The Shala Daily

The return of three South Asian bronzes from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art — a Somaskanda, a Saint Sundarar, and a Shiva Nataraja — is a story about more than artifact logistics. It’s a story about responsibility, memory, and how museums are changing the way they tell the lives of things. Provenance research revealed that these sculptures were photographed in temple contexts in Tamil Nadu in the 1950s and were likely removed without authorization. The museum’s decision to return them — and to display the Nataraja on long‑term loan with explanatory material — models a new ethic of collecting: aesthetic admiration woven together with social, ritual, and historical context.

As a teacher of attention, I read this as an invitation to re‑train our institutions to notice the stories objects carry — the people, places, and practices woven into their making and use. Too often museums have aestheticized objects: polished surfaces, perfect lighting, minimal text. The repatriation movement asks us instead to recontextualize: to honor the living relationships that make an object meaningful. That requires patience, curatorial humility, and laborious provenance work — the slow, compassionate detective work that reconstructs an object’s biography.

For practitioners, the moment invites a simple, embodied exercise in stewardship. If we treat cultural objects (and the stories they hold) with the same attention we give our breath, we begin to cultivate ethical habits of care. Repatriation debates can be fierce, but the practical center is clear: care for people and the continuities that objects represent.

A short practice: bring to mind an object you love — a bowl, a photograph, a statue. Sit quietly with it for a few minutes. Notice who made it, who cared for it before you, and how it was used. Trace its life in your imagination: where it was born, where it traveled, and who held it. Offer a silent wish for its well‑being — and for the people whose lives it touched. This small ritual cultivates the attention that underlies ethical stewardship.