Two Khmer Statues in the Met: What Are They Doing There?

The Cambodian government is being kept busy trying to piece together the history of two objects in the Southeast Asian galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum. These two life-size 10th-century sandstone statues, called the Kneeling Attendants, currently "flank the doorway of the gallery where the Met displays its small but globally significant collection of artifacts from the glory days of Khmer civilization". They had been on display since 1994 when the Met opened its new Southeast Asian galleries. The heads of the two statues had been donated in 1987 and 1989, and the two torsos were given together to the museum in 1992. It now appears that they were taken around 1970,

at about the same time as a companion piece, a mythic warrior figure that the United States government sought to seize last month on Cambodia’s behalf from Sotheby’s, where it had been placed for sale [...]  Anne LeMaistre, the Unesco representative in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, said her agency is assembling a report laying out evidence that the Met statues and the Sotheby’s warrior belonged to a 12-statue Khmer empire grouping first broken up when Cambodia was destabilized by civil war. 

The evidence accumulated in the case of the 'Sotheby’s Koh Ker piece', indicates that the temple was savagely looted after 1970, during Cambodia’s chaotic and bloody years of civil war, genocide and Vietnamese occupation. There is testimony from villagers who say the temple was virtually unmolested until the 1970s, and the not insignificant detail that until the late 1960s the area lacked the roads needed to carry away large and heavy statuary. The Met had (obtained) no information to say how and when these objects had left the country, or from what site they had come (though the style should have suggested that they were from the Koh Ker site in the period of its greatest glory).

Archaeologists believe the Kneeling Attendants stood for about 1,000 years at the Prasat Chen temple in a vast site called Koh Ker, about 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, said Eric Bourdonneau, who directs a project at the site overseen by the French School of Asian Studies. The Met statues, the experts say, stood a few yards from the Sotheby’s warrior, a figure known as Duryodhana. 

One of the heads and both torsos are listed as gifts from Douglas A. J. Latchford (a British citizen living in Thailand who has a vast collection of Khmer antiquities). The New York Times journalists contacted  Mr. Latchford, 80, in Bangkok, he gave some interesting information:

he came upon the three items when they were the property of Spink & Son, a London dealer known for its sales of Asian art. “Spinks had had the pieces for some time,” Mr. Latchford said, “and they had not sold, so in honor of the curator, who was Martin Lerner, they requested that I would provide financial aid to donate them, and that’s what I did and why they are in my name.” Mr. Latchford said that he did not know where Spink had gotten the items, that he never took possession of them, and that he does not have any documents from the transaction. He recalled spending about £10,000. A spokesman for Spink said it no longer has any of the paperwork from that era. The family that donated the head of the other statue in 1987 also found it at Spink, a year before the gift, and said it had not come with any information on its provenance. Marsha Vargas Handley, the wife of Raymond G. Handley, one of two donors, who has since died, said the purchase price was $42,000. 

It will be recalled that Spinks (suppliers too of the ACCG illegal import stunt coins) was also mixed up in the story of the other Koh Ker statues in the news recently... Note the interesting discrepancy in prices, one knocked-off head Spinks was able to sell, without its torso (which it seems to have had), for 42000 green ones, but a few years later they were glad to offload the other bits for a far smaller sum. Perhaps most collectors on being shown the stuff were more cautious about its legitimacy than the Met.


In the wake of the Sotheby’s case Cambodian officials have formed a task force to return artifacts removed from their country and possibly held by American and other foreign museums.

Source: Tom Mashberg and Ralph Blumental, 'Cambodia to Ask Met to Return 10th-Century Statues',  New York Times, June 1, 2012.

Additional note: Kimberley Alderman has a rather scathing post about this story here, taking issue with a side-point to the main issue: 'New York Times to Assign Cultural Heritage Articles to Uninformed Generalists'("it’s not really a story yet because Cambodia hasn’t actually asked the Met to return anything. But, apparently, they will. That’s fine, ask away, and then we’ll discuss it"). In my opinion, there is something here to be thinking about before the Cambodians get their request on paper - and even if they do not.

If there were indeed twelve statues in the group, do specialists know where the other eight are? I don't suppose it would do any harm to ask Spink's...

