Bangkok, Thailand – Over a number of years within the mid-Sixties, the crumbling ruins of an historic temple in northeast Thailand had been picked clear by native looters.
Probably tons of of centuries-old statues that had been lengthy buried beneath the comfortable, verdant grounds across the temple had been stolen.
To today, all of the identified artefacts from the pillaging spree, collectively generally known as the Prakhon Chai hoard, sit scattered 1000’s of miles away in museums and collections throughout the USA, Europe and Australia.
In a matter of weeks, although, the primary of these statues will start their journey house to Thailand.
The acquisitions committee of San Francisco’s Asian Artwork Museum advisable the discharge final 12 months of 4 bronze statues from the hoard, which had been held in its assortment because the late Sixties.
San Francisco metropolis’s Asian Artwork Fee, which manages the museum, then authorized the proposal on April 22, formally setting the items free.
Some six many years after the late British antiquities supplier Douglas Latchford is suspected of spiriting the statues overseas, they’re anticipated to reach again in Thailand inside a month or two.
“We’re the righteous house owners,” Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Workplace of Nationwide Museums at Thailand’s Positive Arts Division, instructed Al Jazeera.
“It’s one thing that our ancestors … have made, and it ought to be exhibited right here to point out the civilisation and the idea of the folks,” stated Disapong, who additionally serves on Thailand’s Committee for the Repatriation of Stolen Artefacts.
The approaching return of the statues is the newest victory in Thailand’s quest to reclaim its pilfered heritage.
Their homecoming additionally exemplifies the efforts of nations the world over to retrieve items of their very own stolen historical past that also sit in show instances and within the vaults of a number of the West’s prime museums.
From Thai temples to the Acropolis in Athens
Latchford, a high-profile Asian artwork supplier who got here to settle in Bangkok and lived there till his demise in 2020 at 88 years of age, is believed to have earned a fortune from public sale homes, non-public collectors and museums around the globe who acquired his smuggled historic artefacts from Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia.
In 2021, Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak, agreed to return her late father’s non-public assortment of greater than 100 artefacts, valued at greater than $50m, to Cambodia.
Although by no means convicted throughout his lifetime, Latchford was charged with falsifying transport data, wire fraud and a number of different crimes associated to antiquities smuggling by a US federal grand jury in 2019.
He died the next 12 months, earlier than the case in opposition to him may go to trial.
In 2023 the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York agreed to return 16 items tied to Latchford’s smuggling community to Cambodia and Thailand.
San Francisco’s Asian Artwork Museum has additionally beforehand returned items to Thailand – two intricately carved stone lintels taken from a pair of temples relationship again to the tenth and eleventh centuries, in 2021.
Whereas Thailand and Cambodia have not too long ago fared comparatively properly in efforts to reclaim their looted heritage from US museum collections, Greece has not had such luck with the British Museum in London.
Maybe no case of looted antiquities has grabbed extra information headlines than that of the so-called “Elgin Marbles”.
The two,500-year-old friezes, identified additionally because the Parthenon Marbles, had been hacked off the long-lasting Acropolis in Athens within the early 1800s by brokers of Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which managed Greece at the moment.
Elgin claimed he took the marbles with the permission of the Ottomans after which offered them in 1816 to the British Museum in London, the place they continue to be.
Greece has been demanding the return of the artefacts because the nation’s declaration of independence in 1832 and despatched an official request to the museum in 1983, based on the nongovernmental Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.
“Regardless of all these efforts, the British authorities has not deviated from its positions through the years, legally contemplating the Parthenon marbles to belong to Britain. They’ve even handed legal guidelines to stop the return of cultural artefacts,” the institute stated.
‘Colonialism continues to be alive and properly’
Tess Davis, government director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit campaigning in opposition to the illicit commerce of historic artwork and artefacts, stated that “colonialism continues to be alive and properly in elements of the artwork world”.
“There’s a mistaken assumption by some establishments that they’re higher carers, house owners, custodians of those cultural objects,” Davis instructed Al Jazeera.
However Davis, who has labored on Cambodia’s repatriation claims with US museums, says the “custodians” defence has lengthy been debunked.
“These antiquities had been cared for by [their] communities for hundreds of years, in some instances for millennia, earlier than there was … a market demand for them, resulting in their looting and trafficking, however we nonetheless do see resistance,” she stated.
Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian authorities in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, has heard museums make all kinds of claims to defend retaining items that ought to be returned to their rightful homelands.
Excuses from museums embrace claiming that they don’t seem to be certain the place items originated from; that contested gadgets had been acquired earlier than legal guidelines banned their smuggling; that home legal guidelines block their repatriation, or that the traditional items deserve a extra world viewers than they’d obtain of their house nation.
Nonetheless, none of these arguments ought to preserve a stolen piece from coming house, Gordon stated.
“If we consider the item is stolen and the nation of origin needs for it to come back house, then the artefact ought to be returned,” he stated.
Previous attitudes have began breaking down although, and extra looted artefacts are beginning to discover their means again to their origins.
