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BURIRAM PROVINCE, Thailand — The villagers dug by way of the night time — hoping, praying, dreaming to discover a bronze statue that would make them wealthy.
For 2 years within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, the bottom surrounding the 1,000-year-old Plai Bat II temple close to the Cambodian border turned an excavation zone, a looting mecca.
Just about everybody within the village took half, stated Satien Rojanabundit, an area who was only a boy on the time. Households introduced their youngsters to the temple website, hauling cooking utensils and child carriages as males dredged the hidden vaults for treasures.
When these impoverished rice farmers discovered a big piece, a number of villagers advised The Denver Publish, that meant a burgeoning collector named Douglas Latchford would return to the village to see it along with his personal eyes — and hand out wads of money.
“Latchford was the person who’d purchase just about every thing,” Rojanabundit stated by way of an interpreter from his home close to the temple, recalling how his father made a fortune serving to the businessman package deal and ship statues by way of practice to Bangkok. “Everybody knew you can promote something to him and he’d offer you numerous cash.”
Latchford, who died in 2020, got here to dominate the Southeast Asian artwork commerce over the subsequent half-century. However he later could be accused by American authorities of promoting plundered works to rich collectors and outstanding establishments just like the Denver Artwork Museum.
What turned often called the Prakhon Chai bronzes, found at Plai Bat II, may need been his first heist.
Within the third installment of a three-part investigation, The Denver Publish reveals the little-known story of how these prized Thai relics made their method from the fingers of villagers to galleries within the Denver Artwork Museum and different international collections — and the function a Colorado artwork scholar, Emma C. Bunker, performed in serving to sanitize Latchford’s looted assortment because it was bought on the open market.
The Publish’s year-long challenge — that includes on-the-ground reporting in Southeast Asia, dozens of interviews and a evaluation of beforehand unreported emails — examines the assorted essential gamers that help the illicit worldwide antiquities commerce.
The U.S. authorities is investigating three Thai items in Denver’s museum, together with two Prakhon Chai statues and one other relic from Bunker, because the Southeast Asian nation strikes to reclaim its looted historical past.
“Something that comes from Prakhon Chai, something that comes from Plai Bat II, is illegitimate with clearly no provenance,” stated Tanongsak Hanwong, an archaeologist and member of Thailand’s committee on repatriation of stolen artifacts, by way of an interpreter. “There’s not a single Prakhon Chai statue that’s on show in Thai museums. These items are all in U.S. museums and different museums all over the world.”
Whereas previous consideration from prosecutors and journalists has centered on Latchford’s illicit scheme in Cambodia, The Publish’s investigation reveals that Thailand suffered from a lot of the identical cultural plundering.
“It’s in no one’s curiosity to suppose very laborious in regards to the supply of objects that everybody is having fun with and individuals are taking advantage of,” stated Erin Thompson, an artwork crime professor at New York’s John Jay Faculty of Felony Justice.
Bunker’s function in what’s now often called the Prakhon Chai hoard can be deeply suspicious, artwork crime specialists say, given her shut affiliation with Latchford and her historical past of utilizing articles and books to validate his stolen relics.
She wrote a number of articles on the topic, together with pegging the Thai treasures to their exact location on the Plai Bat II temple when everybody believed that they had come from Prakhon Chai, a close-by area. Bunker, who died final 12 months in Denver at 90, and her husband additionally owned not less than certainly one of these bronzes, which the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Museum of Asian Artwork says sits in its assortment in Washington, D.C.
Bunker’s accounting of Prakhon Chai statues is now getting used as a important useful resource for Thai officers scanning the globe for the nation’s historical relics. And her articles, starting within the early Nineteen Seventies, set the stage for a prolonged profession writing scholarly works that promoted Latchford’s plundered assortment.
“It turned their modus operandi,” stated Angela Chiu, an impartial artwork scholar who has researched the Asian artwork commerce. “It’s all about legitimizing his looted objects.”
Three of Bunker’s surviving youngsters declined to remark or didn’t reply to The Publish for this sequence. Harriet Bunker, certainly one of Emma’s daughters, stated the allegations towards her mom didn’t align with the lady she knew and beloved.
A Latchford household consultant declined to remark for the sequence.
Unearthing a hidden historical past
It began as an accident.
Legend has it that villagers, maybe tending to cattle, stumbled upon a secret vault within the early Nineteen Sixties close to the crumbling temple, which had been inbuilt 895 by King Ishanavarman II.
It’s there they discovered these distinctive bronze statues, ranging in peak from 3 inches to greater than 3 toes tall, encrusted with obsidian gem stones and silver plates. They depicted a spread of main Buddhist gods, together with Maitreya, Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara and Gautama.
The statues possible have been delivered to the world greater than a thousand years prior, Hanwong stated. They might have been buried within the underground vault in an try to undermine Buddhist affect within the area, he stated, or to cover them from invaders.
The villagers, shocked by their discovery, didn’t know tips on how to promote their newfound items.
In got here a person often called Boonlerd, a Bangkok purchaser. Dazzled by the bronzes, Boonlerd shared the information with Latchford.
The items have been so stunning, the businessman needed to see them along with his personal eyes.
“Latchford was hooked,” Rojanabundit stated.
Over the subsequent 12 months, the aspiring Bangkok collector returned again and again to the village, Baan Yai, and to see Plai Bat II, Rojanabundit stated. He remembers Latchford as a pleasant white man with a little bit of a tummy and a very good humorousness, at all times doling out cash to villagers.
Each time Latchford got here to city, he’d hand the boy 100 or 500 baht (as a lot as $117 in in the present day’s foreign money) — mind-boggling sums for a kid.
