Khmer Bronzes go on display in the Smithsonian

Fine examples of Khmer bronzes will go on display at the Smithsonian later this week until early next year.

Saving culture for the future
Phnom Penh Post, 04 May 2010

The exhibition, titled “Gods of Angkor”, will showcase more than Cambodia’s art; it is also a stage for the country’s new generation of museum conservators, who have been tasked with preserving some of Cambodia’s key archaeological heritage pieces.

Though a generation of conservators was lost during the Khmer Rouge period, the last decade has seen a new crop emerge to take its place in the National Museum’s Metal Conservation Laboratory.

“The exhibition is going to introduce the laboratory to the world,” said Cort, the curator for ceramics at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution and the upcoming exhibition’s co-curator.

The laboratory was launched in 2005 as part of a training partnership with the Freer and Sackler Galleries. The Smithsonian exhibition marks the first time works that have been conserved completely independently by the laboratory will be shown internationally.