Re: Stolen art & inscriptions

Well, as I have been encourgaged by Dr. Pind ...

(1) Dr. McDaniel is correct that the Californian Museum collection I
was thinking of was the Norton Simon Museum --however, based on the
catalogue I have recently read, I would not agree with his estimate of
"very few Khmer ... and many fewer Lao and Thai" works in the
collection.  Their Sinhalese pieces are few and minor, but they have
very significant Khmer and Thai holdings, including one pre-Angkor
piece of a large size (it is a "Harihara" as I recall --i.e.,
vertically bifurcated).  Every pre-Angkor statue "counts" for quite a
lot in the history of Cambodia --many styles and periods have just one
or two examples still in the kingdom.  The pre-Angkor Harihara (held
by the Norton Simon) should be returned to Cambodia --and, no doubt,
many of the other pieces could be traced to their "modern origin" in
Thailand, and returned.

(2) The two biggest clearing houses for Buddhist art are currently
Hong Kong and Bangkok --although I am not at all sure where
Bengaladeshi works are currently sold.  In terms of legality, the
Swiss remain an important stop-over, with most works bound for Europe
technically acquired in Zurich, and remaining in Swiss territory for
30 days (or so) to be officially deemed "imported from Switzerland"
[i.e., into the E.U.] with no paper-trail leading back to the dealers
in Asia.  In any case, if you "hang out" in Zurich, you can find
whatever you're looking for, or will be directed as to where to look;
the trade is fairly overt as most of it is technically legal.

(3) In reply to Dr. McDaniel, the Khmer Rouge also liquidated and sold
entire temples --i.e., breaking off statues and selling them-- so
their reputation as iconoclasts in this regard has to be tempered with
an awareness of their own mercenary inclinations.  The complicating
factor here is the active collaboration of U.S. forces with the Khmer
Rouge circa 1978 - 1994 (yes, that's correct: the Americans were on
the same side as Pol Pot from at least the hour of the Vietnamese
invastion until very recently --a fact too often omitted in the BBC
version of history).  The involvement of U.S. armed forces in
air-lifting huge quantities of Asian art has a long history
--including the U.S. Marine Corps evacuating the collection of the
National Palace Museum from mainland China to Taipei on behalf of the
KMT.  I really don't know to what extent U.S./C.I.A. hauled Buddha
statues along with Heroin in their nightly flights --but, if art
smuggling was half as profitable as heroin smuggling, I would expect
that quite a few statues came out of Cambodia by this route.

The sheer weight of Khmer art is difficult to exaggerate; many
would-be temple looters in Cambodia today give up while trying to load
a statue into a truck, leaving a ruined temple, and a half-smashed
stone statue 30 m away from it.  In any case, a team of soldiers with
a helicopter are at a distinct advantage over a farmer with a truck;
and, in all of Cambodia east of the Mekong (code-named "freedom deal")
the badly organized assortment American armed forces and intelligence
services were at their liberty to loot whatever they didn't bomb into
oblivion during the overt period of the war.  Thereafter, the active
role of collaboration (on the ground) that evolved between the U.S.
and the Khmer Rouge (probably starting before 1978, and continuing
into the 1990s, as mentioned) would then have made direct guides to
these sites in the remote jungle even more likely.

E.M.