Displaying items by tag: honolulu museum of art

The Honolulu Museum of Art and the Honolulu Academy of Arts (HAA) are suing art collector Joel Alexander Greene for $880,000 for previous donations.

The museum fears that Greene's works may have come from a smuggling ring—an entanglement which the institution especially wants to avoid after seven of its artifacts were seized by Homeland Security Investigations in connection to the ongoing case against disgraced Indian art dealer Subhash Kapoor.

An international investigation into antiquities looted from India and smuggled into the United States has taken authorities to the Honolulu Museum of Art.

The museum on Wednesday handed over seven rare artifacts that it acquired without museum officials realizing they were ill-gotten items. Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the items back to New York and, from there, eventually return them to the government of India.

U.S. customs agents say the items were taken from religious temples and ancient Buddhist sites, and then allegedly smuggled to the United States by an art dealer. The dealer, Subhash Kapoor, was arrested in 2011 and is awaiting trial in India. Officials say Kapoor created false provenances for the illicit antiquities.