Denver Art Museum Repatriates Khmer Artifacts to Cambodia

DENVER, COLORADO—The Denver Art Museum will repatriate four Khmer artifacts to Cambodia, according to a report in The Washington Post. “Each one has a fascinating story and priceless value to our nation,” said Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s Minister of Culture and Fine Arts. These four objects have been linked to a Cambodian looting team operating during political unrest in the 1970s. The museum acquired them between 2000 and 2005 with input from the art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was indicted in 2019 for allegedly looting artifacts from Cambodia. He died last year. The artifacts include a late twelfth-century sandstone sculpture of the goddess of transcendent wisdom called the Prajnaparamita, thought to have been taken from southern Cambodia; a prehistoric bronze bell thought to be part of a set of 12 used to call warriors to battle to the north of Phnom Penh; and a seventh- or eighth-century sandstone sculpture of the sun god Surya, and a lintel depicting the sleep of the Hindu god Vishnu and the birth of Brahma. Both of these items are thought to have come from a temple on Kulen Mountain. “We encourage museums and private collectors with Khmer cultural properties to reach out to the ministry to share provenance documentation and to move toward voluntary repatriation of our Cambodian treasures,” Sackona concluded. To read about Khmer rest temples set along roads crisscrossing the Angkor Empire, go to "The Pursuit of Wellness: Rest."