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In 2002 the Royal Academy was given over to an exhibition of thirty-five ancient Buddha images that had been unearthed in northern China. They were exquisitely beautiful, with slender, androgynous torsos and a radiant inwardness. The exhibition rooms were darkened and the figures picked out by spotlights. Looking at them you felt you'd entered the sublime, tranquil realm the images created. This week, the latest row with Greece over whether the the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles should be returned set me thinking about the difference between seeing those Chinese Buddhas and my usual experience in museums. For me, a Buddha image is the outward expression of a dimension that can only be accessed by opening your mind through devotion or meditation. Its purpose is to evoke wisdom, compassion or transformative energy. It may also be a work of art and offer insights into the culture that produced it; but for Buddhists, a Buddha image is, above all, a sacred object, whose natural home is a shrine or a temple. I imagine other faith traditions would say something similar about their artefacts. I’m sure curators would say that the exhibits in their collections are fine where they are. But for me, situating sacred objects within the secular space of a museum or gallery changes their meaning. Some objects survive their displacement. The huge standing Amitabha Buddha figure that confronts you when you enter the British Museum from Russell Square has a gravity and grace that’s somehow enhanced by the stairwell winding around it. But, in the museum’s spacious Asian art galleries, other objects can feel stranded on a plinth or cut off behind glass. The loss of the context that gave an object its meaning is often an argument for returning them to their places of origin. Alongside that discussion, I would love to see museums and galleries displaying objects in ways that fit their meaning within the faiths that produced them. It might be hard to create a temple in a gallery, but I think our museums would look very different if they were conceived as contemplative spaces, where people of all faiths and none can absorb themselves in the deeper meaning of the works on display. When I visit the National Gallery in London I always try to see Leonardo Da Vinci’s cartoon of the Virgin and Child. The work itself is ethereally beautiful, but what makes it special is that it’s set apart, in a sheltered space away from damaging daylight – an inadvertent shrine and a place of communion.