Metropolitan Museum of Art Repatriates Two Khmer Sculptures to Cambodia
The Metropolitan Museum of Art repatriated two Khmer sandstone sculptures to Cambodia: an Angkor-period guardian deity (rākṣasa) dating to c. 921–945 and a mid-7th-century lintel carved with an anthropomorphic dragon (a kirtimukha). The returns, reported by the Met and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, stem from DA Alvin Bragg’s investigation into dealer Doris Wiener (died 1981) and her daughter Nancy Wiener, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to trafficking looted artifacts. The rākṣasa, looted from Koh Ker’s Prasat Chen temple and sold to Doris Wiener in 1972 before being gifted to the Met in 1987, and the lintel, smuggled into New York in 1981 and donated to the Met in 1985, were both seized by the DA’s office this year. They were formally transferred at a ceremony alongside a third object, a 7th-century head of Harihara surrendered to the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit in 2025; Met director and CEO Max Hollein and Bragg both issued statements about the return.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Repatriation Reckonings and Museums Under Siege