‘The stuff was illegally dug up’: New York’s Met Museum sees reputation erode over collection practices

A Metropolitan Museum official hands over a 13th-century wooden strut to Nepal’s archaeology department last year. Photograph: Aryan Dhimal/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

In the village of Bungmati, Nepal, above an ancient spring, stand two stone shrines and a temple. On the side of one of those shrines is a large hole where a statue of Shreedhar Vishnu, the Hindu protector god, used to be.

Carved by master artisans nearly a thousand years ago, the sandstone relic was carefully tended and worshipped by local people. Sometime in the early 1980s that tradition abruptly ended when thieves removed the 20in statue. A Bungmati resident, Buddha Ratna Tuladhar, recalls how the community was “overwhelmed by melancholy” over its loss. “We kept hoping the statue would be restored, but it never was,” he said.