Photo: Kneeling Male Attendant Cambodia, Angkor period, Khmer style of Koh Ker, ca. 921–45 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

The Schimmel Collection

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The Turkish government is currently seeking the return of 18 objects from the Ancient Near East Galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (initially reported by Martin Bailey in the Art Newspaper earlier this month, now discussed in the Chasing Aphrodite blog, 'Exclusive: Turkey Seeks The Return of 18 Objects From The Metropolitan Museum of Art', Chasing Aphrodite blog, March 20, 2012.). They all come from the collection made by industrialist Norbert Schimmel (here too). Most of the objects have no documented ownership history other than being in the Schimmel Collection by the mid 1960s or 1970s. As Felch and Fremolino note:

Turkey claims all of them were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country after the passage of a 1906 law that gave the state ownership of its cultural property. All the contested objects are from the Norbert Schimmel Collection, which the museum has described as “the finest private assemblage of its kind in America” and “one of the most important gifts of ancient and Classical art ever presented to this museum.” Between the 1950s and his death in 1990, Schimmel was a member of the Met’s board of trustees and acquisitions committee. In 1989, he donated 102 objects from his collection to the Met. [...] The Schimmel Collection was published in a 1974 volume entitled “Ancient Art:The Norbert Schimmel Collection.” The editor of the volume was Oscar White Muscarella, a former Met curator who has been an outspoken critic of the role museums have played in the illicit antiquities trade. We’ve asked Muscarella for his thoughts on the Turkish claim and will post his response when we have it. It is interesting to note that for some reason Turkey waited 38 years after the publication of the collecting before asking for the objects back.

David Gill ('Norbert Schimmel as the model collector') notes comments by Shelby White on Norbert Schimmel and precedents for the return of items from the collection to the places they had been removed from (an eye of Amenhotep III, an Apulian dinos ). He also notes Schimmel's role in the funding of the purchase of the Morgantina hoard.


See also: Benjamin Sutton, 'More Antiquities Woes for U.S. Museums Loom, As Turkey Demands 18 Artifacts From the Metropolitan Museum', ArtInfo, march 20th 2012.

Paul Barford: Turkey Seeks Surrender of Part of the Met's Norbert Schimmel Collection Cultural Property Repatriation News and Issues.

Aidona Treasure Displayed at Last Near Where it was Found

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Last week hundreds of residents from the tiny hilltop town of Aidone in eastern Sicily visited the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return of an ancient treasure that had been illegally whisked away from them thirty years ago. The cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects (originally used for religious purposes and for banquets and dating from the third century B.C. ) had been illegally excavated in Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement whose ruins lie next to Aidone. The objects, now known as the Morgantina silver, had been acquired on the antiquities market by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in two installments, in 1981 and 1982, for a total of $2.74 million from dealer Robert Hecht. It has taken all that time for archaeologists, magistrates and eventually the Italian government to convince the museum that the pieces should be returned.

This was achieved in a 2006 accord between Italy and the museum for the return of several objects that Italians had demonstrated had been looted from Italian soil. This recognises that the Met shares joint custody of the silver, which will travel between New York and Aidone every four years for exhibit, it will temporarily return to New York in 2014. When the silver came to Italy in February, the Met received a recently excavated 20-piece Roman dining set from the Pompeii region.

After being exhibited in other Italian towns and the Shanghai World Expo this year after it arrived back in the country in February, the hoard has now arrived in Sicily, and installed in the local museum with other finds found in the house where it seems the silver was probably buried in 211 B.C. when Morgantina fell to the Romans.

For decades Dr. Malcolm Bell III, professor emeritus of art history and archaeology at the University of Virginia and the director of excavations at Morgantina was a leading crusader for the return of the treasure, and in Aidone, where his excavations brought seasonal work for many residents, he is very much a hero.

“This is a very happy moment and deeply satisfying,” he said in an interview. [...] “The silver can perhaps shed light on the brutal, dramatic circumstances of the final years of the Second Punic War and, seen within the framework of the house, we get a sense of the art and the material culture of Hellenistic Sicily,”[...] “The [objects] have truly been recontextualized, and that is really important.” [...] The Aidone museum is small, without space for temporary exhibitions or multimedia stations, and roads to the town badly need repairs, said Enrico Caruso, who in September was appointed director of the new Archaeological Park of Morgantina. But all of its treasures belong in Aidone, he said, adding, “Here they are not orphans.”

Local residents are pleased that at last those who bought the items taken from them have been persuaded to return them.

“They’re beautiful works of art, they tempted a lot of people, but it’s right that they’ve come back to their proper home,” said one visitor, Alfredo Scivoli, who opened a bed-and-breakfast here in April, in anticipation of the tourists that local officials hope will be drawn here by the silver.

