohmann for looking into collections files to clarify questions about ownership histories. Gohmann and Christine Howald organized a 2023 symposium, “Provenance and Asian Art,” sponsored by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation’s Asian Art Museum & Central Archive. We first presented this material at this symposium, and the comments generously offered by many attendees contributed immensely to the project. Finally, our reviewers for the article provided invaluable suggestions, ranging from specific pieces of information to prompts to restructure the article as a whole.

2 Section 2(a) of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act covers “any temple, building, statue, image… [and] objects made of stone, metal … of historical, archeological or artistic interest,” while Section 13(1) states that such objects “shall not be exported outside from the Kingdom of Nepal or transferred from one place to another inside the Kingdom of Nepal.” (Section 13(1) Ancient Monuments Protection Act (1956), available at https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/nepal_act2013_1994_engl_orof.pdf.

3 For example, Robert E. Dallos, “Top New York Dealer of Asian Arts Closes Doors,” Los Angeles Times, (December 25, 1990); Elyssa Cherney and Steve Mills, “Nepal Wants a Sacred Necklace Returned. But a Major Museum Still Keeps It on Display,” ProPublica (March 20, 2023) and Karen K. Ho, “Manhattan DA Repatriates Four Antiquities to Nepal,” ARTNews (December 6, 2023). For an overview of cultural heritage loss from Nepal, see Smith and Thompson Reference Smith and Thompson2023.

4 Nepal ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention in 1976. For more on the relevance of this date, see Gerstenblith Reference Gerstenblith2013.

5 The king’s visit to the Asia House Gallery is mentioned in a March 6, 1961 letter from Rockefeller to Marian Willard Johnson: Rockefeller Archive Center, Asia Society Exhibition Files, “The Art of Nepal,” FA 258 [hereinafter “Rockefeller Exhibition Files”], Box 14, Folder 143. This letter also shows that the Asia House Gallery had been contemplating an exhibition of art from Afghanistan, but “in view of the complications which have arisen in connection with the Afghan situation,” Rockefeller recommended taking up the idea of a Nepal exhibition instead. The visit to Rockefeller’s home is mentioned in a March 27, 1963 letter from Rockefeller to the king: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 146. In this letter, Rockefeller writes that he and his wife remember “with such pleasure and satisfaction our trip to Nepal in 1958,” but we could not ascertain if he met the king at that time.

6 This conversation is referred to in several letters, e.g. Rockefeller to Charles Poletti, March 3, 1961: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143.

7 March 3, 1961 letter from Rockefeller to Charles Poletti: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143.

8 The exhibition was initially intended to open in December 1963, to run just before the World’s Fair, but was pushed back: April 26, 1961 letter from Montgomery to Rishikesh Shaha: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 144. A few Nepali artworks borrowed from American collections were shown at the World’s Fair in an exhibition of art from New York museums. Kramrisch lent a “Akshobya Mandala, painting on cloth, 16-17th century” to this exhibition: “Receipt of Delivery,” Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 156.

9 Id. Apparently not having yet received a reply, Montgomery sent another letter on March 10, 1961 to repeat the proposal to Shaha: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 144.

10 March 14, 1962 letter from Montgomery to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

11 March 20, 1962 letter from Kramrisch to Montgomery: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

12 December 17, 1963 memorandum from Washburn to Cesar Sanchez, ordering him to pay Kramrisch her fee: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

13 For the biographical details of Kramrisch’s life, see Mason Reference Mason and Mason2010 and Ziebritzki Reference Ziebritzki2021.

14 Kramrisch Reference Kramrisch and Glaser1929. Unsurprisingly for both the period and because Kramrisch had not yet visited Nepal, this article explains its art almost exclusively through the comparative lens of Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese art.

15 These were an early fifth-century limestone statue of a male figure borrowed from the Godshanath Monastery in the Pashupati complex (cat. 1); a ninth-century limestone relief carving of the birth of the Buddha, which was removed from its installation in the Sundhara Fountain, Deo-Patan, and would return to a new home in Nepal’s National Museum (cat. 11); a late fifteenth-century bronze female deity (cat. 40); a fourteenth-century gilt bonze Avalokiteshvara lent from its shrine in the Golden Monastery (Hiranyavarna Mahavihara) of Patan (cat. 20); and painted book covers from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries (cats. 80 and 90). Although it is beyond the scope of this article, the exhibition’s archive contains fascinating records of the complications of obtaining permission from Nepal’s Department of Archeology to export these objects – the first loans to a museum exhibition from Nepal since the passage of its 1956 act regulating the export of cultural property. For example, the Avalokiteshvara was the last object to reach New York, and was delayed because “signatures of fourteen hundred of the chief worshippers of the Golden Monastery in Patan were required for the release of the image”: July 31, 1964 letter from Washburn to Lester Markel, Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 17, Folder 161.

