Ardhanarishvara Lost and Found

The statue in situ with a Tamil
inscription above the niche ("Chasing
Aphrodite: from the archives
of the American Academy
of Benares, Varanasi)

The late Chola-era (c. 850–1150) sculpture of Ardhanarishvara (the androgynous form of Shiva and Parvati) with Nandi stood in its place at the Vriddhachalam temple in Tamil Nadu, India for 900 years, despite the passing of history. It was still there in 1974 according to an illustration in Douglas Barrett’s 1974 book Early Chola Architecture and Sculpture 866 – 1014. After that it disappeared. A little bit of detective work has now shown that the statue (1.12 x 0.46 x 0.29m) had been stolen from its original context at the Vriddhachalam temple and 'surfaced' with some dodgy documentation on the no-questions-asked antiquities market.  Enquiries in Tamil Nadu are attempting to determine when and how the sculpture was stolen from the temple.   It is unknown where it was in the thirty years between 1974 and August 2004, when Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased it (220.2004) for more than $300,000 from the prominent Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor. Kapoor provided documents suggesting a collecting history whereby a New York antiquities collector had purchased the sculpture in 1970 from a handicraft dealer in Dehli and held it ever since. This document purports to be a 2003 “Letter of Provenance” on letterhead from Art of the Past, Kapoor’s Madison Ave. gallery. It is signed by “Raj Mehgoub,” who claims to be the wife of a diplomat who lived in Delhi from 1968 to 1971, but on checking, there seem to be no records of a Raj or Abdulla Mehgoub. "Today we can say that ownership history, like others supplied by Kapoor, was fabricated" say Chasing Aprodite who were responsible for helping to track down the new evidence, indicating once again the value of blogs raising awareness of issues. Here is the Chasing Aphrodite blog discussing how the identification was made:

The discovery of the sculpture’s origin is a result of rapid international collaboration. After requests from Jason and The Australian’s Michaela Boland, the Art Gallery NSA released the Kapoor provenance documents on June 25. On June 28th, A. Srivathsan at The Hindu wrote a story about the recent Kapoor revelations with a link to ChasingAphrodite.com. One of the people who read the story was Vijay Kumar the creator of Poetry in Stone [a blog that celebrates South Asian temple sculpture]. Kumar came to this site, saw our post on the Ardhanarishvara and recognized it immediately. Four years earlier, Kumar had published an iconographic study of Ardhanarishvara, the androgynous manifestation of the Hindu god Shiva and his lover Parvati. One of the temple sculptures he singled out as the “perfect form” of the god was in the Vriddhachalam temple [...] When Kumar recognized the Sydney sculpture as the very same “perfect model,” he dug through his files and found the 1974 plate in the Barrett book and other records of the statue, which was well documented in its original context [...] Overall the contours of the kosta block itself are unique as well and offer the vital clue”.

Meanwhile, these revelations raise several questions. Why, since it had been published in at least one book on SE Asian art, did the museum not identify it as stolen before the 2004 acquisition? Why did they not try to follow up the lead given by the 2003 “Letter of Provenance” and determine whether the person signing it actually existed and can confirm the authenticity of the document? Will Mr Kapoor come clean and tell the truth about where he acquired this object, from whom and how it arrived in the US? As "Chasing Aphrodite" ask, when will other museums release provenance information provided by Kapoor? Do they dare, with the eyes of the world on them?


"Chasing Aphrodite", 'Lost and Found: Images Show Art Gallery NSW’s Sculpture Was Stolen From An Indian Temple', July 1, 2013.