Updates on Two Ongoing Cases...

In regards to the Kapoor and Koh Ker statue cases that I originally assisted in tracking or exposing, here are some excellent updates recently reported. Once my doctorate is finished, I will return to more regular and weighty posts where possible, as well as new topics as they arise!

-Regarding Cambodia vs. Sotheby's, the case now seems to be locked in a legal battle between Sotheby's lawyers and the US District attorney. Sotheby's is still prohibited from moving or selling the piece, and the fight will resume on the 12th April. My colleague Jason Felch reports for the LA times here, and Chasing Aphrodite has a great summary here.

-Regarding the Kapoor case, the global network of his contacts and charitable (tax deductible?) "gifts" is slowly being revealed (see Chasing Aphrodite again here). I predict that as more investigations occur, more antiquities trafficked from outside Tamil Nadu and beyond will be revealed. Does this include the alleged smuggling of Buddhist statuary and antiquities out of Afghanistan, and might they have ended up in galleries such as this one, investigated by Australian authorities once before?

Particularly interesting to me is the presence of antiquities (in the LACMA collection and elsewhere?) gifted by Kapoor's brother Ramesh via his independent Kapoor Galleries. I personally visited this gallery as well in 2010 and can attest that it is smaller is size/scope than Art of the Past and allegedly trades more in historic pieces and paintings. Is Subhash Kapoor merely trying to foist blame onto his innocent siblings and daughter (here), or are they more connected than we realize?

Of course, an investigation is currently underway regarding the National Gallery of Australia's Shiva statue, one of 21 artifacts purchased from Kapoor (see photo above, © The Australian). Several press releases have occurred locally (here, here, and here). I can personally attest to having been briefly interviewed for Mrs. Boland's article in The Australian, but more relevant authorities as to the specific legal matters were also approached. An additional update as of August 6th is that the Art Gallery of NSW has also purchased from Kapoor and is now under investigation (see reporting here). Another relevant question is what will recently proposed Immunity from Seizure acts currently moving through the Australian Parliament mean for repatriation or prosecution? More developments on these cases and others will be broken or shared here as situations warrant.

Breaking News: Another Repatriation Claim for Khmer Antiquities

I just received an article a few moments ago from a colleague, written by NY Times authors Tom Mashburg and Ralph Blumenthal. It concerns a new repatriation case to get two c. 921-945AD statues ("The Kneeling Attendants") that likely stood at Koh Ker before their theft in the 1970s returned to Cambodia. This time, the Met is the defendant, with the Cambodian government's cultural heritage division (APSARA) and UNESCO currently assembling the evidence for this claim. 

In the Met's defense, the article attests that internal investigation in 1997 resulted in the return of a 10th c. head of Shiva to APSARA. However, from my own visits there in 2010 at least, I can attest that many of the prehistoric artifacts on display, due to their types and rarity (especially grave goods), have much more suspect origins. Their newest acquisitions policy, on paper, is supposed to be very strict in terms of all antiquities having pre-1970 provenance, but...?

The article alleges that these statues would have stood mere yards from the standing statue (referred to as Duryodhyana) that the US and Cambodian governments are trying to get returned by Sotheby's. All these peaces were connected to the London auction house Spink & Sons in the 1980s, likely arriving in London via Bangkok after being looted during the chaos of the Khmer Rouge regime. If the testimony of local villagers given in the article that the temple "had been virtually unmolested" before the 1970s is true, then this would add to the case, but the doubt expressed as to their origins by the individual who originally purchased them from Spinks is worth noting.

If Spinks really did loose the paperwork, this will make the case harder to prove. The Met's current Director of External Affairs is here on record giving the standard argument that Western museums have some sort of right/obligation to acquire cultural property/heritage at all costs, "especially if, by doing so, they might be protected from disappearance completely from public view and from study." While this may seem noble, it can never excuse arranging, relying on, or condoning obvious looting in order to flesh out one's 'encyclopedic' museum shelves.

On the other hand, however, Cambodia was in a state of turmoil and these pieces very well could have been destroyed if Koh Ker was bombed... I won't deny that cases like these are far more complicated than dealing with prehistoric SE Asian antiquities on the market, but the high profile nature of these statues should at least encourage all possible information to be gathered. All we can do is stay tuned as  this newest case develops.