“There’s positively a rising development towards doing the suitable factor on this space, and … I hope that extra museums comply with the Asian Artwork Museum’s instance. We’ve come a great distance, however there’s nonetheless an extended technique to go,” Davis stated.
![The Kneeling Lady on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Knee-Lady-1747982733.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C512&quality=80)
A lot of the progress, Davis believes, is all the way down to rising media protection of stolen antiquities and public consciousness of the issue within the West, which has positioned mounting strain on museums to do the suitable factor.
In 2022, the favored US comedy present Final Week Tonight with John Oliver devoted an entire episode to the subject. As Oliver stated, should you go to Greece and go to the Acropolis you would possibly discover “some odd particulars”, resembling sections lacking from sculptures – which are actually in Britain.
“Truthfully, in case you are ever searching for a lacking artefact, 9 instances out of 10 it’s within the British Museum,” Oliver quips.
Gordon additionally believes a generational shift in pondering is at play amongst those that as soon as trafficked within the cultural heritage of different nations.
“For instance, the youngsters of many collectors, as soon as they’re conscious of the details of how the artefacts had been faraway from the nation of origin, need their dad and mom to return them,” he stated.
Proof of the previous
The 4 bronze statues the San Francisco museum will quickly be returning to Thailand date again to the seventh and ninth centuries.
Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong stated that interval locations them squarely within the Dvaravati civilisation, which dominated northeast Thailand, earlier than the peak of the Khmer empire that may construct the towering spires of Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia and are available to overcome a lot of the encompassing area centuries later.
Three of the slender, mottled figures, one almost a metre tall (3.2 ft), depict Bodhisattva – Buddhist adherents on the trail to nirvana – and the opposite the Buddha himself in a large, flowing gown.
Tanongsak, who introduced the 4 items within the San Francisco assortment to the eye of Thailand’s stolen artefacts repatriation committee in 2017, stated they and the remainder of the Prakhon Chai hoard are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when a lot of the area was nonetheless Hindu.
“The truth that we should not have any Prakhon Chai bronzes on show anyplace [in Thailand], within the nationwide museum or native museums in any way, it means we should not have any proof of the Buddhist historical past of that interval in any respect, and that’s unusual,” he stated.
![Plai Bat 2 temple in Buriram province, Thailand, from where the Prakhon Chai hoard was looted in the 1960s, as seen in 2016 [Courtesy of Tanongsak Hanwong]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Temple-2-1747983054.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C446&quality=80)
The Positive Arts Division first wrote to San Francisco’s Asian Artwork Museum concerning the statues’ illicit provenance in 2019, however began to make progress on having them returned solely when the US Division of Homeland Safety obtained concerned on Thailand’s behalf.
Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, stated employees may discover no proof that the statues had been trafficked in their very own data.
However they had been satisfied that they had been looted and smuggled out of Thailand – and of Latchford’s involvement – as soon as Homeland Safety supplied proof, with the assistance of Thai researchers.
“As soon as that proof was introduced and so they heard it, their feeling was the suitable place for these can be again in Thailand,” Mintz stated of the museum’s employees and acquisition committee.
‘Pull again the curtain’
The San Francisco Asian Artwork Museum went a step additional when it lastly resolved to return the 4 statues to Thailand.
It additionally staged a particular exhibit across the items to focus on the very questions the expertise had raised relating to the theft of antiquities.
The exhibition – Transferring Objects: Studying from Native and International Communities – ran in San Francisco from November to March.
“Considered one of our targets was to attempt to point out to the visiting public to the museum how vital it’s to look traditionally at the place artistic endeavors have come from,” Mintz stated.
“To drag again the curtain a bit, to say, these items do exist inside American collections and now’s the time to handle challenges that emerge from previous accumulating observe,” he stated.
Mintz says Homeland Safety has requested the Asian Artwork Museum to look into the provenance of not less than one other 10 items in its assortment that seemingly got here from Thailand.
Tess Davis, of the Antiquities Coalition marketing campaign group, stated the exhibition was a really uncommon, and welcome, transfer for a museum within the technique of giving up looted artefacts.
In Thailand, Disapong and Tanongsak say the Asian Artwork Museum’s determination to recognise Thailand’s rightful declare to the statues may additionally assist them begin bringing the remainder of the Prakhon Chai hoard house, together with 14 extra identified items in different museums across the US, and not less than a half-dozen scattered throughout Europe and Australia.
“It’s certainly instance, as a result of as soon as we are able to present the world that the Prakhon Chai bronzes had been all exported from Thailand illegally, then most likely, hopefully another museums will see that each one the Prakhon Chai bronzes they’ve should be returned to Thailand as properly,” Tanongsak stated.
There are a number of different artefacts moreover the Prakhon Chai hoard that Thailand can also be trying to repatriate from collections around the globe, he stated.
Davis stated the repatriation of stolen antiquities continues to be being handled by too many with collections as an impediment when it ought to be seen, because the Asian Artwork Museum has, as a chance.
“It’s a chance to teach the general public,” Davis stated.
“It’s a chance to construct bridges with Southeast Asia,” she added, “and I hope different establishments comply with go well with.”
