Thailand to Welcome Home Stolen Ancient Statues from US

Thailand is set to welcome back four bronze ancient statues from the Prakhon Chai hoard, which were looted from an ancient temple in northeast Thailand in the 1960s and later found their way to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The museum’s acquisitions committee recommended the release of the statues last year, and the San Francisco city’s Asian Art Commission approved the proposal on April 22.

“We are the righteous owners,” Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Office of National Museums at Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, said. “It is something that our ancestors have made, and it should be exhibited here to show the civilization and the belief of the people.”

The statues are believed to have been smuggled out of Thailand by British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford, who was accused of falsifying shipping records and wire fraud in a US federal grand jury in 2019. Latchford died in 2020 before the case against him could go to trial.

The return of the statues is a significant victory for Thailand’s efforts to reclaim its pilfered heritage. According to Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, “colonialism is still alive and well in parts of the art world.” Davis added that “there is a mistaken assumption by some institutions that they are better carers, owners, custodians of these cultural objects.”

Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, said that “if we believe the object is stolen and the country of origin wishes for it to come home, then the artefact should be returned.”

The Asian Art Museum’s decision to return the statues is seen as a positive step towards repatriating looted artefacts. The museum even staged a special exhibit around the pieces to highlight the questions surrounding the theft of antiquities. “One of our goals was to try to indicate to the visiting public to the museum how important it is to look historically at where works of art have come from,” Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, said.

The return of the statues is expected to arrive in Thailand within a month or two. Tanongsak Hanwong, a Thai archaeologist, said the statues are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when much of the region was still Hindu. “The fact that we do not have any Prakhon Chai bronzes on display anywhere [in Thailand], in the national museum or local museums whatsoever, it means we do not have any evidence of the Buddhist history of that period at all, and that’s strange,” he said.

This development could also help Thailand bring back the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard, including 14 more known pieces in other museums around the US, and at least a half-dozen scattered across Europe and Australia.