The 4 cavernous wings of Cambodia’s nationwide museum are so filled with objects that guests want to look at their elbows whereas strolling among the many roughly 1,400 on show.
The century-old constructing in central Phnom Penh is operating out of room partly as a result of overseas collectors and establishments have returned about 300 stolen artifacts over the previous six years. On a latest afternoon, returned statues the scale of fridges have been sheltering below the courtyard’s blood-red roof eaves of their foam packaging.
“House,” the director, Chhay Visoth, mentioned throughout an interview within the courtyard when requested what tops his lengthy want checklist.
An growth and a renovation are deliberate, however it’s unclear who would pay for upgrades, how the cash can be managed, or how the museum plans to deal with its inner politics.
There’s additionally the problem of designing galleries for Cambodian guests who see its statues not as paintings, however as divinities holding the souls of their ancestors. For them, the museum is extra of a temple.
“They arrive to see the gods, or to be seen by the gods,” mentioned Huot Samnang, the director of Cambodia’s antiquities division.
He was standing in a conservation lab close to the galleries the place specialists have been eradicating adhesive from the bottom of a statue mendacity on wood pallet. The remnants of its blue delivery crate, sealed on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York weeks earlier, have been scattered on a close-by ledge, nails poking by means of plywood.
Cambodia’s nationwide museum has come a great distance because it was closed and uncared for throughout the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge within the late Nineteen Seventies. The bats that after lived in its rafters are gone, a loud roof restore is full, and the roof’s ornate spires have a contemporary coat of white paint.
However overseas consultants in Khmer artwork mentioned in interviews that the museum may do a greater job of telling Cambodia’s story. That features the rise and fall of the Khmer Empire that constructed Angkor Wat, and the looting of Cambodian artifacts that peaked within the Nineteen Nineties.
On a fall afternoon, guests wouldn’t have recognized that a number of Tenth-century statues in a single gallery depict a battle scene from the Mahabharata, an Indian epic, or that one was donated to the Met in items, years after it was smuggled out of a jungle temple. It was one among two such statues that the Met returned to Cambodia in 2013.
One other level that didn’t come by means of was that Douglas A.J. Latchford, an artwork supplier who died in 2020, had been accused of organizing most of the thefts. In 2019, U.S. prosecutors charged him with illicitly trafficking Cambodian antiquities. His longtime authorized adviser has mentioned that Mr. Latchford was comatose on the time and unable to rebut the costs.
About 4,000 stolen Cambodian items nonetheless reside with overseas museums and personal collectors, mentioned Bradley Gordon, a lawyer representing the federal government in a yearslong marketing campaign to stress the Met and others for extra repatriations.
Portia Jezard, 37, a British vacationer who visited the museum not too long ago, mentioned she left questioning which overseas museums and collectors nonetheless owned stolen Khmer treasure, and what Cambodia was doing about it.
“Are they giving it willingly?” she requested. “Or are you having to go, ‘Hey, give us our stuff again’?”
A couple of weeks later, the museum put in a couple of new panels to assist handle such questions. One was titled “Returning Residence: The Story of Looting and Restitution.”
Statue repatriations are an essential a part of Cambodia’s reckoning with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, a totalitarian regime that killed as much as 1 / 4 of the inhabitants. Among the many victims was a former director of the nationwide museum.
They’ve “a significance that’s rather more than getting again stolen property,” mentioned Helen Jessup, an professional on Cambodian artwork and structure. “This going to be an emotional subject ceaselessly for the Cambodians.”
On the museum not too long ago, waves of Cambodian guests, some from provinces which are a a number of hours’ drive from Phnom Penh, expressed surprise on the assortment. A couple of mentioned the statues have been much more spectacular than those they have been used to seeing in native temples.
Additionally they mentioned that the shows hadn’t taught them a lot concerning the artifacts.
Som Preksa, 27, a Buddhist monk and a latest college graduate who was standing close to the doorway gate in a vivid orange gown, mentioned he had been overwhelmed by the variety of statues. A couple of shows explaining how they’re related to Cambodian historical past might need helped, he added.
Mr. Chhay Visoth, the museum director, mentioned his priorities included making the shows extra accessible for schoolchildren, and putting in a climate-control system for bronze objects.
