Three bronze sculptures looted from Cambodia and later sold to the National Gallery of Australia for $1.5 million will be returned to the Southeast Asian kingdom, the museum announced Thursday.
The gallery purchased the artifacts in 2011 from the late art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was subsequently accused by US investigators of trafficking stolen antiquities.
“This is an historic occasion and an important step towards rectifying past injustices, reinforcing the value of cultural properties, and acknowledging the importance of preserving and protecting cultural heritage,” said Dr. Chanborey Cheunboran, Cambodia’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, at a repatriation ceremony in Canberra last Friday, according to the museum.
From left to right, Cambodia’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Dr. Cheunboran Chanborey; the National Gallery of Australia’s director, Nick Mitzevich; and Australian Special Envoy for the Arts Susan Templeman sign a loan agreement in Canberra.
Karlee Holland/National Gallery of Australia
Latchford was considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on art from the Khmer Empire, which ruled between the 9th and 15th centuries.
In 2019, US authorities brought charges against the British dealer in a New York court claiming he had served as “a conduit” for stolen treasures since the 1970s. Investigators say he was part of an organized looting network that faked records for items taken or illicitly excavated from archaeological sites like Angkor Wat.
Latchford died in Thailand in 2020, aged 88, without answering to any of the charges.
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Dating back to the 9th or 10th century, the artifacts returned this week depict three different Bodhisattvas, enlightened figures often portrayed in Buddhist sculpture.
Bradley Gordon, a legal advisor to the Cambodian government, told CNN via WhatsApp that a delegation from the country had engaged in “productive conversations on research” with the National Gallery of Australia. He added that “about 20” other Cambodian items in the museum’s collection are still being reviewed.
The National Gallery confirmed this via email, saying that “all works of art from the region are under review” and that “the outcome of the research process will inform the future of the Cambodian and Khmer works of art currently in (our) care.”
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In 2021, Latchford’s daughter Nawapan Kriangsak promised to return all the Cambodian artifacts she inherited from her father to the country. Her collection — made up of at least 100 statues and carvings — is considered of such cultural significance that the country’s national museum in its capital Phnom Penh is being expanded to accommodate it.
Cambodia’s Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Phoeurng Sackona, told CNN at the time that news of the items’ return had produced a “magical feeling.”
“Our culture and our statues are not just wood and clay, they possess spirits, and they have senses,” she said in a video interview, via a translator. “The pieces themselves want to come back to their country.”
One of the bodhisattva statues to be returned to Cambodia.
Kingdom of Cambodia/National Gallery of Australia
The three items from the National Gallery will join that collection in Phnom Penh once the new extension is complete. In the meantime, they remain on display in Australia.
This is the National Gallery’s second major repatriation of objects found to have been stolen or looted. In 2021, it returned 17 works of art connected to disgraced art dealers Subhash Kapoor and William Wolff.
The museum said these decisions demonstrate its “commitment to being a leader in the ethical management of collections.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