The New York Times article notes that for Aidone,"the silver’s return means much more than righting a wrong" and celebrating the power of place of the region where the items were found. The exhibition of the Morgantina treasure near the place it was found presents new hope for the future and is a concrete example that the damage done by looting and the illicit trade is not only archaeological, but economic. Aidone is an economically depressed town that offers few employment opportunities and has seen droves of younger people seek their fortunes elsewhere and the archaeological heritage of the region is an important way of boosting revenues through cultural tourism, a process which the looting of sites and the uncontrolled illegal export of antiquities of all types prevents.

Last year the Aidone Archaeological Museum became the permanent home to two archaic acroliths (statues usually made with wooden trunks but stone heads and extremities) that had also been looted from Morgantina. They had once been owned by Maurice Tempelsman, a New York businessman. [...] Another boost to the collection will come next year when the J. Paul Getty Museum [...] returns a cult statue of a goddess that it bought in 1988 for $18 million. It too was probably looted from Morgantina. [...] In return Sicily will loan several works to the Getty. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Mayor Filippo Gangi of Aidone. The “extraordinary triptych” of artworks, he said, could “trigger an unprecedented economic development” in Aidone, exploiting too the town’s proximity to the Roman Villa del Casale, which boasts more than 4,200 square yards of late Roman mosaics and is already one of the most visited sites in Sicily.

Source: Elisabetta Povoledo, 'A Trove of Ancient Silver Said to Be Stolen Returns to Its Home in Sicily' New York Times December 5, 2010.

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Context and the Morgantina Hoard

David Gill has an interesting post on his blog "Morgantina Hoard: on display in Rome " about the Morgantina Hoard. There is an interesting point here that knowing precisely where this particular group of objects (or rather two separate groups of objects now muddled up) had come from allowed them to be seen in the context of other items from that same context and its surroundings. In this case there is a very interesting illustration of that capability of that other information to add to our understanding of the objects themselves.

Rome Displays Ancient Greek silverware

I was struck by the terminology used in the Associated Press article: "Rome to display ancient Greek silverware" March 19th.

A collection of ancient Greek silverware dating to the third century B.C. is going on display in Rome after being returned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, officials said Friday [...] The pieces are known as "The Morgantina Treasure" after the name of the ancient Greek settlement where they were excavated, near what is now the Italian city of Aidone.


... Italy's aggressive campaign against illegal trafficking in antiquities...
... came back as part of a deal with the Met ...
...Italy has been aggressively campaigned (sic) to ....
... recover antiquities it says were looted ...
... secured the return of dozens of [...] artifacts in deals with museums...

[Those nasty "aggressive" foreigners, eh? But its a good job the Americans tricked them into agreeing to some kind of "deal"].

Somewhat more balanced and informative was Elisabetta Povoledo's "Antiquities Once Owned by Met Go On Display in Rome" New York Times March 19, 2010, which gives a bit more of the background to the Morgantina Treasure affair. "In 1981 and 1982 the Met bought the silver hoard from the American dealer Robert Hecht for $2.74 million. Mr. Hecht is currently standing trial in Rome on charges of conspiracy to traffic in looted artifacts". The objects were returned to Italy as part of a 2006 agreement between the government and the Metropolitan Museum. In recent years Italy has signed similar accords with other American institutions and archaeologists praised such restitutions "as indicative of a cultural sea change that recognizes that “archaeology is context,” according to Malcolm Bell III, a professor at the University of Virginia who played a crucial role in establishing the provenance of the objects, which led to their return".

The silver will be on display in Rome until May 23, when it will travel to Sicily, where it will eventually be exhibited in Aidone. It will return to the Met periodically in keeping with the 2006 agreement, which also provides for a continuing exchange of antiquities. Last month the Met installed a recently excavated ancient Roman silver dining set from Moregine, on the outskirts of Pompeii, sent by Italy in exchange for the silver.

Cherishing the Historical Environment: Good or Bad?

well, I was wondering how long it would be before a feature about "abroad" in last week's New York Times (Michael Kimmelman "When Ancient Artifacts Become Political Pawns") would find its way over to the blogs of the "culture club" throwbacks. It just has:

While bloggers steeped in an "archaeology over all" perspective claim that only "looting matters," those cultural property observers with a broader perspective recognize the importance of the political and nationalistic dimensions to the debate about restitution, import restrictions and the like.

writes Mr Tompa. But of course if we are of the conviction that "Looting really does Matter", then repatriation, import restrictions are side issues in the wider one. Why does the antiquities trade and all those who support it not address the core issue rather than fiddling about with the side issues all the time? Because it is easier there to pass the buck and say it's somebody else who is at fault?