However Cambodia’s Nationwide Museum doesn’t aspire to be a Western-style establishment, officers mentioned, and plenty of of its challenges are distinctly Cambodian.
One is whether or not guests needs to be allowed to the touch statues or put flowers on them, as they might in a temple. Mr. Chhay Visoth says no, though he permits flowers to be positioned on the ground close to them on some Buddhist holidays.
“Compromise for the Cambodian context,” he mentioned with amusing.
There are additionally proposals to ship statues from the museum again to the locations they have been looted from, together with the Tenth-century temples of Koh Ker, close to Angkor Wat. Mr. Chhay Visoth is open to the concept, he mentioned, so long as the brand new websites are safe.
Many museums gather extra materials than they might ever show. In Cambodia, the place the nationwide assortment contains an estimated 19,500 objects, the query of the place to place them takes on further weight. One motive is that many Western establishments have argued that museums in nations the place paintings was stolen can’t correctly look after the returned items.
Mr. Gordon, the lawyer, mentioned that Cambodia rejects such arguments.
“We simply maintain saying, ‘Look, it’s stolen,’” he mentioned. “Cambodians need it again. It ought to come dwelling.”
There’s vast settlement that the museum wants a makeover. Its conservation labs look rickety. Its galleries, which open onto the courtyard, have an ungainly combination of pure and synthetic gentle. Its basement storage space has a historical past of flooding.
However precisely what a brand new model of the museum ought to appear to be is up for debate.
France, which dominated Cambodia from 1863 to 1953, is financing a research to discover a renovation and growth. The adjoining Royal College of Advantageous Arts is transferring its campus to create house, its director, Heng Sophady, mentioned.
Ashley Thompson, a specialist in premodern Cambodian arts with many years of expertise within the nation, mentioned {that a} mannequin for a brand new wing might be the Acropolis Museum in Athens. That museum, which opened in 2009, features a reconstruction of friezes stolen from the positioning by a nineteenth century British aristocrat and explains how they ended up within the British Museum.
“It’s a really efficient name for restitution,” mentioned Professor Thompson, the chair of Southeast Asian Artwork at SOAS College of London.
Cambodian tycoons have provided to pay for upgrades on the nationwide museum, in response to Mr. Chhay Visoth. Professor Thompson mentioned that Western establishments that benefited from the plundering of Cambodia’s cultural heritage also needs to bear a number of the prices.
A number of outstanding establishments have signed agreements with Cambodia’s nationwide museum that embody employees trainings and exchanges. A couple of, just like the Met and the Cleveland Museum of Artwork, have returned stolen statues. However Mr. Gordon mentioned that none has provided to assist pay for any capital tasks.
The Met, which has a typically fraught relationship with Cambodia, didn’t make a consultant out there for an interview. Ann Bailis, a spokeswoman, mentioned in a press release that the Met would “proceed to actively have interaction with ongoing efforts to additional advance the world’s understanding and appreciation of Khmer artwork and tradition.”
Finishing the repatriation course of may take many years. Within the meantime, there are extra pressing duties.
There are historic inscriptions to interpret, a vacant curator place to fill, items to arrange for journeys overseas and a brand new exhibition on the museum by the Cambodian artist Leang Seckon. Tradition Ministry officers are additionally debating whether or not some statues with murky provenance might be fakes. And Mr. Gordon mentioned that 74 stone and bronze artifacts, relinquished to Cambodia by Mr. Latchford’s property, may quickly be despatched to the museum from London.
There are administrative distractions, too. One is that, in 2023, some members of the museum’s employees accused Mr. Chhay Visoth of embezzling ticket income. He denied wrongdoing, and there’s no proof that he has confronted any fees. The anticorruption company that handles such accusations didn’t reply to an inquiry.
Employees members have not gotten round to eradicating a 2009 plaque close to the doorway that honored museum benefactors who’ve since been indicted or imprisoned on fees associated to the looting commerce. Among the many individuals the plaque honors for his or her “beneficiant help and help” is the person blamed for orchestrating a lot of the theft: Mr. Latchford.
Solar Narin contributed reporting.
