Three 9th and 10th Century bronze sculptures, worth more than one million dollars, are to be returned to Cambodia by the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), after a decade-long investigation into their origin proved they had been stolen.
According to the BBC, which notes that the return of the artefacts comes amid a global push to return looted cultural goods, Cambodia’s government welcomed the historic move as ‘an important step towards rectifying past injustices’.
The three artworks originally came from the Champa Kingdom that once inhabited Vietnam and parts of Cambodia.
The works are to remain on display at the NGA in Canberra for three years while Cambodia prepares a new home for them in Phnom Penh.
The NGA says it purchased the sculptures in 2011 for about $1.5m from British artefacts smuggler, Douglas Latchford.
The BBC reports that Latchford, who died in 2020, has been implicated in the illegal trade of antiquities since 2016, according to the NGA, with charges laid against him in 2019 relating to the alleged trafficking of stolen and looted Cambodian artefacts.
The three statues were reportedly unearthed in a field in Tboung Khmum in the east of Cambodia in 1994 before being smuggled to international art dealers across the border in Thailand and ending up in Latchford’s collection.
Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak, worked alongside researchers from the NGA and Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts to help return the goods.
This is the second time the NGA has removed stolen art from its collection in recent years, according to the BBC.
In 2021, the gallery returned a series of artefacts to India – some dating back to the 11th Century – which were linked to alleged antiquities smuggler Subhash Kapoor and the late New York art dealer William Wolff.