July 30, 2021 

National Gallery of Australia (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) 

The National Gallery of Australia will remove 14 works from its Asian art collection and return them to the Indian government. Worth a combined $3m, 13 of the objects were purchased between 2002 and 2010 from Art of the Past, the now-infamous New York gallery run by the dealer and alleged antiquities smuggler Subhash Kapoor. And one came from the late New York art dealer William Wolff in 1989.

This collection is the largest yet to be repatriated by the gallery and includes six sculptures, six photographs, a painted scroll and a processional standard. Thirteen of those items were purchased from Mr Kapoor while another was acquired from a separate dealer. The museum said its collection no longer contains artifacts acquired through Kapoor or his gallery. The museum also said it was researching three other sculptures acquired through Art of the Past and has removed them from the collection.

Manorath' portrait of donor and priests before Shri Nathji, purchased in 2009.(Supplied: National Gallery of Australia) 

While the gallery could not establish the provenance of another two items — and did not have any evidence the six photos were stolen — Mr Mitzevich told the ABC they would also be returned to India because the NGA had no faith in Mr Kapoor's ethics. The NGA has removed all three items from display and said they will also be repatriated when the gallery has established where they should be returned to.

“We have strengthened our processes and have zero tolerance now for any inconsistencies in the provenance of a work of art,” he said, and added, “This is another step towards us building an ethical approach to managing our collections.”

The National Gallery of Australia said it has introduced a "provenance assessment framework" to help identify items that may have been "stolen, illegally excavated, exported in contravention of the law of a foreign country, or unethically acquired."

"I think we have to acknowledge that Kapoor initiated a worldwide fraud that affected many galleries around the world," said Mitzevich, adding that the museum's policies had "tightened" since 2018. "The lessons learned from this is that extremely careful due diligence and verifying all chains of ownership independently are key parts of ... acquiring works of art."