 Ysbydd syrys. Not here. Anyway, I'd just like to thank Sirys. Even though he's not here. I'd like to thank him for all the hard work putting this event together. And especially the wonderful catering and I think that's why people are not here, the downstairs finishing their tea. Anyway, we're gonna make a start because we're on the last leg of this amazing journey. Wow, we've had a real range of papers today I will agree with many different things to think about. We could probably sit here for another couple of days at least, and carry on. Anyway, maybe not. I am really happy to introduce the first of our two speakers with panel number three. Dr William Southworth, who actually really needs no introduction, He's an old friend, an alumni of SOAS. He told me he took 10 years with his PhD with those of the days. Anyway, curator of South East Asian Art, Rhykes Museum, Amsterdam. William, as I've said, originally graduated from Hull University with an MA in Art and Archaeology at SOAS and the Institute of Archaeology in London. His doctorate was on the early Chumper culture of Central Vietnam, which he completed in 2001. He became a fellow of the Centre for Khmer Studies in Siem Reeb and also at the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden. He's a contributor to this research project, the Corpus of Inscriptions of Chumper at the FAO and his current curator at the Rhykes Museum. His paper now is titled The Providence History of the Stone Sculptures from Central Java in the Rhykes Museum, Amsterdam. Thank you. Hello. Sadly, I haven't speeded up in the last years, so hopefully I will be able to get through most of this talk. But it's a little bit different in the sense that I'll be looking in particular at just one specific collection in the Rhykes Museum and really just giving you an overview of the whole collection without trying to get too much into individual objects. I will fail in that because sometimes we know a bit more, but yeah, the intent is to give you an overview. This is just, I think you know the Java. This is just to give you an idea of the collection. By Central Java, I really mean the area around Mount Marapi, Prambannam, Boroboda, but I will also include one sculpture from Chandisuku, which is further to the east, but just to, for the sake of inclusivity. The collection consists, this is the collection of stone sculptures from Central Java, and it consists of 24 objects. Sometimes people assume that we have thousands of which only a few are on show, but actually we can almost show 50% of the collection. But it's actually one of the collections where the questions of provolence and restitution come up very frequently. So that's why I chose this. Of the 24 objects, only one is actually owned by the Rhykes Museum. The others, 23, are on long-term loan from a private society, which is the kind of clicker for anything in the Asiatisakunst, which is their English name as Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands. And this was founded in 1918. The Coeniglicker, that's the Royal designation, was only granted on their 100th anniversary in 2018, so quite recently. But this society was founded specifically by private individuals, often bankers, people in the financial sector, lawyers who were interested in Asian art. And I should say that the bulk of the collection is actually Chinese and Japanese art. So the smallest collections are in fact Southeast Asia and South Asia. For Javanese material, the most important person is actually the first chairman of the society, a man called Hermann Karel Westendorp, who was a banker, and his wife Betsi Westendorp Ozek. And a lot of the pieces that I'll be showing were actually collected by him or bought by him or arranged for transfer by him. And his wife often gave aesthetic advice. So she was an artist herself, and I think he took her views quite seriously. The first four were all acquired by Westendorp. The one top left is the first piece, and it was bought in 1919 in a sale in Amsterdam. There's auctioneers F. Muller, and that was the first piece acquired. He bought it for himself, and he donated it to the society in 1924. The two pieces in the centre, Nandishra and Mahakala, were bought from a Dutch nobleman, the young heir van Halter, who was living in Paris in 1928. He donated it from him in 1928. And these kind of acquisitions are also actually quite typical of the society. We don't have anything actually that was bought on the international art market. They were all bought really from usually Dutch collectors who were known to have something of interest. And in many cases, the actual origin when the piece came to the Netherlands, when it was first acquired, is simply not known, and our information runs out. This would be a very boring talk, if that was true of all of the pieces. But in 1930, Westendorp went to Java for the specific purpose of acquiring Javanese sculpture, and it was part of a big Asian trip where the society managed to gather a huge amount of funding at the time to acquire objects. And in China and Japan, they went to dealers and bought objects that way. But in Java, it was a little bit more complicated. The Ganesha, he bought out the Indonesian art market in Yogyakarta in 1930. And it's about a little bit over 40 centimetres high. And I think that this must be the kind of maximum that you could actually acquire legally in Java at the time. So small statues, but nothing bigger than that. More importantly, and this is a little bit, more importantly, the society was very well connected, not only in the Netherlands with figures in government and other government institutions, but it was also very well connected internationally. And it had very good relations, it established good relations with the archaeological service of the Dutch East Indies, the Audit Cymigodinsk. And at the time, they were busy with a restoration programme, especially of the Temple of Chandilara Jongran, but of other temples in the Prambanan area. And this is one of the small temples and you can see, the OD 1932 is the Audit Cymigodinsk and their work. Unfortunately, in the late 1920s, you had the stock market crash, and commodities from the Dutch East Indies really dropped in value. So the local government, which funded most of the archaeological services work, was hugely short of money. And all, but the most essential restoration work was put on hold. And this was problematic because they collected a huge number of sculptures, some of which they had clear plans to restore to the temples, but others which they had, which, yeah, they couldn't really see any chance of being able to restore in the future. So they wanted a home for the sculptures where they would be preserved. Most of them were being kept outside in a temporary storage around the Prambanan. But also they wanted to show it to a Dutch audience to encourage, especially from people connected to government, to encourage support for the restoration programme as a whole. I think that was the main intent. And the result of this was that the Audit Cynigoddins gave or lent 12 objects from their collections in storage to the society. And these are really the most important, seven of the most important. And what is good about this from the point of view of the archaeology is that we know where they're from because the Audit Cynigoddins knew exactly where they had come from. So the first three are from Chandilara Jongrang. The one on the left actually isn't. It's from a village called Desa Prambanan Cadol, which was actually a site in the rice fields where sculpture had been found, but it's very close to the temple. The Manjushri, we know, is from Chandiplayasan. And the three pieces on the right, the big lintel, the Kala lintel is from Chandisewu. And one of the macarons on the other is from Chandibubara, which is a site just south of Chandisewu. So all from big, well-known sites. In the Prambanan plain. This one is