16 April 23; 1963 letter from Montgomery to Matrik Prasad Koirala: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 145. We do not know why these particular artifacts were chosen. The most extensive information comes from the July 10, 1962 letter, in which Kramrisch reports to Montgomery that she has “seen everything except a few private collections which will be shown to me in due course. Excepting about six larger sculptures and two or three paintings there is hardly anything that would qualify for an exhibition as planned.” She specifies that these six sculptures are sixteenth-century wooden pieces larger than five feet tall: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. This report is rather mystifying since the Kathmandu Valley was then full not only of the many artworks in its temples, shrines, and museums but many more that were stolen after Kramrisch’s visit. It is true that many fewer works were then in Nepal’s National Museum. Many of the artworks in temples would have been in closed shrines or storerooms, brought out during annual festivals, especially in the late summer after Kramrisch had left. We cannot be certain even about the timing of Kramrisch’s visit. In the letter Kramrisch sent to Montgomery, the then Director of the Asia House Gallery, from Kathmandu, dated July 10, 1962, she reports she is in the sixth week of her stay in Nepal and that she is planning to reach India during the second half of August, so we can perhaps date her stay in Nepal from the beginning of June to early August, 1962: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. However, it might have begun earlier since the archive contains a copy of a letter dated May 9, 1962, from Montgomery to Kramrisch, stating that she is “hereby authorized to act as the representative of the Asia Society in all matters pertaining to an exhibition of art from Nepal,” presumably so she could carry the letter with her to Nepal to show to anyone who inquired as to her status: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. Kramrisch planned to return to the United States on January 8, 1963: March 20, 1962 letter from Kramrisch to Montgomery, Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. A letter sent by Washburn on December 18, 1962, to Royal Bisbee of the South Asia Division of the United States Information Agency of the State Department, apparently in response to some inquiry from the State Department, states that Washburn confirms that Kramrisch has been authorized to negotiate loans from a museum in Nepal and while he “had understood that she would make an exploratory trip in both Nepal and India in the hope of gathering the proper material for this show … we have not heard from her directly since her departure”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144. Contrary to this assertion, Kramrisch had written Montgomery on July 10, 1962. Perhaps either this letter was greatly delayed or somehow the message was not transmitted to Washburn when he took on the directorship.

17 July 10, 1962 letter from Kramrisch to Montgomery: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

18 See, e.g., “Art of Nepal” object checklist, Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 153. Two other anonymous loans of comparative artifacts from Tibet or Mongolia came from Kramrisch’s friend Natacha Rambova (cats. 49 and 69), while Kramrisch lent an additional three comparative artifacts (cats. 83, 86, 87). Rambova’s choice of anonymity was probably motivated by the fact that, as she explained in a March 12, 1964 letter to Washburn, she was in the process of deeding these artifacts to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1964-180-2a,b and 1964-180-1): Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144.

19 Interview of Gordon Bailey Washburn by Virginia Field, March 5, 1977, Reel 3, Side 1, Smithsonian Archives of American Art; December 10, 1963 letter of Washburn to Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143. The letter also discusses a Heeramaneck loan to the Gallery’s 1963 exhibition “The Art of Mughal India.”

20 Washburn reported in an October 1, 1963 letter to Warrington that Heeramaneck had asked “why we had not invited the great male figure which he said he had sold you at an earlier date”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144. This was a Tara, a female deity, but Heeramaneck had apparently misidentified the figure. Kramrisch initially requested the loan of all three of Warrington’s Nepali objects, but eventually decided to leave the “White Tara” out of the exhibition: September 14, 1963 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn, Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

21 Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

22 For example, Washburn thanked Warrington for sending photographs of all three of the Nepali objects in his collection (unfortunately not retained in the archive): December 12, 1963 letter from Washburn to Warrington: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144. Washburn also specified seeing all of Lippe’s Nepali objects: September 26, 1963 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

23 The following information about loans is drawn from an exhibition checklist in Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 153.

24 College Art Association, 1935, nos. 40, 17, and 25.

25 Davis Reference Davis1937, nos. 102 and 109.

26 Trubner Reference Trubner1950, nos. 92 and 138. Since this catalog contains no illustration, and only a vague description, for this sculpture, we could not match it to any of the several Nepali Avalokiteshvaras Heeramaneck went on to sell.

