More than a dozen ancient Cambodian artifacts and relics looted during the Cambodian civil war in the 1960s-’70s and purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art via a questionable art trader will be returned to the Cambodian government, the WNBC NBC-4 New York reports.
Obtained through art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was later charged for his involvement in an art smuggling scheme but died before trial, the sixteen pieces were returned in two lots–one of 13 and a later one of three–as the Met combed through records and discovered more stolen items in its collection.
The return is in no small part due to an increase in media attention to the plight of stolen cultural antiquities from Cambodia and other countries highlighted by a wide variety of journalists, from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, to the Washington Post, to the Discovery Channel’s Josh Gates, who highlighted archeological finds in the region during recent seasons of his shows.