particularly interesting because we only know it's from Chandisewu, not because of the Audit Cynigoddins, but because of art historical research in the last few years. And it's clear that this piece was taken, obviously taken from the temple very early, or certainly before 1865, because it appears in the photograph on the far right. This is the same sculpture in a collection, the Lichter Estate. And this was a man who collected pieces from the surrounding areas. It was quite close to Chandisewu. But this origin had been forgotten. Lichter himself died, it was given to somebody else, and eventually came through to the Audit Cynigoddins in the early 20th century. But the actual origin had been, was forgotten. But it clearly comes, this is just the view of the temple. And it clearly comes from the main building. And you have four entrances with two macarons on each side. And it's definitely one of these. There's one missing on the east side. And yeah, it was from there. So this little, luckily the archive material we have within the museum gives you details, the letters from the Audit Cynigoddins specify exactly which of the 240 subsidiary temples this one is from. And it's from one of the first, yeah, the first row of subsidiary temples. And this is from this actual kind of shrine. So yeah, really, really good information. And that's because it's linked to the archaeological service. Otherwise we would have no idea. In addition to those seven pieces, which were given on loan, and actually that reminds me of what I was going to say, is that because they're on loan from the Audit Cynigoddins to the society and then on loan from the society to the Reich's Museum, you have a kind of double loan objects. And the question is, well, who is actually the owner of the objects? And it's quite possible that the owner, well, the owner is basically the legal opfal, the legal, thank you, I've forgotten my English, but the legal successor of the Audit Cynigoddins and that could well be the Indonesian archaeological service. So that is something which is actually being investigated now is to determine, yeah, who is actually the owner. But five objects were given to the society. I suspect because these were not so considered so important. But also, yeah, I think they were quite sure that these were not going to be used for restoration. And again, this one is from Chandisew on the top left. This, these, the Brahma in the middle and this head are from Chandimerach. Lower right is from Chandipeleosan. And the top right, we don't actually know, it's the only one we don't know where it's from. And there was something I was going to add here, but I've forgotten. Yeah, for the case of Chandimerach, we also have excavation photos, which show clearly the piece in context. This was found in September 1925. So you can, with the photographic archive of the Audit Cynigoddins, which is nicely available actually from the museum in Leiden, you can actually find it quite easily. This piece, yeah, is a little bit exceptional. It's one from, it was bought in 1936 from a collector in the Netherlands. And this is, I have it here, Mr J.G. Hoyser. I think that's the wrong pronunciation, but he was a collector and he also wrote actually quite some quite good articles, mainly on Crees and other later objects. But he bought this sculpture from a Yonker van Sipersdain with this gentleman here. And he gave a detailed story of where sculpture was supposed to be from. And according to the story, it was originally in the house of Deepa Nogoro, who is a hugely important hero from the Java Wars in 1825, 1830. He was the leader of the Japanese rebellion and is a huge hero of one day Indonesia. And the story goes that it was taken from his house by the commandant J.U. Baron de Salis and then threw him to his son-in-law, Yonker Dana van Varek, and then to his son and then to an art dealer, Mr Tennyson. And we've done a lot of this research on this, actually there isn't a Baron J.U. de Salis. The Baron at the time was completely in the Netherlands. He was not in Java at all. And also he was not the father-in-law of Dana van Varek. The father-in-law was actually Baron Melville von Kahnbe, who is another nobleman with a very extensive record in Java. But the Baron had three sons, all of which had some connection. They were all in Java at the time, usually with the military or with some aspect of government, often as a resident. And there's been lots of speculation of which one of these people may have owned the sculpture. And I'll flick through this. But the basic result of this is that actually we have no, none of the information in that story matches. The dates don't match, nothing matches. So we don't even know that it was ever in the collection of the de Salis family, there is no doubt that it is. That's the story of the art deal, that's the story of the art deal with Terneson. And I gave this lecture on this at the National Museum in Jakarta. And I actually had a very kind audience for that. But this is one of the problems. The fact that I think it's the story from the art deal with Terneson. And I think it's completely made up in the 1920s. Very quickly pieces acquired after 1940, ac mae'n ffordd yma ar gyfer y borbodaeth, sy'n ddod yn 1948. Mae'r ddod yn Magdalf Ydw Llyfrgell, yn y bancur, ond mae'n ddod yn mynd yn ymddangos pan yw'r artistoriaeth Daniel Francois Chalea yn y 19... y 19 yma. Mae'n ddod, mae'n ddod yn y troi. Mae yw 1999. Mae'n ddod yn ymddangos yng Nghymru, mae'n ddod yn y Rhaid i Gwyfnidol. Mae'n ddod yn gweithio, mae'n ddod yn... mae'n ddod yn ymddangos y 19. Mae'n ddod yn ymddangos yng Nghymru a ddod yn ymddangos yng nghymru oherwydd mae'n ddod yn ei ddod yn ffordd y 1923 o'r ddod yma. Mae'n ddod, mae'n ddod yn ymddangos ac mae'r rhai ni ddod yma yn 40 yn eiffan. Mae roedd y ymddangos sipolaeth i'r hoffi ym g bikes. Mae sefydlu eu tanethau am yr Archeologyno'r Ffais aboard de Chwrth gyrt Og dros'u btagfail Dechстаточно ni eisiau ac mae arnynnu i'ricsf aquell dechreu Lovegriaeth. Maybelliaฺ, feddwl tup, a rydym yn gweld I would love to know what the argument was. It must be a recorded argument for why it was released. So that is, yeah, we know it's from Geddon Tsonga, so that kind of almost covers the entire heritage of central Java. And perhaps in my closing remarks, in a way, I'm kind of totally caught, because in a way this is a problematic collection because so many of the objects can be linked to major temples in central Java. They're all famous, they're all from famous temples. It's not problematic in the sense of, this is my archaeological hat, is that, yeah, it's actually, it's all taken from either, either through official connections through the archaeological service, or it was acquired from people in the Netherlands. And this is one aspect I would like to mention for the fragments, is that those fragments were, they were all donated one in 1972, one in 1985 and one in 1991. They think, well, what were the greatest thinking when they accepted those? But actually, it kind of, it's one of, yeah, it almost redeems the museum, actually, because the role of the museum is not just to present new objects for display, but actually to bring to public attention things that are in the private domain. And if we hadn't accepted those, I don't know what actually would have happened to them. And this is something which, often in the debate, we start to get, actually, as a curator, you start to get rather defensive because everybody's thinking about, you know, all this stuff should go back to Java, you shouldn't have it, you know, but actually, I think the museums do have a role in actually, yeah, operating in that interface between the public and the private domain, and bringing things into a public awareness, which it simply wouldn't have if it just remained in a private collection. