Inside the Mind of an Antiquities Looter

Hyperallergic interviewed Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Matthew Campbell about his book The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy, which examines the looting of Khmer antiquities from Cambodia and their sale to Western collectors. The book centers on Douglas Latchford, an Englishman who moved to Bangkok in the late 1950s and allegedly orchestrated the trade in looted Cambodian sculpture; in 2019, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted him on wire fraud, smuggling, conspiracy, and other trafficking charges, but he died in 2020 at age 88 before trial. Campbell describes how Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Hoving pushed to expand the museum’s Southeast Asian holdings in the 1970s and hired curator Martin Lerner, who acquired major Cambodian works that Campbell characterizes as having “wildly illicit origins.” The discussion links the demand for Khmer Hindu and Buddhist statuary (from the 9th to 15th centuries CE) to violence and upheaval during Cambodia’s modern history, including the period of genocide.

Read the full article at Hyperallergic