The Metropolitan Museum of Art will return more than a dozen Southeast Asian sculptures after they were linked to a late art dealer accused of trafficking artifacts looted from the region, according to the museum and the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum said in a statement it has initiated the return of 14 artworks to Cambodia and two to Thailand that were tied to Douglas Latchford, a British antiquities dealer and leading scholar on Khmer art.

Latchford was indicted in 2019 for “orchestrating a multi-year scheme to sell looted Cambodian antiquities on the international art market,” the US attorney’s office said in a statement. The indictment was dismissed following Latchford’s death in 2020.

  • bendak@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Older art and other artifacts could be sold or gifted to American citizens or organizations?

    • rodolfo@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I truly hope that’s never the case. USers should start getting out their country not just to pillage and let pillage baghdad national museum. they should respectfully visit other countries and visit their museums and so on.

      art so old as in this article is part of the history of a country and should never be possible to sell it, in particular to usa. I mean, some pieces are probably older than usa itself.