Event
Khmer Objects in Motion, Center for Khmer Studies (October 2026)
Khmer Objects in Motion: Provenance, Dispersal, and Repatriation? is a free online seminar held on October 9, 2026.[1] The Center for Khmer Studies and the Siem Reap center of the École française d'Extrême-Orient organize it. Over a full day, more than 30 speakers, among them archaeologists, museum staff, provenance researchers and legal experts, discuss how Khmer objects traveled across Southeast Asia and beyond, and how their histories are traced.[1]
Program
October 9, 2026. Morning session 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., afternoon session 2:00 to 5:15 p.m., Cambodia time, on Zoom.[1]
- Talks of fifteen minutes each take up collecting and museum histories, looting and trafficking, provenance research and the return of objects.[1]
- Case studies include the giant heads from the causeways of Angkor Thom and Preah Khan and the National Museum of Cambodia's work on small looted objects. Another follows a sculpture stolen from the Wat Po Veal Museum in Battambang and offered at a New York online auction in 2024.[1]
- Museum speakers come from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Australia, the Musée Guimet, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin.[1]
- Other talks cover the 1923 removal of reliefs from Banteay Srei by André Malraux, the trafficking case of the collector Douglas Latchford and the sculptures returned from Koh Ker.[1]
- The artist Phung Huynh and the curator Rebecca S. Hall present Huynh's Return Home series, which pairs sculptural heads in U.S. museums with the headless statues still in Cambodia.[1]
Visiting
Times are Cambodia time, so the morning session begins at 6:30 p.m. Pacific time on October 8. Registration is free on the Center for Khmer Studies website, and people may join one session or follow the whole day.[1]
Source
- From the Center for Khmer Studies seminar page (read October 6, 2026).