Crime-fighting art expert helps bring stolen Buddha statue back to India

SMITHSONIAN
By Brigit Katz

Image of the 12th-century Buddha statue (Metropolitan police)

Back in March, Lynda Albertson went to the European Fine Arts Fair in the Netherlands, on the lookout for stolen antiquities that sometimes surface at these kinds of events. Albertson, CEO of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA), soon caught sight of bronze Buddha statue that aroused her suspicions—and her hunch about the relic’s shady provenance proved to be correct. As Gianluca Mezzofiore reports for CNN, the 12th-century Buddha has been identified as one of 14 statues that were swiped from the Archaeological Museum in Nalanda, eastern India in 1961. And on Wednesday, which is also India’s Independence Day, the statue was handed over to Indian officials during a ceremony in London. [More]