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

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.

Introduction ¹

Nepal prohibited the export of artifacts “of historical, archeological or artistic interest” in 1956. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ⁹ Nearly a year later, Montgomery wrote to Stella Kramrisch, a specialist in the art of India, to invite her to curate the exhibition. ¹⁰ Kramrisch accepted the post. ¹¹ She received a fee of $1,000 to select artifacts and write the exhibition catalog. 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. 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 1929 encyclopedia article on Nepali art was one of the few attempts at a systematic study of this topic. ¹⁴

“The Art of Nepal” featured the first loans of artwork from Nepal to an American institution. 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.” 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.” 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. 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.” 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. 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.” 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. 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.” 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. 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 . 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. ²⁶ The 1950 exhibition also included four additional Nepali pieces associated with Heeramaneck. First, the gilded bull reappeared as Warrington’s property. ²⁷ Warrington lent two more Nepali sculptures he had purchased from Heeramaneck, a sixteenth-century dakini and an eleventh- to twelfth-century Tara. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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); 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. ³⁴ The Seattle Art Museum also lent two pieces (18 and 28) and had one out. ³⁵ The Philadelphia Museum of Art lent one piece (cat. 17) and had three outs. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ⁴¹

Ultimately, 11 private collectors lent Nepali objects to “The Art of Nepal.” Four of them lent only a single artifact: George Bickford (cat. 4 ⁴² ), LeRoy Davidson (cat. 73 ⁴³ ), Alfonso Ossorio (cat. 29 ⁴⁴ ), and Erwin Swann (cat. 35 ⁴⁵ ). The Philadelphia collector Richard C. Bull lent a comparative Chinese sculpture (cat. 70) and had one Nepali out. ⁴⁶ Hord, a San Diego sculptor who collected Asian art, lent one object (cat. 56 ⁴⁷ ) and had one rejected. ⁴⁸ Plumer lent one piece (59 ⁴⁹ ) and had one rejected. 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. 27 ⁵¹ and 64 ⁵² ) from his private collection and had three rejected. ⁵³ John Warrington lent two (cats. 44 and 54 ⁵⁴ ) with one out ⁵⁵ and one rejected. ⁵⁶ Samuel Eilenberg lent four artifacts (cats. 22, ⁵⁷ 57, ⁵⁸ 58, ⁵⁹ 107 ⁶⁰ ) and had another three rejected. 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, ⁶² at least one piece that was rejected (on whose authority is unclear), ⁶³ and a painting which seems to have hung in the exhibition, although it was offered too late to be in the catalog. 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!” 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, ⁶⁶ an unspecified number of artifacts offered by Professor Jane Mahler of Barnard College in New York, ⁶⁷ and a fragment from the private collection of the Metropolitan Museum curator James Biddle. ⁶⁸ None of the six artifacts offered from Ballinger’s collection, presumably among those displayed in the 1960 University of Oregon exhibition, were accepted. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, ⁷⁴ 8, ⁷⁵ 13, ⁷⁶ 15, ⁷⁷ 41, ⁷⁸ 42, ⁷⁹ 52, ⁸⁰ 75, ⁸¹ 92 ⁸² ), while the others were comparative East Indian or Tibetan artifacts (cats. 76, 78, and 104). They also offered at least four out artifacts. 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. 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. 51 ⁸⁵ ). J.J. Klejman lent three pieces (cats. 24, ⁸⁶ 37, ⁸⁷ and 66 ⁸⁸ ) and had one (or possibly more) rejected. ⁸⁹ Klejman also lent another large sculpture that was noted in a review of the exhibition but was not included in the catalog. ⁹⁰ Another New York dealer, Mathias Komor, had his offer of a “large severed head of the late 17^th Century” ⁹¹ and a “little Hanuman” rejected. 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. 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 1960 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. ⁹⁴ By contrast, she owned over 350 pieces of art from India. 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. 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. 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. ⁹⁸ Already in 1965, Douglas Barrett published an article dating a new British Museum acquisition from Nepal using Kramrisch’s chronology. 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.” 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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, ¹⁰⁵ 74, ¹⁰⁶ 87, ¹⁰⁷ 102 ¹⁰⁸ ). 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. 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. ¹¹⁰ We complied of course. At this exhibit I purchased a tiny Ganesha sculpture. 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. 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.” 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. ¹¹⁴ Additionally, Christian Humann seems to have only begun adding Nepali objects to his “Pan-Asian Collection” in the late 1960s or the 1970s. ¹¹⁵ Norton Simon and John and Berthe Ford also became major collectors of Nepali artifacts, beginning in the 1970s. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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.” 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.” ¹²² All the new collectors discussed above lent to Pal’s 1975 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). 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. 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. ¹²⁵ Indeed, Washburn later recalled that Wiener “scarcely knew anything” about Nepali art at the time. ¹²⁶ But she rapidly educated herself and made major sales, including selling at least two sculptures that are now in the Metropolitan Museum. 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. 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.” 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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.” 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.” ¹³⁵ Although he spent several days there, Pal recalled that he could only “only scratch the surface” ¹³⁶ of the collection “squirreled away” 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. 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. ¹³⁹ In connection with this purchase, the LACMA hired Pal as a curator for its new department of Indian art. 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. ¹⁴¹ In 1973, Alice Heeramaneck sold a collection of Islamic art to the LACMA. 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.” 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. 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.” 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.” ¹⁴⁶

Where did these artifacts come from, and when? Pal claimed that Heeramaneck made his final trip to India in 1964. 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.” 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.” ¹⁴⁹ Pal painted a picture of Nasli and an “irritable” Alice at odds, with their relationship marked by “constant bickering.” ¹⁵⁰ Since Alice thought Nasli’s purchases were “profligate,” 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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.