Now what exactly is the "importance" of the political and nationalistic dimensions of the debate, features which anyone engaged in actual debate, and anyone at all familiar with the copious academic literature, knows has been accepted as part of the pictures since at least the 1980s? Yes "heritage" is indeed connected to specific groups of people who claim various types of it as their own. That is in its essence. Collectors of ancient dugup coins do the same, they claim them as some part of their own personal ('global') heritage.

Mr Tompa calls it "nationalism" that local people take an interest in the material remains (but also related intangible values) of millennia past of the region in which they live. He seems to see it as an entirely negative phenomenon when it stops collectors getting their hands of assorted "pieces of the past" with which to create a pretend "place on the past" of their own. Mr Kimmelman the author of the article which so tickled Mr Tompa sees nothing incongruous in using decontextualised bits of Roman heritage to create a "new public space" in New York surrounded by faux-Roman architecture on the edge of Central Park.

The same Mr Kimmelman who wrote:

Italy is not like America. Art isn’t reduced here to a litany of obscene auction prices or lamentations over the bursting bubble of shameless excess. It’s a matter of daily life, linking home and history. [...] “Without the culture that connects us to our territory, we lose our identity,” he said. “There may not be many famous artists or famous monuments here, but before anything, Italians feel proud of the culture that comes from their own towns, their own regions.

So this art which gives a region its identity is a good thing or a bad thing for Mr Kimmelman when he is in Italy?

Or what about when he's in Poland ("Poland Searches Its Own Soul")?

To the surprise even of the researchers, many residents said the Jewish history of their district was crucial to their own sense of pride and home. The study found that the monuments, museums and other cultural reminders of the past were essential to sustaining the neighborhood’s collective memory. “History is being rewritten here every day,” as Mr. Bilewicz put it.

The power of place, good or bad? It seems to me Kimmelman is writing approvingly here when he's in Poland. So what changes when the stuff is hoiked away into a western big-green-dollar museum where it can no longer be used to speak of the past to generations lving in the area where these items were made, used and deposited many years ago? Why is it mere "nationalisssm" to say this should not be happening? Why is it "nationalism" that the people of Athens say they'd like the bits of their Parthenon back please?

It seems to me that cherishing and attempting to protect the historic environment in a world of change and erosion of landscape values by commercial interests can only be seen as a positive thing. Not, it seems if you are a collector of portable antiquities or lobbyist on their behalf. They seem hell-bent on trying to misrepresent such concerns as negative phenomena, in total disregard of the public debate that has been going on for the last three decades at least.

Update:
For a far more thoughtful reaction to the Kimmelman NYT piece than Tompa's, see Derek Fincham:
"It's about emotion, not airtight logic and consistent policy."

Also for a piece on archaeology and identity in the united Kingdom, see Madeleine Bunting's comment mentioning the weekend's cringeworthy BNP's Nick Griffin "Questions Time" appearance ("Original thinking: The booming interest in archaeology suggests a new quest for identity in a time of rapid change"). She argues that proper archaeology is a tool to fight the woolly views of the past favoured by real nationalists like Nick Griffin (who does NOT get a link here).

The Universal Museum as a Rogues Gallery

Oscar White Muscarella's review of Michael Gross's Rogues' Gallery makes depressing reading for a number of reasons. The first is obvious. This institution was promoting itself for so long as an elite cultural institution, a Universal Museum spreading intercultural understanding. This "justified" almost everything that went on around the acquisition of stunning trophy objects - some of which turned out to have been less legitimate purchases and donations than others. Gross's book depicts the place as a swamp. Fair enough, those of us who have worked for big institutions know that "stuff happens". Nasty stuff. Muscarella's review however clearly shows that Gross wasn't telling half the story. His text was conceived more as a somewhat personal addendum, somewhat difficult to follow without the original book in front of you (I've not bought it). The material which interested me most about the purchase of apparently looted finds and the media coverup that Muscarella alleges is at the end of a long involved text which reads like a "catalogue of errors" (of both the Met as well as the books author). A terrible terrible indictment of the Metropolitan Museum. I'd like to see Muscarella write his independent account of his days at the Met, rather than his notes on something somebody else wrote. It is clear he still has lots to say, and apparently not now afraid to say it.

So, the next Universal Museum on the list is the British Museum, lots of gossip and colourful characters there. Who is going to brave the lawyers and write the companion volume: "Gallery of Rogues", "Museum of.... "? Hmmm.