27 Trubner Reference Trubner1950, nos. 141 and 144.

28 Trubner Reference Trubner1950, nos. 54 and 139. The remainder of the exhibition’s total of nine artifacts from Nepal were borrowed from North American museums and one from a Swiss collector. Actually, the catalog claims ten artifacts from Nepal, but the lack of knowledge about the art of Nepal in mid-century America (and the difficulty of tracing these collections) can be illustrated by looking at one of these, which is no longer considered to have been made in Nepal. The catalog describes it as a Nepali copper “Brahma-Griva,” 10 7/8″ tall, and dates it to the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries: Trubner Reference Trubner1950, no. 143. It was lent by J. Lionberger Davis, a lawyer, banker, and patron of the arts in Saint Louis, Missouri: Jones Reference Jones1974; “John Lionberger Davis, Art Collector, Dies at 94,” New York Times (April 15, 1973). Davis was one of Heeramaneck’s clients; for example, he purchased a Ptolemaic Egyptian silver figurine from the Heeramaneck Galleries in New York in 1947, subsequently donating it to the Saint Louis Art Museum (220:1954). Davis purchased the “Brahma-Griva” in Amsterdam in 1949 and donated it to the Saint Louis Art Museum (256:1955) in 1955. But this museum currently describes it as a brass Lokeśvara, 8 3/8″ tall, made in Kashmir in the eighth century. It is only because the piece was illustrated in the 1950 catalog that we could trace it across its transformation from this prior understanding of its century, culture, subject, and even height and material.

29 This new gallery was inaugurated by King Mahendra and Queen Ratna themselves, during the same state visit when they met Rockefeller; a newspaper clipping in Kramrisch’s archive at the Philadelphia Museum of Art features a photograph of the royal couple in chic sunglasses on the museum’s steps and calls the display “the only one of its kind in a Western Hemisphere museum”: 11.16.13 XXX. The same clipping illustrates a twelfth-century bronze Indra, which it hails “the climax of all the sculpture shown in the new gallery.” The same Indra is illustrated and discussed in Kramrisch’s article on the new gallery: Kramrisch Reference Kramrisch1960. Kramrisch herself owned this Indra as well as another piece in the 1960 exhibition, an eighteenth-century Samvara statue (“Art of Nepal” cat. 68), as is revealed by pages from an inventory listing loans from Kramrisch to the Philadelphia Museum of Art: PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 1, Folder 24. The Philadelphia Museum of Art archive also contains a manuscript for an apparently unpublished “Catalogue of an Exhibition of Nepalese and Tibetan Art,” written by Kramrisch to accompany the 1960 opening, which reveals that Kramrisch included at least four other Nepali artworks from her personal collection in the 1960 exhibition: PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 9, Folder 7. All but one of these artifacts would also be included in “The Art of Nepal,” and, except for the Samvara statue, whose current location we could not find, all would eventually come into to collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Indra (PMA 1994-148-596); Samvara painting (PMA 1994-148-637); Amoghapasha Avalokiteshvara painting (PMA 1977-253-1); Lokeshvara and Tara painting (PMA 1994-148-611); and the Vasudhara Mandala painting (PMA 1994-148-608). The 1960 Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin article also illustrates other artifacts Kramrisch loaned to the exhibition but did not include in the draft catalog: a nineteenth-century Sarvabuddhadikini, whose current location is unknown (identified as belonging to Kramrisch in Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 17, Folder 160) and a fifteenth- to sixteenth century bronze Vina (PMA 1994-148-600), as well as a Tibetan or Mongolian Kurukulla painting (PMA 1959-38-4). In total, Kramrisch provided at least eight Nepali objects for the 1960 exhibition; indeed, we could not identify any other owner besides Kramrisch or the museum itself of any of the Nepali artifacts then on display.

30 Baldinger Reference Baldinger1959.

31 These are identified as a ninth- to tenth-century seated brass Green Tara, an eleventh-century standing brass and turquoise Avalokiteshvara, a fifteenth- to sixteenth-century fragment of a terracotta frieze with a dancing apsara, and a sixteenth-century brass Shiva Mahesvara. Here and elsewhere in this article, we retain the dating of the artifacts given in the cited publications, since our arguments do not depend on their actual dating. However, we are aware that scholars would now date many of these pieces differently.

32 This correspondence is in Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 150. For the quoted language, see the July 31, 1963 letter from Washburn to Walter H. McBride, the director of the Grand Rapids Art Gallery.

