Cambodia seeks 2nd Koh Ker statue

Cambodia is seeking to repatriate a second statue that was looted from the site of Koh Ker, which is now on display at the Norton Simon Museum in California.

Cambodia Is Seeking 2nd Statue
New York Times, 28 July 2012

he Cambodian government has asked the United States to help it recover a 10th-century Khmer sandstone statue from the Norton Simon Museum in California. It says the work was looted from a Cambodian temple complex during the country’s political upheavals in the 1970s.

The request was revealed by prosecutors in federal district court in Manhattan on Thursday, during hearings involving a matching statue that the United States government has sought to impound from Sotheby’s. The sculptures, each five feet tall and 600 pounds, depict mythical warriors. The one at the Norton Simon, in Pasadena, Calif., has been on display since 1980, and although Cambodian authorities have long known it was there, they had not sought its return until now.

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