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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2024

Alisha Sijapati  and
Erin L. Thompson Open the ORCID record for Erin L. Thompson [Opens in a new window]
Alisha Sijapati*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Nepal
Erin L. Thompson
Affiliation:
John Jay College, City University of New York
*
Corresponding author: Alisha Sijapati; Email: [email protected]
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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.

Keywords

repatriationprovenancecultural heritageart marketNepal
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 79 - 101
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Cultural Property Society

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