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, William. As an ex museum curator, I can sympathise with a lot of what you're saying. There were two things that stand out from that very interesting presentation. One was that you mentioned that perhaps the Dutch archaeological service actually, presumably it was nationalised when independence happened and therefore this question of the legal successor. I don't know if maybe you could say a little bit about what you know of what happened when, you know, bodies like that, what happened to their status through nationalisation. And then the second one is the kind of shenanigans that dealers get up to and they try to authenticate objects. But if he's making a case that Duponagoras was the original owner, then he needs to have a rationale for how it was passed on then from Duponagoras hands. You know, but there's no evidence is there of how that came to be. No, no, I mean the. Yes. I'll deal with that one first and then remind me of first. Yeah, in the case of the Duponagora one it was interesting because the occasion was, we had a staff, which was in private collection in the in the Baud family. Baud was general in the Java war. And the family had kept this ever since the 1830s. And it was offered, I think, offered to the museum. And we facilitated its return to Java because there's things belonging that are known to belong to Duponagora are kind of number one on the list of what the authorities in Indonesia want return. So this is a special case. It was immediately sensitive, but in that case we have a, the family had a letter detailing from the 1830s detailing the circumstances in which they were given to him as the staff of Duponagora. It was in exactly the right area the right time. So you have real historical evidence. You can't actually prove, you know, people want, you can you actually prove that this was one. No, but, but if you have evidence from the period, you know when you have that historical documentation you can say well is 90% 80% 98% certain that this was on Duponagora. If you have a art dealer story from the 1820s 1920s, that's a completely different story. But there's a lot of this is, yeah, I mean, basically, if it's passed through the art market, if it's passed through a dealer, then it's, then you, you can't trust the information. And in the past, and by in the past, I actually mean, even in the early 1980s, who wasn't a great interest in problems research. You know, people. Well, I said people but often the collectors the society members just wanted a good story, you know, and there wasn't the kind of critical attention that there is now. Now it's deeply serious. The whole issue of of constructing the hit biography of objects is a deeply serious matter, but it wasn't even 2025 years ago. So yeah, you can't trust anything that dealer tells you. I say that as archaeologist but also curator. But the first, the first bar. Yes, the pieces on loan. What was the question? What happens? What happens during independence to the Dutch archaeological service, for example. I was complicated because then the Second World War, there was a kind of alternative archaeological service set up by the Japanese. But I am as far as I know the Indonesian archaeological service today sees itself very much as the legal successor of the Dutch archaeological service. So it's an integral part of the history, I think. Marika. So it's not an alternative. Institutional continuity across the war. Well, in the I think, but I mean, you can correct me on this, but I think after after the war, there was a continuation in the area of the of the Indonesian team who had worked on with the Japanese. But the Dutch then set up their renewed archaeological service in itabia. And so there's a kind of this at a certain point in time you have two organizations. But I think both are seen as as. Yeah, I think the modern archaeological service is seen as its legal success of both. But that would would indicate that that yeah there's a very likely, and it would be it would be really nice, actually, if we can just scrub out on learn from the other kind of things from to on learn from. Yeah, the modern Indonesian organization. And very, very quickly. This, the actual. Yeah, if, if that is the case, then it's also possible that the original loan agreement is still valid. And that is a really interesting agreement, because the agreement was these things would be sent on loan of the main objects. But if they were required for restoration, they should be given back immediately on the expense of the society for that purpose. But it would then each piece would need to be replaced by an alternative object of equal aesthetic and monetary value to be displayed in the society. So that you have a kind of it locks you into a kind of reciprocal relationship, which is actually, I think it really I really like this. This was FDK Bosch, and who knew what he was doing. And I think this is a really good. Actually a very modern way of looking at it. So we're kind of eternal rotating loan. It sounds weird, but but actually there's a let out clause somewhere. I don't think so. I think it's really solid. But it, but it actually. Yeah, it's like almost a kind of. Yeah, I think it's interesting. Let's click me on dick on. Requested the return of your very ornate macro and undertook to put it back in the place so that the four were now back together again. We spent a lot of today talking about, oh, we don't know where they go when they go back. What if they undertake to put it specifically back in that spot? I think it would be very difficult. Actually, I mean, one of the points is that these objects are not at the board of trustees of the museum has no say in them going back, because they're privately owned by the society. So it's actually a question for the board of the society. But actually, I think I would, I would certainly argue that it would be very difficult for them to say no. On the basis of the documentation we have on the agreement made, it would be a, it would actually, yeah, it would undermine the whole loan agreement. If you did that. That's how I see it. The aspects, you mean the one from Chandisew. I mean, what is interesting about that one is that I took a later photo of, there's a restored version, there's a new macro. But the shape of it is actually quite different. But that's because the whole of the, the whole of that side of the entrance has collapsed in the past and the stones have been lost. So it's been reconstructed in the 1980s, but the whole facade of that side of the building is new stone. So it would actually be very, it would be difficult, but also, yeah, the immediate context is actually gone. So that kind of makes me feel a little bit better. But it would, it's not quite as, it's not quite as clear cutter argument as for return as it would be. No, well, no, but I think it's not, that's not for, it's not for us. I mean, sometimes I'm asked, well, you know, what would you do if, but actually, I'm not going to be asked. Maybe by the society members, I might be asked for advice, but, but it's for the curator, it's not our collection. We often curious on my collection, but it isn't. It's actually owned by somebody else. And the people making the decisions for the return are either in this case, the society board, but also in the case of objects belonging to the museum. Actually, it's the Ministry of Culture of the Netherlands. It's the politicians making those choices. So all I can do is say, you know, if that was asked, if they were asked that back for restoration specifically for restoration, I would say you can hardly say no. That would be my answer. Thank you. I think we have to move on. Thank you very much. Okay, and so we are moving now into the final paper for today. It's gone by very fast, I have to say, a Professor Marika Lombergen is Professor of Heritage and Post Colonial Studies in Indonesian History at Leiden University. And she's a senior researcher with