But how many other collecting institutions, either in Australia or overseas, will follow suit?

The gallery is hardly the only institution to be grappling with the issue of how to deal with items that have made their way into large-scale collections through suspect, or even just circuitous means.

Acquisition policies have evolved over the years, just as cultural appropriation has gradually - oh-so-gradually - come to be viewed as an undesirable act for a gallery, museum or library to find itself adopting, albeit years after the fact.

National Gallery director Nick Mitzevich was announcing the return of a further 14 works from its Asian art collection, most procured through disgraced New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor.

In doing so, he said the gallery had applied a new framework when assessing the provenance of an object - one that takes both legalities and ethics into consideration.

"If you were to view this purely through a legal lens, you would continue to have uncertainty," he said.

It's a simple metric that should have been introduced from the outset: if a work from another country has even the faintest question mark over its provenance, it doesn't belong in the national collection.

The gallery's current approach, which includes transparency around its review processes, is a marked contrast with the way the matter was handled back in 2014, when revelations emerged that its Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja) had been looted from a temple in Tamil Nadu in southern India.

Back then, gallery management went into defensive damage control, refusing to bow to any suggestion that its processes for acquiring antiquities could do with improvement.

But now it's leading the way, as well it should. Mr Mitzevich has also spoken of "refocusing" the gallery's collecting policy, in a way that makes its sprawling collection "smaller and better".

With this goal, the national collection should set the standard when it comes to assessing and returning works to their rightful owners.

It should also send a message to those overseas institutions that continue, stubbornly and ideologically, to hold items of great significance to Indigenous Australians, including symbolic works and human remains.

Past practices are there to be interrogated, not defended. And mistakes must be remedied, not justified. It's the only way we can rightfully be proud of our institutions and what they stand for.

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