Torso of Rama

Torso of Rama

The Denver Art Museum acquired the Khmer torso of Rama in 1986 from the Doris Wiener Gallery in New York City. At the time, the museum says, it had no evidence that the statue had left Cambodia inappropriately.

The torso was subsequently published by the British dealer Douglas Latchford and American scholar Emma Bunker in their 2004 book, "Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art." "It's size and drapery style identify it with the site of Lingapura," they wrote, using an ancient name for the Khmer temple complex of Koh Ker, which had been heavily plundered. "To date, the Denver torso appears to be the only existing large-scale Khmer sculpture of Rama."

Cambodian authorities investigating the looting of Koh Ker found information that Douglas Latchford had bought the torso from looters and sold it to Doris Wiener, a regular customer. They also found a pedestal at Koh Ker from which they believe the torso had been removed by looters. They provided this information to the Denver museum in 2015.

The Denver museum announced in 2016 that it was voluntarily returning the torso to Cambodia after learning new information about its provenance from Cambodian authorities that were not available to the museum when the object was acquired in 1986. The museum’s director, Christoph Heinrich, said the museum had also formed a “collaborative relationship” between the Denver museum and the National Museum of Cambodia.

Months later, Doris Wiener's daughter Nancy Wiener, who took over Wiener Gallery, was arrested and accused of working with Douglas Latchford and other traffickers to sell looted South and Southeast Asian antiquities to American museums and collectors. (She pleaded guilty to related charges in 2021.)

Latchford himself was criminally charged in 2019, with Emma Bunker cited as an unnamed conspirator in his decades-long trafficking scheme. U.S. authorities alleged their books, including Adoration and the Glory, where the torso was published, were part of a scheme to launder looted Khmer antiquities that they had helped loot and smuggle out of Cambodia.

In 2022, the Denver Art Museum surrendered four Khmer antiquities tied to Latchford and Bunker amid an on-going federal investigation of the trafficking network. And in 2023, the Denver museum returned another five objects that it had acquired from Doris and Nancy Wiener.

1

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Khmer

Denver Art Museum

Cambodia

Denver Art Museum Press Release
https://d26jxt5097u8sr.cloudfront.net/2023-03/02%2026%202016%20Repatriation%20of%20Torso%20of%20Rama%20to%20Cambodia.pdf

Unmasking “The Scholar”: The Colorado woman who helped a global art smuggling operation flourish for decades
https://www.denverpost.com/2022/12/01/emma-bunker-douglas-latchford-cambodian-art-denver-art-museum/

Sam Tabachnik

Jason Felch