the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, KITLV in Leiden. She's a Professor in Archival and Post Colonial Studies. It's changed. It's changed. Heritage and Post Colonial Studies in Indonesian History. Okay. Yes, that's in the title, in your title. So the first line of the write up has changed. And her research interests concern the politics and mobility of knowledge in colonial and post colonial Indonesia, which she studies through the lens of policing and violence material culture and heritage practices within into Asian and transnational contexts. She published widely on politics of archaeology material culture, collecting and exhibit exhibiting in colonial and post colonial Indonesia. And amongst these, most recently with Martin Eikof, the politics of heritage in Indonesia, a cultural history in 2019. So today, the title is from Burabudur with Love, movable Buddha heads friends of Asian art and the moral geographies of greater India. Well, first of all, thank you Leslie and Heidi for this invitation. Yeah, I think I follow up nicely on William's talk and also on some of the questions. And I'd like to start with a story. So around 1900 to ancient stone Buddha heads from Java. Being a dusty life in the country house of a French engineer, a local Senate member, Paul de Gauville, who himself normally dwelt in Paris. Then, in April 1910, the two heads became objects of certain excitement in the minds of their noble beholder. It was their chance to regain public fame. In a letter, the engineer offers offered them to a new man founding director and namegiver of the Museum of Asian Art in Paris here on the picture with another Buddha heads, but it's the Indonesian section. The two heads were to fill in what the engineer perceived to be a gap in the man's collection. When visiting the museum's galleries a few days before the engineer had noticed that it had no heads of Buddha statues on display. She looked that he happened to have two. He offered them to the museum with a discount from 5000 francs apiece, his calculation down to 3000 francs each. Significant in the framework of his workshop, the engineer noted down their provenance. Once originated, he claims, from the 8th century ancient Buddhist shrine Borobador in central Java, and there is a chance they were because it was one of his engineers. He wrote, selected it at the site of the temple in the 1880s, when he was in Java exploring the possibilities for modern intercolonial infrastructural development and expansion. More significant for this presentation, however, it was the new lure valuation and emphasis of grace and spirituality of ancient Hindu Buddhist objects. Now framed as Asian art, with which Musa Bima proliferated, which triggered him to offer, not necessarily the provenance. The new framing he realized added new value and to him potential profit, both in material terms and in status. Even while nothing came of this offer, as far as I've found out until so far. This whole gesture shows how new taxation of ancient Hindu Buddhist objects from Java, or elsewhere in Asia, were being shaped not only in and by the world of Asian art museums, a new world, but also in a mindset and networks of art collectors and traders. And as I will discuss why that is a political act. In this paper, as promised, I draw on my ongoing research and now a book project in progress on Indonesia, knowledge networks, knowledge networks, which include art collectors like this engineer and the makings of moral geographies of greater India. I use this chance to reflect on the politics and moralities of provenance research as proliferated in recent years by some prestigious museums in Europe. And of what triggered it, the whole the worldwide call for the restitution of objects deriving from formerly colonized countries. And I do so for my also for my experience as an advisor and participant researcher in the Dutch pilot project provenance research. So provenance. Provenance of museum objects in the narrow sense of origin is not necessarily the most interesting interesting aspect of the social biography of an object. The signification of objects changes when they change owner and move to other places and in their journey through time. In this journey, they become part of heritage politics through transactions at multiple locations and we have seen many examples of that in the previous presentations. The sum of these transactions is what we call the social biography of an object and what makes this biography political. Therefore, the question of provenance is not the same as asking who is the rightful owner. Also, enough examples of this this day. Whilst for many objects, it is unclear who they should be with. And this question is always political. For some, it is immediately clear I argue where they should be. Oh, now it's going to fall. Yes, thank you. Oh, sorry, I went too far. So this applies, for example, for the two images I just showed, I'll go back. Yes. For the ancient Islamic gravestones from Sumatra and the Barobador Buddha heads from Central Java, now held in their posts and showcases in museums of Asian art around the world, including an Indonesian museum. The gravestones belong on the ancient graves in Sumatra. The Buddha heads, to which I will restrict my talk today, belong on the statues of the more than 1000 year olds of this temple. In Indonesia, these places, graves and temple have in turn become part of national and international heritage politics and also changed as a result of local signification. But there at Barobador, the Buddha heads could have continued to play a part in local cultural practices, memory creation and changing signification of that place. Their removal in the context of colonial power structures and disappearance into museum showcases and they pose as spiritual Asian art should be seen as an injustice and epistemic violence. In this paper, I follow a number of Buddha heads from Barobador or said to be from Barobador to museums elsewhere in the world. They share the same fate with a much larger number of tokens from Barobador heads, statues and reliefs carried away in colonial times being kept in these museums worldwide or in private collections. Research into these objects, I argue, requires international coordination and should ideally be conducted on behalf of the temple and the objects, rather than for the diplomatic interests of decolonizing museums, prestigious art schools and universities or research institutes also in the Netherlands or governments. Such research will show how much their lives can be and reveal stories of love and epistemic violence that transcend the interest of institutes, nations and states. And it will show their entanglement in the moral geographies of great India, the topic of my ongoing research. For that project, I explore how scholarly and spiritual knowledge networks from the Theosophical Society to the hippie thrill and including ourselves, enabled the development of what are referred to as moral geographies of greater India. People's imagination of the region that is today referred to as South and Southeast Asia is one superior spiritual civilization with Hindu Buddhist characteristics and its origin in India. Significant for the larger problem, these moral geographies encapsulate Indonesia, ignoring a predominant Islamic population, the largest of the world. The image of a greater Hindu Buddhist India lingers on worldwide. In popular culture of yoga aficionados and in movies, where Indonesia figures again and again as a predominantly Hindu Buddhist country and relevant for my presentation. Today in the world's prestigious museums of Asian art. There we see how Indonesia again and again performs as I should go back actually as the receiving part of an Indian Hindu Buddhist civilization and is absent in the new galleries of Islamic art popping up everywhere. From the Metropolitan Museum in New York to a museum in Paris and the Reich's Museum in Amsterdam. Well choreographed exhibitions strategically use light and space that emphasize the spiritual power and inner inner beauty of Hindu and Buddhist statues, evoking ideas of greater India. In this way, they obfuscate the violence underlying how objects were collected. So, while the idea of greater India has lost appeal to most historians and archaeologists of Southeast Asia, and is being countered by Indonesian scholars like pangariansha, emphasizing local agency and a study of local sources. It is still vividly present in Asian art history and museums of Asian art and the wider worlds claiming to be inspired by it. So the question is, why is it still so hard for art historians and curatorial experts of the region to think of Southeast Asia or its sub regions material remains without starting with India. Today, as a beginning of explaining the dominance of greater India thinking, and as food for debate on the question, whether and how we can decolonize that multi centered world. I focus on what I call the charged knowledge networks and friendships between Asia and the West in the world of museums and trades in Asian art that helped shaping these moral geographies of greater India. And inspired by the work of Leila Gandhi, I argue that we should focus on the role of love or affections, and thus also greed across decolonization. If you want to understand the appeal and strength of greater India thinking in that rules. So, in this light, I explored the social political life of some antiquities of Indonesia's Islamic and Hindu Buddhist past traveling around 1900 from colonial Indonesia to museums and private collections in Europe and the US amongst them, where some of the heads of the 504 Buddha statues from Borobodor, or that Borobodor originally counted. I looked into five that turned up in France, just before and in the midst of the high tide of Buddhist art trades. And some of them ended up in music. Not the one on display here traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the rise in market price of around $1,700 within seven years. Their social life provides insight into how changing taxonomies and valuations of the material remains of Asia's Hindu Buddhist past transformed these objects into arts of greater India, and vice versa. From around 1910, greater India thinking became pivotal to the inception of a new category of and theorizing on Asian art and the emergence of the Friends of Asian Art movement and market. Two theosophist arts critics were crucial to the new appreciation of the Hindu Buddhist material remains for their aesthetic and Indian merits. Ananda Comraswami, he has been quoted today, born out of Sri Lankan and English parents who would become the first curator of the Indian section of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. And the second one is E.B. Havel, until 1906, superintendent of the Calcutta Government Art School. Both men looked at artistic expressions in Asia under the label of Indian art. Both argued from an India centered perspective that Asian art should be appreciated as high art in its own right, and not as a derivative of Western, and that is Greek and Roman standards. Asian art was superior to European art because in their eyes, it showed the Indian artist's capacity to conceptualizing the divine. In Havel's publications, one of Borobador's Buddha statues from the north side served as a superb example. While this statue was located in Java, maybe the National Museum of Dende of the Batavia's Genotskap, the art is Indian, concluded Havel. The ideas of Havel and Comraswami are still influential in the ways the material remains of the Hindu and Buddhist parts of Asia are put on display. Now, in the context of what was an inventive moment and a celebration of greater Indian art, as well as of Asia based nationalism, from the 1910s onward, cultural and economic elites in Asia, Europe and the US began to engage with new academic and private social activities, while self identifying as friends of Asian art and friends of Asia. Like the Viveaka. These associations reflected the globally connected powerful movements of greater Indian thinking that fed into colonial and intercolonial networks of knowledge. What's here is that how these associations firmly share the belief that the collection study and United Display of Asian reads Indianized arts and contemplation of the civilization in which they could flourish would benefit the West and the East. It would be good for both empire and Asian nationalist self esteem. The friends of Asian art were charmed and connected via their esteemed modern institutions and associations in the United States, Europe and Asia and built on trending theorization of Asian art as art of greater India. And their imagination became useful again, after World War Two, and the formal independence of the formerly colonized countries in Asia. So, in the 1950s, the newly independent Republic of Indonesia, once again became part and parcel of art of greater India exhibits, supported by the Indian amenities in several places in the world. To all indications for their curators, the categorization remained unproblematic. One such exhibit was held at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1950. Indonesia was represented as Java and exclusively by ancient Buddhist objects from American collections. This exhibition and its catalog are enlightening for how moral geographies of greater India can become etched in people's minds. The map of greater India, which framed all objects on display and the way curator Trudner defended the initiative. The Harvard where Comradwami also taught. Today, sincere efforts are being made to bring about closer relations between the East and the West. It is important that we attain knowledge of India's great cultural past and realize the tremendous role that country has played in the history of Eastern art, Parisian art. The immediate purpose of the exhibition is to bring about an unbiased and true appreciation of Indian art and this deeper understanding of India's great heritage. So much for the heritage of the other new independent nation states, the borders of which were obfuscated on the map of greater India and whose people were working at home in parallel on nation building through cultural politics. So, like here, where President Sukarno in December 1953 inaugurated the reconstruction of the 9th century Shiva Temple at Parmanon as Indonesia's first national monuments. In the country's National Museum in Jakarta, formerly the Museum of Ottavian Society, the Hindu Buddhist antiquities there and vertically tell the history of Indonesia, not India. Nonetheless, in museums outside of Indonesia, the Hindu Buddhist temple remains from Java still serves narratives of a greater India. So, what does love got to do with all of this? The study and collection of Indonesian antiquities by the secrets central in my paper was driven by love inclusiveness or motives of peace through cultural understanding. But their search also reveals the potential that love has to spawn epistemic violence and appropriation. The Friends of Asian Art, captivated by Comras Wami's and Havel's theories, identified the Indian artist's capacity to visualize the divine in what were, to them, self familiar images of a meditative man. This kind of self understanding and through their networks, texts and object based interpretations, sales and exhibitions, the Friends of Asian Art contributed to the global spread of moral geographies of greater India in the world of art. These moral geographies entailed exclusion, a steadfast blindness regarding Indonesia's predominantly Muslim population, which had so many other pasts to identify with, beyond those of Hindu Buddhist kingdoms, labeled as Indian, Indianized, or Indic. Now, back to Provedure and provenance research. It is intriguing that from the early 20th century outside the world of restoration