A sacred Buddhist painting stolen from Bomunsa, a Buddhist temple in South Korea, in 1989 has been returned after more than three decades, following its discovery in the online collections database of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.

The painting, known as Sinjungdo, a depiction of Buddhist guardian deities, was one of four artworks stolen during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1989. The thieves had disguised themselves as hikers to enter the grounds of Bomunsa, in North Gyeongsang Province.

The thieves were eventually found and prosecuted, and the authorities located two of the stolen paintings in 2014. The other two paintings remained missing for several years.

Bomunsa’s abbot, Ham Tae-Wan, described his feelings in a letter, stating: “I have blamed myself for failing to safeguard these Buddhist paintings that are objects of faith in Korea . . . not just art.” (The New York Times)

It seemed as though the painting might be lost forever until, in 2023, government officials in South Korea discovered one of the stolen paintings in the Smart Museum of Art’s online collections database.  The officials told Bomunsa’s monks of their findings.

In August 2024, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago received a letter from the president of the Jogye Order, the largest Buddhist order in South Korea. In the letter, the Jogye Order’s president, Ven. Jinwoo, explained that the museum was in possession of a sacred Buddhist painting that had been stolen in the 1980s. Ven. Jinwoo noted: “I hope that the museum will work with us amicably on this matter so this sacred Buddhist painting can be returned.” (The New York Times)

Vanja Malloy had served as the Smart Museum’s director for less than a year when news of the Buddhist painting’s provenance came to light.  Over the course of a year, Malloy acted to secure a US$2.45 million grant for the Lilly Endowment to refine and improve the museum’s ability to research the derivation of religious objects and artworks. She also began the process of returning the painting to the monks.

Malloy described her mindset during this time: “Through the whole repatriation process, I kept thinking: what did the museum miss?” (The New York Times)

Her inquiries uncovered the fact that the Smart Museum possessed little documentation of the painting’s provenance.  The little that existed consisted of an email from a New York gallery, the Kang Collection, which stated that the gallery had purchased the painting from a private collector in California in the 1980s.

The difficulty of tracking the derivation of a painting was described by Gay-Young Cho, a member of the Smart Museum’s board of governors: “Twenty years ago, you trusted that galleries had a due process. Now at our collections meetings, there is always a question of what is the provenance of a particular piece.” (The New York Times)

Malloy and the Smart Museum returned the stolen painting to a delegation of Buddhist monks in a ceremony in Chicago in November 2024.  Malloy described the experience: “When they saw the work, they immediately knelt and started praying. Everyone who saw it was moved. It made me think about the significance of these religious objects in our collection, and how they still have so much meaning to their communities.” (The New York Times)

The Smart Museum hopes to use a portion of grant money received from the Lilly Endowment to build an open-access tool for researching the provenance of artworks, along with updating the museum’s provenance policies.  They are being assisted in this by the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion.

Malloy described the benefit that will be derived from this: “This grant gives us an opportunity to not just play defensively when things like this come up, but to be leaders and ask what resources people need.” (The New York Times)

See more

Stolen From Buddhist Monks, Sacred Painting Is Returned by Chicago Museum (The New York Times)
Stolen Buddhist painting to return home from US after 35 years (The Korea Times)

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