33 Apparently at some point, Kramrisch wanted to reject Denver’s loan, but Washburn sent her a telegram on November 15, 1963, saying that he “must make sever decision to retain Denver, Plumer [cat. 59] and Ram [cat. 97] loans” since they could not “at this date without offense reject formal agreements to exhibit them”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. We could not find any indication in the archive as to why Kramrisch wished to reject these loans.

34 A palm leaf manuscript, now Metropolitan Museum 55.121.37.8.

35 A manuscript, now Seattle Museum of Art 36.24.

36 The first is identified on the exhibition checklist as “Amitayus”: this may have been an eighteenth-century Nepali manuscript of The Illumination of Amitayus, Bodhisattva of Limitless Life donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Nasli Heeramaneck in 1931 (1931-71-1e1). The second is a Sarvabuddhadakini, probably the one donated by Natacha Rambova to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1963 (1963-155-16). The third is a Lokanatha, which a partially drafted catalog entry in Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 157 identified more specifically as the bronze statuette published as Figure 1 in Kramrisch Reference Kramrisch1960.

37 A Manjushri statue (Cleveland Museum of Art 1956.8).

38 The Harvard Art Museum described several manuscripts and a sixteenth-century gilded bronze, the Riverside Museum of New York offered unspecified material, and the University of Michigan’s art museum offered a painting.

39 For example, a November 5, 1963 letter from Carolyn Shine, Registrar of the Cincinnati Museum of Art (Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 11, Folder 144) and an August 9, 1963 letter from Elizabeth T. Casey, Curator of Oriental Art at the Rhode Island School of Design (Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 150).

40 “I would suggest… that you contact Mrs. James Marshall Plumer…. The widow of Professor Plumer of the University, [who] retains several fine pieces from their private collection: notably a Shiva and Parvati…. Also, a bronze Tara”: August 8, 1963 letter from Samuel Sachs to Washburn: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144. Hord was first mentioned in an August 27, 1963 letter from Carl Skinner, the assistant director of the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143.

41 August 12, 1963 letter from Washburn to H. Medill Sarkisian: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 142.

42 CMA 1983.153. The archives of the Cleveland Museum of Art include a July 22, 1963 letter from Sherman Lee, the then museum’s director, to Klejman, asking him to send a bill for “the Nepalese bronze, figurine of a woman standing, Tara” made out to Bickford:

Cleveland Museum of Art Archives, Director’s Office Records, Sherman Lee, Box 36 Folder 26 (Klejman, J. J.). Lee often asked donors to purchase artifacts with the understanding that they would later donate them to the museum, which is presumably what happened here.

43 We could not determine the current location of this artifact.

44 We could not determine the current location of this artifact, but it is in a private collection according to Himalayan Art Resources, where it is item no. 11015, available at https://www.himalayanart.org/items/11015.

45 Swann left this object to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1975-22-1).

46 Identified only as a “Bhairava”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 157.

47 We were unable to determine the current location of this object.

48 Identified as a “banner of Avalokiteshvara”: October 25, 1963 letter from Field to Hord, Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143.

49 We were unable to determine the current location of this object. Apparently, at some point, Kramrisch wanted to reject this loan but Washburn sent her a telegram on November 15, 1963, saying that he “must make [the] severe decision to retain Denver [cat. 99], Plumer and Ram [cat. 97] loans” since they could not “at this date without offense reject formal agreements to exhibit them”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. We could not find any indication in the archive as to why Kramrisch wished to reject it.

50 Identified as a Shiva and Parvati statuette in a November 13, 1963 letter from Field to Plumer: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144.

51 We could not determine the current location of this object, but it was sold at Christie’s New York on March 31, 2005, as a figure of Kubera, with the statement that it had been acquired by Lippe in 1958.

52 This object was purchased by the Ashmolean Museum (EA2005.77) at the same Christie’s sale; the listing also states that Lippe acquired it in 1958.

53 November 20, 1963 letter from Field to Lippe: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143. The others are a “Temple Dance Mask - wood, 17th c., 12-3/4″ and “Erotic Deities, gilt bronze, 18th c., 4″ high,” which shows the deities “in their conventional embrace” according to a September 26, 1963 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. A photograph of the mask is in Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 17, Folder 160.

54 We were unable to determine the current location of either of these objects.

55 Identified as a “White Tara.” It was published in Trubner Reference Trubner1950, no. 139.

56 Identified as an “Avalo Kitesvara” which was rejected “as it somewhat duplicates another piece” in the exhibition: December 12, 1963 letter from Washburn to Warrington: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144. The dimensions of Warrington’s Avalokiteshvara are given in a November 29, 1963 telegram from Joan Clark to the Asia House Gallery’s registrar as 35.8 cm high plus 3.5 cm lugs on each foot: Rockefeller Exhibition Files, Box 14, Folder 144. We have not discovered its present location.

57 We were unable to determine the current location of this object.

58 Now Metropolitan Museum 1987.142.371.

59 Now Metropolitan Museum 1987.142.321.

60 We were unable to determine the current location of this object.

61 Identified as “the Meitreya, the Vasundhara and the fragment of a halo” in a November 4, 1963 letter from the Asia House Gallery registrar letter to Eilenberg: Rockefeller Exhibition Files, Box 14, Folder 142. The first is probably the thirteenth- or fourteenth-century bronze Bodhisattva Maitreya that Eilenberg later donated to the Metropolitan Museum (1987.142.358). We cannot identify the second object. The last was probably included in the same gift, although it is now identified as a seventh-century work from Pakistan (1987.142.313).

62 Listed as “Havajra,” “Tara,” “Vajravarkhi,” “Book Cover 1,” and “Birth of Buddha”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 153.

63 In an April 27, 1964 letter to Washburn, Kramrisch mentions sending her Samvara painting (now PMA 1994-148-637) for the exhibition, asking to have it insured for $4,000: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. It was not ultimately included in “The Art of Nepal.”

64 In a January 22, 1964 “note for file” titled “Extra Material for Exhibition,” Field records that Kramrisch “has purchased a painting 64” high by 42” wide ‘BAJARADARA,’ which we may want to hang although it will not appear in the catalogue”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 148. We propose that this title might refer to the Vajradhara that appears on a 1965 inventory of Kramrisch’s collection, valued at $3,000 and dated to the fifteenth century: PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 1, Folder 24.

65 November 27, 1963 letter from Washburn to E. Bernald: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 142.

66 March 5, 1964 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143. Washburn writes that Marks purchased the bronze, “rather a charming piece,” in Kathmandu in 1959, but also mentions that “the torso is cast separately from the legs and does not join very tightly at the joint,” which probably indicates that it is a modern piece.

67 November 20, 1963 letter from Field to Jane Mahler: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

68 February 7, 1964 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch and February 14, 1964 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

69 December 9, 1963 letter from Wallace S. Aldinger, director of the University of Oregon art museum to Fielding: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 142.

70 On the “Rockefeller Tara,” see October 2, 1963 letter from Washburn to Bertha Sanders, Rockefeller’s secretary: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 144; November 8, 1963 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn and November 7, 1963 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149.

71 September 29, 1963 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. Rockefeller owned several Nepali statues during his life; for example, a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century bronze Padmapani (sold by Sotheby’s New York in November 1977) and a bronze Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara from the same period now at the Asia Society (1979.51) but we have not so far been able to narrow down which might have been the one in his office.

72 Eastman Reference Eastman1934, 16 and 38. These are now Detroit Institute of Arts 42.1 and LACMA M.77.19.7

73 CMA 1938.301 and 1955.49.

74 LACMA M.75.4.14.

75 LACMA M.75.4.15.

76 We have been unable to determine the current location of this object.

77 We have been unable to determine the current location of this object, but it was sold at Christie’s New York on September 13, 2016 as “from a private Midwest Collection.”

78 We have been unable to determine the current location of this object, but it was sold at Christie’s New York on September 13, 2016 with the information that the seller had acquired it from Heeramaneck Galleries in 1965.

79 We have been unable to determine the current location of this object.

80 We have been unable to determine the current location of this object.

81 LACMA M.77.19.1a-b.

82 LACMA M.77.19.7.

83 Unfortunately, these are only vaguely described on the exhibition checklist as “book cover pt. 1,” “2 seated figs.,” “1 stand’g fig.,” and “1 stand. fig. & bird”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 153.

85 We could not determine the current location of this artifact, but it was sold at Bonhams New York in 2015. The listing notes that Wolff sold it to the Brooklyn-based art collectors Robert and Bernice Dickes in 1965.

86 We could not determine the current location of this artifact, but from June 1996 to April 2013 it was displayed at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery as an anonymous loan in a long-term gallery exhibition, “Sculpture of South Asia and the Himalayas.”

87 We could not determine the current location of this artifact.

88 We could not determine the current location of this artifact. “The Art of Nepal” catalog contains a citation showing that it was previously in a private collection in India as of 1950: Khandalavala Reference Khandalavala1950.