expertise and restoration research and development. Many scholars scrutinizing the temple's history and meanings do so by reimagining the temple in the state it was built around 800, this as a complete unity. They rarely contemplated missing parts unless in the sense of regrettable loss and decay. Yet, ever since its so-called rediscovery in the early 19th century, the missing tokens are just as well a part of the stories Barobador has to tell. Barobador has become more and more incomplete over time, suffering losses in the course of the 19th and 20th century, due to the looting of objects belonging to a temple by individuals who saw no problem with that. It is moreover a site of national heritage, world heritage, and global Buddhist commemorative festivals like Vesak. It is and has been part of the local landscape in which local inhabitants build their own relations with the temple or profit from a local and international tourist industry and politics generated by world heritage site destination. This raises the question to what kind of temple, to what kind of temple would Barobador Buddha heads return if they do. Perhaps part of the answer lies in the kind of stories people tell each other about the temple's possible meanings to themselves or to others, academically, architecturally, artistically, privately, socially. Examples are the forms of local activism showing various forms of belonging. These include the protests of villagers living around Barobador, who were forced to move from the UNESCO supported restoration project in the 1980s, or what they call the robot Barobador, which means cleansing rituals, which these villagers have been organizing since 2003. I end this presentation, however, with another story or actually a poem by the Japanese Roman Catholic activist and poet Lidens Suriadi, entitled Barobador. Therein he reflects on a sacred landscape transformed by tourism and commerce, wondering what all of this might entail for Indonesian identity. The point I wanted to make with this poem was originally this. Not only academics study transformation of Barobador and the token, the tokens it lost into heritage objects, Indonesian poets and activists do so as well. And there are many examples from in the first half of the 19th century, the authors of the Serat Shantini to the modern Indonesian poets Noto Surato and Amir Hamza in late colonial times to Lidens Suriadi after the big UNESCO restoration in the 1980s. The literary scholar Taufi Kanafi, who helped me in tracing the original of this English translation, corrected me, and he was right. It is the other way around. Not only Indonesian poets reflect upon Barobador and make us think about its possible meanings, but other poets, academics, artists and tourists do and might do so too, anyone, anywhere. So I'm not sure if I have time to read the poem, but maybe you already read it. You want me to read? Can I? Yes, I read it, okay. Yeah, that's it, but I think at Barobador it is almost incredible. The statues of Buddha are without heads, headless in their places, quiet imprisoned by the old world. You guess full of anger. Is this a riddle? Or is it reality? I see only Japanese peddlers, groups of tourists sightseeing. Shops and restaurants are also there. Hotels and markets at the foot of the temple. When it is lush, the Bodhi tree falls with a crash. There is no replacement. There is another version without the centres for shopping and handicrafts. There is another meaning without the reality of the sacred building commercialized, the legacy replaced by arenas for entertainment, the diverse identity. Thank you very much, Marika. You've given us a really rich presentation there and my mind is going off in all kinds of directions now. I wonder if anybody would like to ask a question at this point. There must be a question in the room. Yes, Peter. You really use the word greater India as the centre of your talk and why is that still so important in the museum displays. It's true, I think what you say. I also think there is more attention now for individual identities. It's not only referring to India in a lot of new museum displays, but what I wanted to ask, in what way do you think this is related to the fascination of Europe or the west with the east? The more general, there's always still that division between the west and the east and then the east is often also something beautiful, something religious, isn't that also the case here? That's actually part of the bigger research, so I'm not only looking at the art historians, but it is a very telling example because you can also ask the question why should we see these spiritual objects and why is that what defines its art. But there is these ideas about an Hindu Buddhist culture that is per definition superior as a mirrored as against the images of the west as a materialist war minded civilization, which had a big appeal, of course, after the first world war. And it was not only promoted by people in the west, but very important figures from India, like Tagore, or the intellectuals from the Greater India Society. But you still encounter it, of course, this idea that Asia is better, and that it's India. And I think it's also quite natural for every human culture to show that the others are different in a way because you create your own identity by creating the other one as someone different. That's what often at stake. That doesn't explain why India and Indonesia and Southeast Asia is seen as one, although for the British, India was the east, for the French, Indochina was the east, for the Dutch, Indonesia was the east. Yes, but still, even in the Guimara, of course, Indochina is the center, but when you follow the order of the exhibition, there is this history of it. It begins in India, and you're right that if you look carefully, you see nuances, you see that curators really try to emphasize that these are processes of exchange. It has to do with the structure of how collections are formed and how exhibitions are displayed. So it is also just the order. You begin in India and slowly you move to the other, to further India, as it was called. Thank you very much. I thought that was really interesting. As much for, yeah, there's so many aspects to that, but one is competing nationalism, also a national heritage and concepts of this, but one, I wanted to make a remark because in the Reich's Museum we have, I mean, we do exactly what you say we have Indian, Indonesian and Cambodian sculptures in one room. And actually, I never thought of this as being a problem because we're showing, okay, the collection we have is largely Hindu Buddhist sculpture, that's what we inherited. And it makes sense to show it together so you can make comparisons, and I think we do that. But I never saw it as a problem until I realized that actually I was trained in Southeast Asian studies, so Greater India is for me something very kind of, okay, that's what they wrote about in the 20s and 30s, then it all changed in the 60s to something. When you emphasize local characteristics, so to me you can make a very interesting debate on this and you can show comparisons. But actually, one of the problems with that is that you have a revival of Greater India thinking in Hindu nationalism. And so a lot of Indian visitors see it completely in a Greater India perspective, and they're constantly reprinting, you know, books by Majumda and others who are part of the Greater India Society, which is a revival in India. Yes, but this is a question of, yeah, it's almost competing nationalisms. And one aspect which I think is maybe not emphasized enough is actually the Dutch contribution to the debate, because actually scholars such as in particular J.C. van Leu and FDK Bosch wrote very well in basically defending the kind of, yeah, Indonesian out perspective rather than India in. But it's true that there has been also in scholarship, there's been a continued indelogical