Stolen statue from Canadian University’s art collection officially repatriated to India

 

               Stolen statue of the Hindu               
 goddess Annapoorna.

The Annapoorna, a statue from the University of Regina’s collection that for the last 70 years has been in the MacKenzie Art Gallery there, will soon be repatriated to India (Stolen statue from the University of Regina’s art collection officially repatriated to India  Battlefords News-Optimist Nov 20, 2020).

The statue was part of the original 1936 bequest by Norman MacKenzie, the gallery’s namesake [...] MacKenzie had noticed the statue while on a trip to India in 1913. A stranger had overheard MacKenzie’s desire to have the statue, and stole it for him from its original location – a shrine at stone steps on the riverbank of the Ganges at Varanasi, India.

The statue is of the Hindu goddess Annapoorna, who is the goddess of food and the queen of the city of Varanasi. She holds a bowl of kheer (rice pudding) in one hand and a spoon in the other. 

When the current administration at the University and the MacKenzie Art Gallery were alerted to the documentation which revealed the statue as an object of culture theft, both institutions committed to take taking appropriate action.