Sotheby’s Wars With Cambodia Over Allegedly Looted Statue

By Rachel Corbett

artinfo.com

October 23, 2012, 

After a year of failed negotiations, the U.S. and Cambodian governments are fighting Sotheby’s in court for the return of a 1,000-year-old statue of a Hindu warrior that was allegedly looted from a temple in Koh Ker, near the border of Thailand, NPR reports. The figure was set to hit the auction block last year, but Sotheby’s pulled it after protests from Cambodian officials. Now the house has filed to legally block the government from seizing the work.

A computer-modeling analysis has led one Cambodia archaeologist to argue that that the statue was ripped from its pedestal at the temple and probably sold illegally. But Sotheby’s counters that the government simply can’t prove it.

According to NPR:

The auction house declined to be interviewed for this report, but provided documents arguing that Cambodia has no physical evidence of exactly when over the past 1,000 years the statue was looted. There have been multiple periods of upheaval involving both foreign invaders and domestic conflict, in which looting occurred.
But LeMaistre argues that there is at least clear circumstantial evidence of when these particular statues left the country.
“There is evidence that all this looting occurred at the end of the ’60s,” she says. “The Duryodhana [statue] was looted from Cambodia because this site was looted at the same time, and several pieces were found on the art market at the same time, for the first time.”