Last year, the Thai government sent a letter to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco requesting the return of four ancient bronze statues depicting Buddhist spiritual figures — buddhas and bodhisattvas.

“ We did some initial research on these,” said Natasha Reichle, the museum’s associate curator of Southeast Asian art. “It was not too difficult to determine that they were looted.”

Stolen around 60 years ago in a massive art heist, the statues are soon heading home to Thailand. But before they leave, the museum is explaining how these artifacts wound up in its collection in the first place in the exhibition Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities. This effort is indicative of a growing trend: Museums opening up about dark truths.

“I would love audiences to think of the return of these objects not as in any way a loss,” Reichle said, noting that the exhibition explores complex questions to do with cultural heritage, ownership, and restitution.  ”And it’s also, I hope, a way to form relationships with countries in Southeast Asia that’s based on equity and collaboration.”

Turning a blind eye to questionable provenance

Reichle said these statues were among the many stolen in the mid-1960s from the ruins of a temple in a remote part of northeast Thailand.

The looted statues were sold to private collectors and museums around the world by a London art dealer. Four of them were gifted to the Asian Art Museum by a major donor.

Even back then, Reichle said, her institution had suspicions about their sketchy provenance. “You can see in the correspondence that they were concerned about the legality of this, but pretty much ignored it, put it to the side, and went ahead.”

Changing values

Until about a decade ago, most museums in the West didn’t think too deeply about questions of provenance when it came to acknowledging — let alone making amends for — looted works in their collections.

“The museum sector stance was much more, ‘We’re the authorities, we’re the experts, we’re going to talk about these things we’ve studied in other cultures,” said Elizabeth Merritt, the founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.