89 One rejected piece is described as “a small version” of another loan, a Lokeshvara (cat. 51) in a September 29, 1963 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. Another mystery is that the archive does not contain a loan agreement for the Indra (cat. 24), but instead contains a signed loan agreement for a “small Tara”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 155. This is probably the object described as “the privately owned Tara belonging to Mrs. Klejman, which is absolutely lovely” in a September 19, 1963 letter from Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. It appears that at some point late in the preparations for the show, the Indra was substituted for this “small Tara.” In this letter, Washburn reports that he “stopped at Klejman’s to see what you had chosen and to see the extra items,” and lists only the pieces Klejman understood that Kramrisch wanted to borrow, including a “14th[-] century Nepalese Figure with the unusual crown.” Washburn reports that he “stopped at Klejman’s to see what you had chosen and to see the extra items.” It is thus possible that Klejman had a number of other Nepali artifacts in stock. Another confusing point comes in a letter sent during the course of the exhibition, which describes Kramrisch’s new hesitation about “the image of Maitreya lent by Mr. Klejman” since “its different parts show styles of different ages” and “Sherman E. Lee says the gilding does not seem right to him”: September 29, 1963 letter from Kramrisch to Washburn: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. This is possibly one of the figures covered by a signed loan agreement for “one seated figure (value: $18,000) and one standing figure of Buddha (value: $16,000)”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 155. The latter could be a sculpture of the Buddha in the background of a publicity photograph of Washburn and Kramrisch looking at one of the loans: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 17, Folder 161. This Buddha appears to be a Gandharan rather than a Nepali piece, and neither the “small Tara” or any Buddhas lent by Klejman appear in The Art of Nepal.

90 The review of the exhibition in the May/June 1964 Art Times highlights the “Achata Lokeshvara, a 12th-century bronze, gilded in fire” which is described as “a life-size seated woman, a slender four-armed one wearing almost contemporary design jeweled bracelets, anklets, armlets and necklace. Her inscrutable smile, her slim cross-legged but graceful pose, upper right hand holding a kind of gavel, dominated the front gallery. This marvelous piece was loaned by Mr. J.J. Klejman of New York City.” The Cleveland Museum of Art holds a Bodhisattva of Wisdom (Manjushri,) purchased from Klejman in 1964 (1964.370). Although the museum dates the sculpture to the fifteenth century, it otherwise accords with this description. The match between Klejman’s loan and the Cleveland Museum’s sculpture is assured by a photograph of the Nepali dancer Bali Ram performing at “The Art of Nepal” in front of the sculpture now in Cleveland (misidentified in the caption), available at https://asiasociety.org/60-on-60-asia-society-celebrates-six-decades-in-photographs. On September 15, 1964, Klejman sent a letter to Lee, informing him that “as agreed last spring we are sending to you the Nepalese bronze which has just been returned to us from the exhibit as Asia House”: Cleveland Museum of Art Archives, Director’s Office Records, Sherman Lee, Box 36 Folder 26 (Klejman, J. J.).

91 September 19, 1963 letter of Washburn to Kramrisch: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. Washburn describes the head as “about 10-12″ high. I can’t say it is very notable aesthetically, although it is good in size, beautiful patina and of fine workmanship.” Kramrisch apparently followed his suggestion that the head was not “important enough” since, as the exhibition opening approached, Washburn was “really prepared to stop our additions, unless something frightfully remarkable appears.” We could not identify this object.

92 February 25, 1964, and March 11, 1964 letters from Washburn to Mathias Komor: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 14, Folder 143 and Box 15, Folder 148. Washburn explains in the second letter that he and Kramrisch had decided to not “interject anything further into the exhibition at this late date.” We could not identify this object.

94 The 1965 inventory includes 27 Nepali objects. Of these, we can identify with certainty 13 of the 17 Nepali objects Kramrisch loaned to “The Art of Nepal” (cat. nos. 2, 31, 55, 67, 74, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, and 100): PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 1, Folder 24.

95 The archive contains a second set of inventories that were taken by museum staff in 1993 and 1994 as they took custody of the art in Kramrisch’s Philadelphia apartment. These inventories list 15 objects from Nepal, including include at least four objects Kramrisch loaned to “The Art of Nepal” (cat. 83, 64, 88, and 89): PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 1, Folder 2.

