Over a hundred 'stolen' Cambodian statues found in Australia
More than a hundred Khmer statues "stolen" from temples in Cambodia are believed to be sitting in Australia's three most prestigious galleries, as well as smaller museums and private collections.
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00:00 In the bowels of the National Gallery of Australia, cultural heritage experts from Cambodia are
00:07 in their element. They're inspecting the gallery's Khmer collection and have found an inscription
00:13 indicating this Shiva statue comes from a particular village.
00:17 I really believe from Cambodia and from the north, northern part of Cambodia.
00:24 The team's job is to identify, trace and reclaim statues that were looted from Cambodia's temples
00:30 during decades of conflict, then sold by international art dealers to museums and private collections
00:36 around the world.
00:37 We're looking at thousands of statues many times, we have no idea where they come from.
00:41 So to see an inscription, it's incredible.
00:45 Last week the National Gallery agreed to return three rare charm bronze statues to Cambodia
00:51 after its restitution team presented compelling evidence that they were stolen from the country's
00:56 east.
00:57 Now the team's investigating whether any of the gallery's Khmer pieces, as well as Khmer
01:02 items in four other Australian museums, should also be returned.
01:06 We've put together a comprehensive list of what we believe is in museums in Australia,
01:12 so we think it's about 100 objects. We're not sure how many are in private collections.
01:17 The Khmer Empire extended across Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, so identifying
01:23 the modern day country to return them to is tricky for galleries.
01:27 One of our key concerns or key focus areas is to establish the provenance of where the
01:32 works were found, and I think that will be very helpful in evolving what the next steps
01:38 are.
01:39 The Cambodian team says it will now return to the village where it believes the Shiva
01:43 came from to try to gather more evidence to present to the National Gallery.
01:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]