Sotheby’s Files Papers to Stop Cambodian Statue Export

The catalogue listing for the lot in question. (Courtesy ki-media.blogspot.com)

6/06/2012
By Dan Duray
Gallerist NY

The New York Times reports that Sotheby’s filed papers yesterday as part of an effort to prevent the repatriation of a 10th-century statue the house had planned to sell in March 2011, but pulled from the auction over claims from Cambodian representatives that it had been looted in the 1970′s.

More details about from that story:

…Sotheby’s argued, among other things, that under the Cambodian laws, the government needed to expressly declare its ownership of particular items, and that this never occurred with the statue, a point Cambodia disputes.

The story has an architect calling this claim “inaccurate and unconvincing.”

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Sotheby's

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Cambodian statue sparks legal battle in US

14 April 2012
By Brigitte Dusseau (AFP)

NEW YORK — For a year, an ancient Cambodian statue of a warrior has been at the center of a legal battle in New York in which US authorities back Cambodia's claim that the artwork was looted.

The standoff between Sotheby's auctioneers, who intended to sell the thousand-year-old statue, and the US government hardened on April 4 when a federal prosecutor in New York demanded its surrender.

For now, Sotheby's holds onto the work, but its future is unclear.

The US Attorney's office said in a statement that the "Duryodhana" statue was "stolen from the Prasat Chen temple at Koh Ker in Cambodia. The Koh Ker site is very significant from a religious, historical, and artistic perspective, and the Duryodhana is considered to be a piece of extraordinary value to the Cambodian people and part of their cultural heritage."

Sotheby’s Retains Custody of Cambodian Statue

April 5, 2012
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times

Ruling against the immediate seizure of a 1,000-year-old Cambodian statue the United States and Cambodian governments say was looted from its temple site, a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday gave Sotheby’s continued custody of the antiquity and called a hearing for April 12.

The judge, George B. Daniels, ordered Sotheby’s not to dispose of the sandstone statue, which the auction house had planned to sell for an unidentified Belgian client for up to $3 million last year, and to make it available for inspection by the Department of Homeland Security, which had sought its forfeiture as stolen property.

Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, filed a civil complaint on Wednesday against Sotheby’s, alleging that the auction house knew the statue had been stolen when it offered it for auction on March 24, 2011.

The government then planned to impound the sculpture this week for return to Cambodia.

Text of lawsuit file by the US to recover Koh Ker statue looted from Cambodia

http://www.box.com/s/ac359113838035bf8685

Return of Stolen Cambodian Art

Dear Brothers and Sisters

YOU are invited into the Solidarity campaigning against the Sothebe company in order to return the stolen of Cambodia Art , so please find in the attachment for the Call for Action and for more detail and press up to raise hearing voice to the world that this great heritage is belong to Cambodia while this company refuses to return and ACILS will meet up with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Art on these but we also need your voice and supports as well , so please share and forward this information to people you know and invite them to show up with solidarity to distribute a leaflet (CALL FOR ACTION TO RETURN THE STOLEN CAMBODIAN ART) in front of the national museum on Friday tomorrow at 4 pm .

Looking to seeing you all there

In solidarity
Tharo
........................
Khun Tharo

Couple arrested at Cambodian border with ancient relics

March 20, 2012
The Nation

A French couple was arrested at Aranyaprathet border checkpoint in Sa Kaeo province yesterday for possessing relics that appear to be ancient statues of two Hindu gods.

Officials have detained the two French nationals, aged 69 and 60 years old, for questioning because they did not have a permit to import historic items.

The couple was crossing the border from Poi Pet in Cambodia to Thai soil at the time of their arrest.

They told Thai officials that after they visited Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, they bought the statues from a market, believing the items were newly-made products.

The officials, however, were not convinced because the relics looked very old. So, the couple have been detained and the statues sent to the Fine Arts Department for examination.

Cambodians Work to Recover Priceless Antiquities

http://www.voanews.com/templates/widgetDisplay.html?id=141646433&player=article

Priceless antiquities - like this statue - were looted from Koh Ker, Cambodia, and have been or are being sold, amid a growing outcry against the legality of doing so.

March 06, 2012
Daniel Schearf | Koh Ker, Cambodia
Voice of America

The proposed sale of an ancient Cambodian statue at Soethby’s auction house in New York has raised new questions about the legality of selling looted ancient artwork. VOA’s Daniel Schearf visited the statue’s original location in Koh Ker and spoke to residents about the loss of their antiquities.

Only the feet remain from two statues more than 1,000 years old that allegedly were cut off during Cambodia’s chaotic 1970s and sold to foreign collectors.

Last year, government complaints halted the auction of one of them, an ancient temple wrestler, worth about $2 million.

Seung Kong is in charge of the Koh Ker temple complex. He said the artwork should not be sold abroad.

Traders of the Lost Art: Asia Life

http://www.box.com/s/5hr2tegmlrzj9r09ffyg

Ancient Statue Sits in Limbo as Rights Question Looms

The pedestal and feet belonging to a disputed thousand-year-old statue, currently held by Sotheby's, in Cambodia. (Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times)

Sotheby's catalog from March 24, 2011 includes a photo of a statue from Koh Ker, Cambodia. Some experts believe it was looted.

February 28, 2012
By TOM MASHBERG and RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times

He said French records in Paris indicate the statues were in place in 1939, and that the Koh Ker temple was thickly covered by jungle and inaccessible by road until it became a military staging area for Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces.

Cambodia has asked the United States government for help in recovering a thousand-year-old statue of a mythic warrior that sits in limbo at Sotheby’s in New York and that some experts believe was looted amid the convulsions of the Vietnam War and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

The statue, a sandstone masterwork with a catalog estimate of $2 million to $3 million, was pulled from auction at the last minute last March after the Cambodian government complained it had been “illegally removed” from the country.

The Department of Homeland Security has opened an investigation, but Cambodian officials say they have held off asking for the piece to be seized while they negotiate with Sotheby’s for a private purchase. The auction house says that the seller is a “noble European lady” who acquired it in 1975. Although it was severed from its feet and pedestal, which were left behind at a remote Cambodian archaeological site, Sotheby’s says there is no proof that it was taken illegally.

A Collection of Cambodian Sculpture by Alan Priest (1937)

A Collection of Cambodian Sculpture by Alan Priest (1937)
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/59843577?access_key=key-1k5vuq9gx9zp99rce63o

US Embassy to return historical aterfact back to Cambodia

27 July 2007
By Pov Ponlok
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

The US ambassador in Cambodia will return back a Khmer artifact consisting of an Apsara sculpture to Cambodia during a ceremony to be held on Monday 30 July.

The Apsara sculpture is made out of limestone and dates back to around 1200, it was previously confiscated by the US authority. Him Chhem, the deputy minister of the ministry of culture and fine arts of Cambodia will participate in this ceremony.