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player ready...The Art Institute of Chicago will soon return a fragment of architectural ornament to the Thai government.
According to an announcement from the AIC Tuesday, an in-house research team led by a Khmer art specialist determined the museum’s provenance information for the artifact was incorrect. The fragment, which depicts the Hindu god Krishna lifting Mount Govardhana in northern India, is from the Phanom Rung temple in northeastern Thailand — not Cambodia, as the museum originally believed.
A site visit to Phanom Rung earlier this year confirmed the 12th century fragment was originally part of a pilaster, or rectangular column, framing a temple entryway. The pilaster fragment was loaned to the museum in 1996, then donated in 2017 by late art collector and philanthropist Marilynn Alsdorf. Alsdorf’s collection of South and Southeast Asian art has courted several repatriation claims against the museum in recent years.
An ornament taken from Phanom Rung in the 1960s was the subject of an earlier repatriation claim between the Thai government and Art Institute. After a protracted legal battle, that contested fragment — a lintel from Phanom Rung’s facade — was returned and re-affixed to the temple in 1988.
The Thai government did not challenge the Art Institute for ownership of the pilaster fragment prior to Tuesday’s announcement. According to an Art Institute spokesperson, the museum decided to return the fragment itself after initiating a months-long internal evaluation of the artifact, among others in its South and Southeast Asian collection.
In the Art Institute’s press release, Phnombootra Chandrajoti, the director-general of the Thai Ministry of Culture’s Fine Arts Department, noted that Phanom Rung is one of Thailand’s most important archeological sites.
“This act serves as a model for ethical collecting practices and strengthens the bonds of cultural respect and collaboration between Thailand and the Art Institute of Chicago,” Chandrajoti said.
The news comes on the heels of reports critical of the Art Institute’s handling of repatriation claims. A joint Crain’s and ProPublica investigation last year challenged the provenance of two dozen other pieces in the Art Institute’s Alsdorf collection, four of which were likely looted.
The Art Institute has also spent much of the year defending its ownership of “Russian War Prisoner,” a 1916 watercolor by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. New York state prosecutors representing the heirs of Austrian Jewish cabaret star Fritz Grünbaum, who once owned the painting, argue Grünbaum was coerced into surrendering his art collection during the Holocaust. The Art Institute filed a 132-page rebuttal in April, arguing that the painting’s transfer — to a surviving relative, who then sold it to a controversial art dealer — was legal and unforced.
Prior to his incarceration and death at Dachau concentration camp, Grünbaum is believed to have owned some 81 works by Schiele. The vast majority of museums and collectors have voluntarily ceded their Grünbaum-owned Schieles after being threatened with similar suits by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Trafficking Unit.
The Art Institute currently employs three full-time provenance specialists, who are assisted by the museum’s broader team of curatorial, conservation and research specialists. A spokesperson told the Tribune the museum will name a new executive director of its provenance research team (leaderless since June 2023) “in the coming weeks.”
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.