emphasis in the study of the objects. So there is an indelogical bias. And there's reasons for that, partly because of the access to documentation regarding religion in other cultures, which are easier to to apply. That survive in, for example, in Tibet or in China, which don't survive documentation texts that don't survive in Indonesia. But, but, but yeah, there is work to be done on this. And yeah, we need to think again about how can how we can display things. Yeah, the thing is also that, I mean, we are also now all talking about Java in terms of Hindu Buddhists antiquities. So we reproduce what is happening in a way. So there is, yeah. And I know we have discussed this before how to get Islamic objects or whatever but to grab the microphone and have the last question. My prerogative I think I'm very intrigued you chose to put that as your final slide now William Dalrymple. It was actually, it was actually in the middle of my talk, but I skip it because it is one of my examples for how much it still has appeal, because this is a review from two blockbuster exhibitions in Metropolitan. One of them lost kingdoms and the other one was put his silk roads. And this was what he was, how he was reflecting on in the New York reviews of books. And for me, this is, this is a literal. This is easy as if he quotes Conrad Fami or Havel. And the other one example I had, but I definitely cannot. Oh, it's gone. Philip Glass interpretation of the country in Buddhism exhibition in the Museum of Asian Artists. I mean, just going on the internet and look for how Asian art museums are promoted or but he made a concert on the way Asian art has been inspired and together with the museum, you get this view of this beautiful spiritual Buddha heads. Yeah, it's all about Buddhism, the goodness of Buddhism. Well, it's not necessarily the case that Buddhism is not unviolence. I think the point I wanted to make is the research I have been doing along with a new book that came out by Peter Sherrick and Andrea Acre was called Creative South, and that actually Java was inspired inspiration for many things. It didn't all come from India. A lot of the work that I've been doing with textile patterns for any of you who know my book. You know that Indonesians, it came from Indonesia and then ended up in Tibet. It didn't all come the other way around and I think the more we need to say that I'm a real advocate for that and that was, I'm going to finish with my own words on that and I think, thank you very much, you did a great job to rounding it up for us. And I want to thank Heidi for rounding this up as well. And I know Ashley is waiting with wonderful notes written up there at the end, so I'll pass it back to Heidi and she can finish off. So now I would like to welcome Professor Ashley Thompson to round up this incredible day. Would you like to sit down? Thank you Ashley. Thank you. Is this on? Yes? Yes? Okay. Thank you. I don't necessarily have wonderful remarks and I don't have a lot of them, but thank you for thinking that I will. I really just wanted to, well, first of all, thank you all. Leslie in the first instance, Heidi, the team of students on our MA and who perhaps are the most interested parties. I would expect and I would hope here. I also want to thank the speakers, all of you, wherever you all are. Yes, there you are. Thank you very much for your energy and really I think staying the line all the way here for a few years as it were in the making. We really appreciate it. And I also want to thank the audience members for making it here today, as well as those people who are online, wherever you are online out there. It's been a very rich day for me. I find it somewhat unheimlish to use a word from a language I do not know. Insofar as it was very unfamiliar in some ways, going off to Indonesia and going off to the Netherlands and to the Germanic regions of Europe. That's not the part of Southeast Asia that I am most familiar with. And in a way, it was something of a, well, I'll use a French word here since that's the most more familiar thing at Depey's Mall as sort of a strange meant and a sense to do that at the same time it was very familiar. And I fear in some ways it was very familiar because it's Hindu Buddhist art issue just brought out and there are paradigms that we share due to largely due to colonial knowledge production and I think that makes it very familiar. We've learned it all through the museum displays as well. I think there are also shared questions through restitution, for example, that are familiar to me in my Cambodia field right now as they really rise to the fore. So I appreciate that because it spoke to me in interesting ways, thought provoking ways, also because it's from the outside of what I think about in most of my time. So I just wanted to, I thought it might be useful to just to raise a few questions or to draw out a few questions with you all really expertly raised in your papers, and ways that I think it would be useful for us as a program, perhaps as a larger collective I don't know to take forward. Perhaps through further collaborative work perhaps through publications I don't know but just questions that that arose from me and listening to you all today. And they're very unformulated you saw me sort of typing out a few incoherent words a moment ago so here they are. The first is the relations between the collective and the individual it seemed to me that that came up a lot. One way that it came up is that there's a sort of collective ownership that you might put on the side of the local in thinking about the objects that we've been discussing today, versus a sort of paradigm of private ownership that seems to that seems to govern processes of restitution processes of understanding. What these objects mean today and where they should be. I thought perhaps thinking through more thoroughly what what what Marika just drew out and perhaps I sort of heard this myself and it's not what you were saying but that perhaps the word belonging is more appropriate or more productive in thinking about the place of objects today so belonging versus ownership or belonging and relationship to ownership are that they're not quite the same thing, and maybe thinking through that relationship would be useful for all of us. So, yeah questions of the protection of private property being privileged over that of collective property, and maybe property again isn't the right word there but how do we, how does that function in the larger context that we've been looking at. The last talk also made me think about I had noted here violence. Many, many times in my papers in my notes today I noted violence, but the last talk made me think maybe we should introduce also the word love into how we're thinking about this but of course, an expression of love which can be channeled to violence. Unfortunately, I think is at least a first step in thinking the expression of love, which is often at work in the museumification of objects in our historical work, and so much of what we are all involved with. So that brings me to violence associated with the art that we study and certainly associated with the way that we study art. So, many questions of real violence, I think that was that was primarily in Brigitte's talk today, but not only. Perhaps it was most in the surface and in your talk today, the real violence, a looter being beaten, for example, but also I think more, more broadly there were questions of epistemological violence that were at work in a lot of the talks that we heard today. So things such as how does the categorization of antiquities versus ethnographic material, how does that character, how does that categorization impact upon the destiny of materials, and their appreciation. Is the what are the violences inherent or at least potentially there within those processes of categorization and the types of terms that we use. How do terminology