This week, US federal officials and representatives of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned an enormous cache of 1,440 antiquities to Indian authorities in a ceremony at the Consulate General of India in New York. The repatriated objects, collectively valued at $10m, include artefacts that were sold by the traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener, at least two of which were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had been on view there for years.
“We will continue to investigate the many trafficking networks that have targeted Indian cultural heritage,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, said in a statement. His office worked with the Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Group of the New York branch of the US federal Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
“While our work continues, we remain resolute in our commitment to safeguard against the plundering of antiquities and guarantee that those who seek to gain from these heinous acts are held fully accountable,” William S. Walker, HSI New York’s special agent in charge, said in a statement. Walker added, in reference to Kapoor: “Today’s repatriation marks another victory in what has been a multi-year, international investigation into antiquities trafficked by one of history’s most prolific offenders.”
Artefacts on display during the repatriation ceremony at the Consulate General of India in New York Courtesy Manhattan District Attorney's Office
The repatriated works include a sandstone sculpture of a celestial dancer that was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in the 1980s. It had been broken in two to facilitate its clandestine transport and, in February 1992, was imported from London to New York, where it was reassembled at Kapoor’s direction. It was ultimately donated to the Met by one of his clients and had been on view there until it was seized by the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) in 2023.
The year before, the ATU had seized another of the antiquities repatriated this week: a schist carving representing the Tanesar Mother Goddess. It was looted from a village in Rajasthan in the early 1960s and, by 1968, was at Doris Wiener’s Manhattan gallery. Following two subsequent sales, the sculpture was accessioned by the Met in 1993 and had been on view there until its seizure in 2022.
Kapoor is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in India for his trafficking activities. In 2012, the Manhattan DA’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for the disgraced dealer; his extradition from India back to the US is currently pending. Five other individuals have been convicted as part of the Manhattan DA’s investigation into Kapoor’s smuggling activities.
Doris Wiener, who died in 2011, first travelled to Southeast Asia and India in 1966, and began organising exhibitions of sculptures and paintings from the regions at her eponymous gallery on the Upper East Side soon thereafter. According to her obituary, her clients included John D. Rockefeller III, Igor Stravinsky and Jacqueline Kennedy. It also notes that works shown at her gallery ended up in the collections of the Met, Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Norton Simon Museum, Asia Society and others. Her daughter, Nancy Wiener, pled guilty in 2021 for her role in trafficking looted artefacts and selling them through her gallery to collections around the world.
This week’s repatriation ceremony at the Consulate General of India coincided with the International Day Against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property, an event on 14 November organised by Unesco to promote international awareness of and cooperation around stopping the trade of looted artefacts.