Denver Museum Returns Cambodian Artifacts Amid Scandal

via Khmer Times/Denver Post, 21 September 2023: The Denver Art Museum has returned three 12th and 13th-century Cambodian bronze sculptures, originally acquired from disgraced New York gallery owners Doris and Nancy Wiener, as it faces scrutiny over its past collection practices.

The returns come as the Denver Art Museum faces a reckoning over its past collection habits — and the shady dealers who helped fill its glass cases.

Authorities have said Doris Wiener, who died in 2011, took “shopping trips” to South Asia to select stolen antiquities that would later be smuggled into New York. She was a generous benefactor to some of the country’s most prestigious art museums, including the Norton Simon Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 2016, during New York’s famed Asia Week, authorities raided the Wiener gallery, seizing prized relics they said were stolen from Southeast Asian temples. Nancy Wiener was later arrested and charged with buying and selling millions of dollars worth of looted relics from the Middle East and Asia.

Source: Three Cambodian relics stored at Denver Art Museum returned – Khmer Times