96 The Rockefeller Foundation archive confirms that Kramrisch obtained at least one of the artifacts she lent to the exhibition in India, although in a surprising form. On September 14, 1965, Washburn wrote to Professor S.K. Saraswati in Calcutta about the book covers of a manuscript of the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra, dated 1028, that had appeared in the exhibition (cat. 74). Washburn wrote that “our good friend, Dr. Pratapaditya Pal” had recently notified Washburn by letter that these covers, though loaned by Kramrisch, “were still your property. Unfortunately, she gave no indication of this in making the loan.” Washburn explains that if he had known the covers belonged to Saraswati, “we would have written you directly for your permission to borrow them.” Washburn closed by suggesting that Saraswati report the matter “to your government.” A 1959 article based on a 1954 conference presentation described these covers as belonging to “S.K. Saraswati, Lecturer, Calcutta University,” who had acquired the manuscript in 1947: Mookerjee Reference Mookerjee1959. The manuscript is documented Kramrisch’s 1965 inventory as “2 book covers, [dated] 1028”: PMA Kramrisch Papers Box 1, Folder 24. As of 2006, the manuscript was in the collection of the Indian businessman Suresh Kumar Neotia, although we could find no indication how they entered this collection: Sharma Reference Sharma2006, 72–73. Saraswati may have successfully reclaimed and then sold the manuscript, or Kramrisch might have ignored (or never learnt of) the claim and herself sold them.

97 For example: “as late as the 1970s [f]or written sources on Nepalese art there was essentially only the ‘Bible,’ Stella Kramrisch’s Art of Nepal… a slim little catalog of the first exhibition of Nepalese art to be held in the West”: Slusser Reference Slusser2005, 106.

98 Rowland Reference Rowland1965, 549. The catalog “put forward and supported by detailed arguments a chronology for Nepalese stone and bronze sculpture”: Digby Reference Digby1976, 461; “Some thought had been devoted to the chronology and continuity of Nepalese art by A. K. Coomaraswamy and Douglas Barrett among others, but Kramrisch in the Asia House catalogue first set before the public an attempt at a chronological survey of Nepalese art from its origins to the nineteenth century, linking the stylistic evolution of the Nepalese bronzes which are now scattered all over the world with that of the stone sculptures still standing in the Kathmandu valley”: Digby Reference Digby1977, 180.

99 Barrett Reference Barrett1965.

100 L.E. Levick, “Art and Artists Around the World,” New York Journal-American (August 15, 1964). This article’s assertion that Kramrisch “dug [some of the art in the exhibition] out of muddy ditches” seems equally incredible.

101 Untitled document with first line “15,243 visitors to THE ART OF NEPAL came from six continents”: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 15, Folder 149. The archive also contains all pages from the visitor book maintained during the exhibition, although we did not examine these.

102 John Canaday, “The Pieta and an Avalokiteshvara,” New York Times, July 26, 1964.

103 According to information given during its sale at Christie’s New York on September 13, 2016. We have been unable to determine the current location of this object.

104 Rockefeller Exhibition Files 15, Folder 111.

105 Listed as in a private collection on Himalayan Art Resources No. 13181, available at https://www.himalayanart.org/items/13171.

106 Vajracharya 2006, 72–73.

107 Sold at Sotheby’s New York, March 21, 2013.

108 Sold at Christie’s Amsterdam, November 19, 1997, as from “the Makler Family Collection,” and then at Sotheby’s New York, March 28, 2006, as from “the Jucker Collection of Himalayan Paintings.” Kreijger Reference Kreijger1999, 70 Footnote note 22 notes that the painting belonged to Kramrisch in 1964. Pal also published the painting as belonging to an anonymous private collection: Pal Reference Pal1978, pl. 122.

109 One possible exception might be “The Art of Nepal” cat. 3, which Barrett noted “has been doubted by most scholars who have handled it”: Barrett Reference Barrett1965, 42. If Kramrisch also came to consider it a modern work, perhaps she did not sell it as a historical piece.

110 This exhibition ran from June 3 to July 30, 1978.

111 Sotheby’s New York, March 21, 2023, lot 116.

112 For example, when Christie’s New York sold the “Pan-Asian Collection” on December 1, 1982, the descriptions for lots 19, 27, and 60 compared the pieces to artifacts in “The Art of Nepal.”

113 Reynolds Reference Reynolds1986, 166.

114 Id.

118 Id.

119 Safrani Reference Safrani and Pal1986, 161.

120 Pal Reference Pal1975, 7.

121 Interview of Gordon Bailey Washburn by Virginia Field, March 5, 1977, Reel 1, Side 2, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

122 A similar analysis can be made of the 54 artifacts on display at a 1974 exhibition of “Tantric Buddhist Art” held at the China House Gallery at New York’ China Society, curated by Eleanor Olson: Olson Reference Olson1974. Most of these artifacts were Tibetan, but Olson and three other private collectors, Caroll L. Cartwright, Paul E. Manheim, and Joseph Heil, lent three Nepali artifacts and three listed as either Nepali or Tibetan, while the dealers Wolff, Doris Wiener, and Rare Art, Inc. lent one Nepali and two either Nepali or Tibetan artifacts.

