The Met Returns Two Cambodian Sculptures as Trafficking Probe Widens
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has repatriated two sandstone sculptures to Cambodia, adding another chapter to a long-running reckoning over looted antiquities in major museum collections. The works — an Angkor period guardian deity, or rākṣasa, dating to c. 921-945, and a mid-7th-century lintel carved with an anthropomorphic dragon — were formally transferred to the Kingdom of Cambodia at a ceremony yesterday, along with a third sandstone sculpture depicting Harihara.
The returns were reported by both the Met and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and follow Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Doris Wiener, a New York gallery dealer and known trafficker who died in 1981, and her daughter Nancy Wiener, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in trafficking looted artifacts. The guardian deity once stood at the entrance of the Prasat Chen temple at Koh Ker, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where its feet and pedestal are still visible. Koh Ker was heavily looted in the 1970s, and the Met said the statue had been sold to Doris Wiener in 1972 before she gifted it to the museum in 1987.
The object remained on display at the Met until this year, when it was seized by the district attorney’s office. Its return underscores how provenance research, once treated as a specialized curatorial task, has become central to the museum’s public accountability. Max Hollein, the Met’s director and chief executive officer, said the institution has expanded its provenance research and continues to review its collection proactively.
The museum has already returned Cambodian works on multiple occasions. In 2023, it sent back 14 sculptures after an investigation into Douglas Latchford, the British-Thai businessman indicted by federal prosecutors for alleged antiquities trafficking before his death in 2020. In 2013, it voluntarily returned two objects known as the “Koh Ker Kneeling Attendants,” also linked to Latchford. The Met’s relationship with Cambodia has also included the 2014 exhibition “Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia,” which drew major loans from Cambodia’s national museums.
Bragg said the sculptures had been in New York City illegally for decades. The D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has now convicted 18 people, recovered more than 6,350 cultural treasures valued at more than $490 million, and returned nearly 6,000 objects to 38 countries. Another seven extraditions are pending.
