Inside the Nepalese Museum of Stolen Art

Along a small street in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur stands an unassuming building with a strange name: the Museum of Stolen Art.

Inside, rooms are filled with statues of Nepal’s sacred gods and goddesses.

Among them is the Saraswati Sculpture. Sitting atop a lotus, the Hindu goddess of wisdom holds a book, prayer beads and a classical instrument called a veena in her four hands.

But like all the other sculptures in the room, the statue is fake.

The Saraswati is one of 45 replicas at the museum, which will have an official location in Panauti and open to the public in 2026.

The museum is the brainchild of Nepalese conservationist Rabindra Puri, who is leading a mission to secure the return of dozens of stolen artifacts from Nepal, many of which are scattered among museums, auction houses or private collections in countries including the US, UK and France.

Over the past five years, he has hired half a dozen craftsmen to create replicas of these statues, each taking three months to a year to complete. The museum has not received any government subsidy.

His mission is to secure the return of these stolen artifacts – in exchange for the replicas he has created.

In Nepal, such statues stand in temples across the country and are considered part of the country’s “living culture,” not merely showpieces, says Sanjay Adhikari, the secretary of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.

Many are worshiped by locals every day, with some followers offering food and flowers to the gods.

“An old lady told me that she worshiped Saraswati every day,” says Mr Puri. “When she found out the idol had been stolen, she felt more depressed than when her husband died.”

It’s also common for followers to touch these statues for blessings – meaning they are also rarely guarded – leaving them wide open to thieves.

Nepal has categorized more than 400 artifacts missing from temples and monasteries across the country, but the number is most likely an underestimate, said Saubhagya Pradhananga, head of the official Archeology Department.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, hundreds of artifacts were looted from Nepal as the isolated country opened up to the outside world.

It was believed that many of the country’s most powerful executives at the time were behind some of these thefts – responsible for smuggling them abroad to art collectors and pocketing the proceeds.

For decades, Nepalis were largely unaware of their missing art and where it had gone, but that is changing, especially since the founding of the National Heritage Recovery Campaign in 2021 – a movement led by grassroots activists to recover lost treasures win.

Activists have discovered that many of these idols are now in museums, auction houses or private collections in Western countries such as the US, Britain and France.

They also work with foreign governments to pressure overseas institutions to return the pieces.

But there are many obstacles. The Taleju Necklace, which dates back to the 17th century, is a good example of this.

In 1970, the giant gold-plated chain engraved with precious stones disappeared from the Temple of Taleju – the goddess known as Nepal’s main protective deity.

Its disappearance was all the more shocking because the temple is open to the public only once a year – on the 9th day of the Dashain Festival.

It’s still unclear how it could have been stolen, and many in Nepal had no idea where it had gone until three years ago, when it was spotted in an unlikely place: the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was noticed by Dr. Sweta Gyanu Baniya, a Nepali academic based in the US, who said she fell to her knees and started crying when she saw the necklace.

“It’s not just a necklace, it’s part of our goddess that we worship. I felt it didn’t belong here. It’s sacred,” she told Virginia Tech.

“We were shocked to hear after so many years that it was on display in an American museum,” said Uddhav Karmacharya, the chief priest of the Temple of Taleju.

He has submitted documents proving its origin to the Nepalese authorities: “The day it is repatriated will be the most important day of my life.”

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, the necklace is a gift from the Alsdorf Foundation, a private American foundation. The museum told the BBC that it has communicated with the Nepalese government and is awaiting additional information.

But Pradhananga said Nepal’s Archeology Department had provided sufficient evidence, including archival documents. Moreover, an inscription on the necklace says that it was specially made for the goddess of Taleju by King Pratap Malla.

It is these ‘delay tactics’ that often leave campaigners ‘fatigued’, says activist Kanak Mani Dixit.

“They like to use the word ‘origin’, asking us for evidence. The responsibility is on us to prove that the land belongs to Nepal, and not to themselves, but to the way they got control of the land.”

But overall, some progress has been made and around 200 artefacts have been returned to Nepal since 1986 – although most transfers have taken place in the past decade.

A sacred idol of the Hindu gods – Laxmi Narayan – has been returned to Nepal from the Dallas Museum of Art, nearly four decades after it first disappeared from a temple.

Currently, 80 repatriated artifacts are housed in a special gallery of the National Museum of Nepal, awaiting restoration before being returned to their rightful place. Since 2022, six idols have been returned to the community.

The idol of Laxmi Narayan has been brought home and reinstalled in the temple where it originally came from and is worshiped daily, just as it was in the 10th century when the idol was first made.

But many worshipers are now much paranoid and put these idols in iron cages to protect them from disappearance.

However, Puri hopes that the shelves of his museum will eventually be cleared.

“I want to say to the museums and to whoever holds the stolen artifacts: just give back our gods!” he says. “You can have your art.”