Sask. art gallery reviewing 2,000 pieces following return of stolen Indian statue

A Saskatchewan art gallery is investigating 2,000 pieces in its collection following the return of a stolen statue to India.

CBC News was recently granted access to the basement vault of Regina's MacKenzie Art Gallery, where namesake Norman MacKenzie's journals and records are stored. They detail MacKenzie's theft of the Indian statue, but also raise questions about other pieces he acquired from China, Syria and elsewhere.

Galleries and museums across North America and Europe are facing demands to return pieces looted from other countries. Some say it's also time to debate whether names like MacKenzie should remain on those buildings.

"Institutions — whether they're local, provincial, national — all created a colonial narrative. The narrative was one of defeat. It's a colonial story," said Gerald McMaster, a Canada research chair at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and director at the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge.

"I think the reckoning is coming."

The MacKenzie gallery's CEO John Hampton recently escorted CBC News to a basement door marked "Vault," keying in a series of security codes before entering. After donning blue latex gloves, Hampton opened a drawer containing MacKenzie's original dictated ledgers from his 1913 world trips.

MacKenzie had moved to Regina from Ontario years earlier and established a thriving law practice. His growing art collection was almost totally destroyed during the 1912 Regina Cyclone, the deadliest tornado in Canadian history, which killed 28 people.

MacKenzie and his wife then embarked on the first of two world tours to replace and enhance his decimated collection.

Hampton opened the large, black leather-bound book and flipped through page after page of photos and descriptions of each piece. It included the story of the Indian statue.

MacKenzie had apparently dictated the story at some point after returning: He and his guide were rowing down the Ganges River in the holy city of Varanasi, then called Benares, when they came upon a Hindu temple.

He saw three stone statues at the edge of a pool filled with red liquid. MacKenzie assumed it was sacrificial blood, but gallery officials say it was most likely coloured with "sindoor," a red powder used in ceremonies.

MacKenzie talked to a man there who agreed to steal one of the statues. Later that night, the man brought all three to MacKenzie's hotel room.

MacKenzie said he'd only buy one, because he knew it was "a most serious offence" and he could have "gotten into trouble" with the British colonial government if he tried to smuggle out all three. MacKenzie told the man to return to the scene and put back the other two statues.

But he took the third statue — depicting goddess Annapurna — back home to Saskatchewan, where it remained for the past 108 years.