The Rubin Museum has listed a total of 770 objects on their online collections page as of March 25, 2024.

According to the documentary Nepal: The Great Plunder | 101 East, Rubin Museum has more than 3,800 works of Himalayan art. The Rubin Museum stores objects not on view at the UOVO, a high-security art storage facility headquartered in Long Island City, New York. A private contractor, UOVO describes itself as a “state-of-the-art [facility] ideal for the long-term preservation and care of archives, cultural artifacts, contemporary collectibles and rare objects.” As Tibetans who have been caretakers of our sacred objects since time immemorial, we describe institutions such as the Rubin & UOVO as prisons where our (and many other communities’) object relatives are held hostage. Stripped of their blessed relics and denied traditional offerings, our statues, paintings, and ritual items are confined to sterile, unnatural conditions that reflect the extractive eyes of colonialism.

How did these objects end up at the Rubin? The Rubin has not disclosed the provenance records of objects in their collection, so it is “unknown” whether these objects were originally stolen. According to Brooklyn-based arts magazine Hyperallergic, however: “The Rubin Museum of Art was founded by Shelley and Donald Rubin in 2004, who started collecting Himalayan cultural objects in the 1970s — known as the heydays of looting of Nepal’s cultural heritage.” Further, after activist pressure in 2022, Rubin Museum returned two sacred objects to Nepal after they were identified as stolen.

Note: when keyword searching ‘Tibet’ in Rubin’s online collections page, only 61 objects appear. However, scanning the database more closely reveals hundreds of objects from Tibet.