NYC’s Rubin Museum Faces Repatriation Calls for Forward of Closure


Forward of the closure of New York Metropolis’s Rubin Museum of Artwork, slated to shutter its Manhattan location this Sunday, October 6, a neighborhood group of activists is asking on the establishment to repatriate Tibetan and Himalayan objects in its assortment.

Since March, the Tibetan-led marketing campaign Our Ancestors Say No (OASN) has been protesting the museum and gathering on-line petition signatures demanding the return of what they allege are stolen sacred cultural artifacts. These embrace the objects that make up the Rubin’s common Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room, which options scroll work, spiritual ritual objects, musical devices, furnishings, and decorative textiles. The set up is slated to relocate to the Brooklyn Museum, the place it’s going to reopen in June in a customized area within the Arts of Asia galleries, marking the start of a six-year collaboration between the 2 establishments.

“As a gaggle of Tibetans organizing to carry the Rubin Museum accountable for many years of violent exploitation of our sacred ancestral objects, we strongly oppose the museum additional displacing the Tibetan Shrine Room to the Brooklyn Museum for the following six years,” reads a press release on the OASN web site.

The choice to relocate the set up is a part of the Rubin’s shift to what it describes as a decentralized “world museum” mannequin, by which the establishment will exhibit its assortment by way of partnerships with cultural organizations world wide. The transfer comes after years of reported monetary points — though the museum maintains that it’s in a “sturdy monetary place” — that compound rising criticisms over the provenance of its assortment.

Devoted to the preservation, analysis, and delight of Himalayan artwork, the Rubin was based in 2004 by New York philanthropist couple Shelly and Donald Rubin, who started amassing their assortment of Himalayan objects within the mid-’70s — a time interval infamous for widespread looting cultural heritage within the area.

In response to its 2023 annual report, the Rubin’s assortment holds “practically 4,000 objects spanning 1,500 years from the Himalayan areas of India, Nepal, Bhutan, the Tibetan Plateau, and associated Mongolian and Chinese language cultural areas.” In 2022, the museum returned two Nepali objects after they have been recognized as stolen.

“The Rubin vehemently opposes the trafficking of stolen or looted cultural objects and has by no means knowingly acquired any such objects,” a museum spokesperson instructed Hyperallergic.

Emphasizing a dedication to ongoing analysis into the provenance of its assortment, the spokesperson mentioned within the occasion that the museum discovers any illicitly acquired objects in its assortment, it “will tackle all claims responsibly, which might embrace the return of the objects to international locations of origin.”

The Brooklyn Museum has not but responded to Hyperallergic’s request for remark.

Final Friday, OASN protesters rallied outdoors the Rubin throughout a museum gala occasion commemorating its upcoming transformation and its inaugural no-strings-attached $30,000 Rubin Museum Himalayan Artwork Prize. Outdoors the establishment’s entrance, demonstrators held “Robbin Museum” indicators that includes photographs of antiquities within the Rubin’s assortment and erected an altar with candles and flowers. They plan to carry one other motion this Friday, October 4.

“Museums, which revenue off the continued dispossession of our object family members, are inherently at odds with true moral stewardship. That is true of the Rubin, and it’s very true of the Brooklyn Museum,” the OASN activist mentioned.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *