In 2000, the first three heads – the ox, tiger, and monkey – re-emerged on the art market, where they were purchased by the Chinese state-owned Poly Group. They are currently housed in the Poly Art Museum in Beijing.
In 2003, the National Treasure Funds of China (NTFC), working to repatriate Chinese cultural heritage, discovered that the pig head was in a private New York collection. The fund negotiated the purchase of the pig with funds provided by the Macau-based gambling magnate, Stanley Ho, who donated over $770,000 USD. The following year, the fund donated the boar head to the Poly Art Museum, where it joins the three previously recovered zodiac heads.
Four years after the recovery of the pig head, the horse head was listed in the Sotheby’s Hong Kong October 9, 2007 sale of ceramics and works of art. The consignor, a Taiwanese collector, had purchased it at Sotheby’s in London in 1989 for $400,000. In contrast to the pig head, which in 2003 sold for under $1 million, the horse had a presale estimate of $10 million.
Despite the Chinese government’s strong objections, Sotheby’s initially intended to proceed with the sale. Shortly before the auction, however, Sotheby’s privately brokered the sale of the horse head to Stanley Ho for $8.88 million. Sotheby’s indicated that the seller agreed to the terms in light of Ho’s intention to eventually donate the sculpture to China. Ho exhibited the horse head in Hong Kong and at his casino in Macau until 2019, when his family donated it to the Chinese National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA).
The horse was first zodiac fountain sculpture returned to the reconstructed Yuanmingyuan Park complex in Beijing.
