Buddhist monks in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on Thursday chanted blessings and laid flowers to welcome the return of 14 smuggled artworks from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Angkorian art, including a 10th-century sandstone statue of a goddess and a large 7th-century Buddha head, were stolen by antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford and taken to New York.
“We are very happy and delighted to see our ancestors returning home,” Cambodia’s Minister of Culture Poon Sakona said at the repatriation ceremony.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has many other treasures that we hope will also be returned to Cambodia,” she added.
Sakonah said more than 50 stolen art pieces will be returned to Cambodia from the United States in the near future.
The minister also called on private collectors and museums around the world to follow the example of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and return looted art.
“The return of our national treasures held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art is of vital importance not only to Cambodia but to all humanity,” she said.
Mr Latchford, who died at his Bangkok home aged 88, was a widely recognised scholar of ancient Cambodian art and was praised for his books on the art of the Khmer Empire.
He was indicted by New York prosecutors in 2019 on charges of smuggling looted Cambodian antiquities and helping to sell them on the international art market.
In December, the Metropolitan police announced it would return 14 antiquities linked to Mr Ratchford to Cambodia and two to Thailand.
A 900-year-old bronze statue of Hindu god Shiva and a female figure was returned to Thailand by a museum in May.
Thousands of statues and carvings are believed to have been smuggled out of Cambodia between the mid-1960s and the 1990s, and smugglers have also fallen victim to archaeological sites in neighbouring Thailand.
The return of these items comes as a growing number of museums around the world are discussing steps towards the return of looted art, particularly those taken during the colonial era.