123 See Smithsonian National Anthropology Archive, Slusser Papers, Nepal Correspondence, Correspondence Asia Society, for Slusser’s loan agreements for “Nepal: Where the Gods are Young” catalog nos. 12, 19, 31, 45, 51, 52, 94, and 95.

124 August 12, 1963 letter of George Kuwayama to Washburn: Box 15 Folder 150.

125 Sheet of handwritten notes about invitations: Rockefeller Exhibition Files Box 16, Folder 158.

126 Interview of Gordon Bailey Washburn by Virginia Field, March 5, 1977, Reel 3, Side 1, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

127 A tenth-century bronze Avalokiteshvara (Metropolitan Museum 1982.220.14) sold to Humann by 1971, and an eleventh- to twelfth-century Bodhisattva Padmapani Lokeshvara (Metropolitan Museum 1982.220.2) acquired by Wiener by 1969 and sold to Alice Heeramaneck in 1972.

128 The note in Slusser’s handwriting reads “She was in Kath with Kramrisch while we were trekking – maybe we should have stayed home!” Slusser was probably writing to her sister, who was a frequent correspondent. (After her death, Slusser reclaimed some of her letters and integrated them into her files.) Slusser and her sister went trekking in Nepal in the early summer of 1967, as is shown by other documents in Slusser’s archives. The advertisement ran in ARTNews vol. 67.2 (April 1968) and showed a Nepali bronze sculpture of a male figure, described as a “circa 8th century” bodhisattva. Slusser annotated this to the much more reasonable guess “16th?” Our thanks go to Judith Barr for identifying the publication from an image of the clipping.

129 December 21, 1969 letter from Pal to Slusser: Smithsonian National Anthropology Archive, Mary Slusser Papers, Nepal Correspondence, Correspondence with Pratrapaditya Pal 1969–71.

130 Pal Reference Pal, Peyton and Paul2019, 154. For more on Heeramaneck, see also Thomas Reference Thomas and Pal1986.

134 Pal Reference Pal, Peyton and Paul2019, 153. Here, Pal indicates he was the one who requested an introduction to Heeramaneck. However, in a 1989 oral history interview, Pal recalled that the gallery staff had told Heeramaneck that a scholar of Nepali art who could read inscriptions was visiting New York, with the result that Heeramaneck “got in touch with me and said he was a collector, a dealer and collector, and had lots of Nepalese art in his house, and would I like to come and see”: Interview of Pratapaditya Pal, October 24, 1989, Tape 5, Side 2, available at https://static.library.ucla.edu/oralhistory/text/masters/21198-zz0008zpsr-4-master.html. In this interview, Pal describes that, being homesick, he was drawn to Heeramaneck and the Indian dishes he prepared, and ended up seeing him “quite a few times” during the two weeks he spent in New York. Pal did not describe any Nepali art he saw at Heeramaneck’s house in this interview. If Heeramaneck’s interest was mainly in Pal’s ability to read inscriptions on paintings, it could have been that the focus was on the Nepali paintings Heeramaneck had acquired in the 1950s as part of the Tucci collection of Tibetan paintings.

136 Id.

142 Id.

144 Id.

145 Id.

149 Pal Reference Pal, Peyton and Paul2019, 153. Pal also describes Alice as “physically disabled by polio and was more or less housebound”: Pal Reference Pal, Peyton and Paul2019, 156.

154 Interview of Gordon Bailey Washburn by Virginia Field, March 5, 1977, Reel 3, Side 1, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

155 Metropolitan Museum 1982.220.2.

156 Erin L. Thompson, “Returned to Nepal by the FBI, a Sculpture Becomes a God Again,” Hyperallergic, December 17, 2021.

157 Rojita Adhikari, “‘Our God Was Locked in a US Museum’: The Heritage Hunters Bringing Home Nepal’s Lost Treasures,” The Guardian (January 24, 2024).

158 Karen K. Ho, “Manhattan DA Repatriates Four Antiquities to Nepal Using an Anonymous Whistleblower’s Family Photos,” ARTNews (December 6, 2023).

159 Interview of Gordon Bailey Washburn by Virginia Field, March 5, 1977, Reel 3, Side 1, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

160 These topics have been addressed by numerous scholars; see, e.g., Mann Reference Mann2017, Courtney Reference Courtney2018, and Gammon Reference Gammon2018.

161 Reed Reference Reed2023, 34.

162 Reed Reference Reed2023, 34 and 36.

163 Reed Reference Reed2023, 34.

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