is pitting, for example, local looters against European collectors who take materials or purchase materials or acquire materials. What does it matter when we use those terms and how can we think productively about our own usage. A really interesting question I thought arose about what is a fake. You know, when does it become a fake and how what does it mean when we call it that. And what does it matter if we call something a modern production, or a replica, or a Buddha period. Or a fake. What what what does it matter and what are we producing in our own language in our own sort of categorization of that. To be a little bit more frank about things what does it matter when we call something Hindu Buddhist art. That's a question we think a lot about in this in this program that is sponsoring this symposium today, and it's a question that we experience a lot of discomfort with, and that we are very open to exploring. I think that we've also sort of put that on the table to you all have put that on the table for us in a way that we can have a hard time doing it so I really appreciate that. Another sort of watchword that came up for me and listening to all of you speak is embodiment. How do, how do objects regulate social order. We talked about, I think this was in talking about the copper plates. The gods are present in the temple when the objects are present, and that presence of the objects ensures a kind of social order. It seems to me to be quite important and thinking further those questions of embodiment, both on the part of the objects, and on the part of people in relationship to the objects is something that I think we could, we could spend a little bit more time on together. Yeah, I'm almost done. So, right. Coffee soon or what is it probably not coffee something better. Yeah, right. Okay. And another, another point is, yeah, just thinking this sort of this kind of the dichotomies between the local and the the Euro. I want to say Euro American we didn't really talk about that whole side of the world today but it's there in my mind, the European, or what is often put on the side of the universal. We tend to think about living culture as being on the side of the local, and about colonial paradigms, certainly our historical paradigms as privileging originality the original site original form and authenticity. There are many ways in which this is true, right, in which local cultural practices privilege modification use reuse the evolution of objects evolution of their meanings. But of course there are other ways in which local practices are really oriented towards retaining the original and valuing the original and I think I certainly tend to move side of that at times. One example that the very logic of restitution of Southeast Asian States today, making a claim to objects coming home is home is premised on that notion of the original of a privileging of the original and all the authentic. So it's not so clear cut that one is on the one side and the other on the other. Vice versa, I think it's important to notice or at least to hope that academic knowledge does evolve. And it changes and it is no longer only privileging original meaning that is art history is no longer only privileging original meaning no matter how retrograde art history may appear to be particularly when it comes to Asian art. There are, for example, modes of art history, which I dare say have also infiltrated the museum, which interrogate the violences that can be engendered through appreciation of beauty or categorization as art. I suppose I was going to say something about the Children of the River, which was such a wonderful formulation. And again in this sort of, I don't know, is it an East West dichotomy or a local versus universal dichotomy. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about local terminologies and I tend to think that tells me a lot about local perspectives. I think that's also a sort of methodological position that I need to query. So, for example, in this term Children of the River, which would indicate that they belong to the land, or the water in this instance, and so therefore the land belongs to them, or whatever it coughs up belongs to them. I wonder what is the source of that logic. Is there, is it purely local, or is the local pure, or is the local authentic and is it not also heterogeneous and we have to sort of consider the heterogeneity of such such an utterance, or such a sort of self identification of Children of the River. I suppose the last thing I will say is again in thinking about the ways that we might pursue some of the questions here and challenging established dichotomies between the local and the European or the colonial or the American or the universal, the ritual versus the academic even is something like this. It seems to me that we're, we are fairly aware of and this is something we do a lot with the students right where we're fairly so so I and a number of colleagues take our southeast Asian we have a bunch of southeast Asian bursary students you all may know this working on postgraduate programs and we, we for since 2014 we've spent a week long field trip every year visiting archives and museum collections and research archives in Paris for the French colonial materials. And in in the Netherlands for the Dutch colonial archives and during that over the over the course of those trips. There's there's a stark difference that comes out to all of us, I think, between a Dutch I'm being very reductive here, but let me do it a Dutch approach to thinking the colonial past which is evidenced in a museum display and in archival organizations and in presentation of those materials to us and a French a French approach to, shall I say not thinking the colonial past in the context of museum display, etc. Again that's very reductive on both sides but there's there's a stark contrast. I was saying to someone a moment ago that I think that contrast is actually really changing with French governmental initiatives under Macklew etc regarding restitution I think that is evolving, but so far it's still pretty, pretty steady. So I think that we're we've become fairly accustomed to seeing the impact of the different colonial context on object interpretation on knowledge production around around objects, and how that is impacting restitution issues today. What we're less attentive to or what is more difficult to feel out into grasp is the the other the sort of other side of the medallion, which would be the the kind of specificities that the local specificities within southeast Asian context that are themselves impacting object, object interpretation knowledge production, and therefore the restitution context today. I think that's harder to see. Also because of the Hindu Buddhist paradigm that we sort of put it all under one paradigm and it's harder to see what are the specificities going on around Borobudua since the 17th century and people are writing about you know Borobudua as a refuge. What are the specificities around around Angkor Wat or around coke. What are the specificities going on in a very local context that make us understand things differently in those different contexts and make us understand the make the restitution processes different in each place it's not just an effect of the colonial past is what I'm trying to say it's also an effect of things on the ground, and it seems to me that's what we that's one of the major tasks that we have now is to really. Feel out on specificities and differences on on on the ground underneath and melded with what we call Hindu Buddhist art. So. And so one way of saying that is let's think about the heterogeneity of the local rather than using that term that I keep using called the local. Right, so all in there. Thank you all very much. It's been wonderful to have you and we have now I think a reception and I'll turn it over to Heidi into Leslie to tell us about that.