“Latchford created a very good economic system for the village,” Rojanabundit stated.
Boonlerd and Latchford arrange an workplace at Rojanabundit’s father’s home, turning the two-story dwelling with pale pink paint right into a bustling antiquities market. Boonlerd was the extra constant presence, Rojanabundit stated, however Latchford would eagerly return when somebody dug up an enormous piece.
Understanding the collector paid high greenback, the villagers simply stored digging.
“Latchford had no restrict,” Rojanabundit stated. “Something they may discover, he would purchase.”
Soin Chansri recalled hurrying to the temple after college, bringing rice for his father. The villagers dug in groups all through the night time, realizing they discovered a chamber after they heard a hole sound emanate from the outlet.
“All the things was so good on the looting website,” Chansri stated by way of an interpreter, standing atop the very floor on which his father used to dig practically half a century in the past. “You might spend all of your time there.”
Villagers who took half within the looting say they keep in mind every bit they discovered on the Plai Bat II temple. Each one must be fastidiously cleaned and washed, with bronzes being essentially the most priceless, adopted by stone.
Samak Promrak was in his mid-20s when he began digging for statues. He stated he remembers the biggest piece he ever unearthed — a 56-inch Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara that’s now prominently displayed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.
Different relics he stated he discovered now sit in New York’s Asia Society Museum and in San Francisco’s Asian Artwork Museum.
Rojanabundit stated his father Singto was in control of packing the statues — 20 or 30 at a time — in safe packing containers to be shipped by practice to Bangkok, labeling them as mechanical objects to keep away from suspicion.
In a poverty-stricken area, Latchford’s cash wasn’t simply good to have. It was life-changing.
“The hardship was actually unhealthy,” Rojanabundit stated, explaining that poor villagers who couldn’t afford rice would dig for tapioca within the floor. “So something that would generate cash, individuals would go for with out hesitation.”
Most individuals within the space have been rice farmers. In 1965, 1 kilogram of Jasmine rice bought for two baht, or half a U.S. cent.
However in the event you discovered an enormous relic at Plai Bat II? That might web you 100,000 baht — the equal of greater than $26,000 in in the present day’s foreign money. Even the smaller bronzes might fetch two or three thousand baht, or practically $800.
Rojanabundit’s father made a lot cash working with Boonlerd and Latchford that he might afford a Jeep — a luxurious unparalleled for somebody of his stature.
“Even the police have been asking to make use of his Jeep,” Rojanabundit stated with a smile. His father purchased land with Latchford’s cash. He constructed a home.
Sitting on a mattress on the ground of his dwelling throughout an August interview, Rojanabundit turned to level to images of his youngsters hanging behind him on the wall, wearing flowy blue robes, bouquets of flowers in hand.
“My youngsters all have college levels,” he stated proudly.
By 1966, after two years of looting, the Plai Bat II temple had little left to take. The key vaults have been barren. However Latchford, up till his loss of life, continued to go to annually, Rojanabundit stated.
“He beloved to be on this village,” Rojanabundit stated.
An avid fan of bodybuilding, Latchford even introduced some Thai musclemen from time to time to see the temple, Rojanabundit stated. The athletes would additionally hand out cash to locals.
Those that took half within the looting say it’s laborious to look again with remorse.
“I by no means thought something like that,” Rojanabundit stated. “We simply needed to get cash for our household.”
He paused. Rojanabundit does remorse it a bit — not the looting, he stated, however the truth that these things are price 200 instances what Boonlerd and Latchford paid the villagers.
After Promrak, now 81, bought among the giant statues, locals known as him a “small millionaire.” However the guilt gnawed at him, so he stated he donated among the cash to an area Buddhist temple — an act often called “making advantage.”
“I felt I had no alternative,” Promrak stated of the looting, his hand shaking barely. Even many years later, he can nonetheless draw maps of the underground vaults at Plai Bat II. “I needed to do it.”
Honing in on Prakhon Chai
In 1965, a 12 months after the startling discovery at Plai Bat II, information of the Prakhon Chai relics appeared in a quick article within the Illustrated London Information.
The piece, which incorporates particulars later decided to be inaccurate, touted a “startling discovery” by Cambodian villagers of “excellent Khmer statues” from the seventh century of a “sort which has hitherto been unknown.”
There have been images of three statues, acquired and placed on show by Spink & Son, the longstanding London public sale home.
The statues turned often called the “Prakhon Chai hoard,” an archaeological time period for artifacts buried within the floor. The place precisely this hoard ended up, nevertheless, remained a thriller.
Enter Emma Bunker.
The Colorado artwork scholar, who spent many years with the Denver Artwork Museum and Colorado Faculty, had turn out to be a widely known authority on Chinese language and Central Asian artwork.
Up till that time, she hadn’t written about Southeast Asia. However in a 1972 journal article, Bunker for the primary time advised the world the place many of those statues could possibly be discovered.
The Denver Artwork Museum, she wrote, held six of those items. Bunker and her husband, John, owned one themselves, whereas others have been displayed in collections from San Francisco to Philadelphia.
Bunker additionally included three images of the temple the place the hoard was found, footage she later wrote have been “provided by a educated buddy.”
For many years, little else got here out about Prakhon Chai. However 30 years after her preliminary article, Bunker printed a follow-up piece out of the blue. She recognized, accurately, that these statues got here from the Plai Bat II temple, not the Prakhon Chai area.
These prized relics, she wrote in 2002, “have the excellence of being among the many most misunderstood objects in Southeast Asian artwork historical past.”
She additionally included an up to date accounting for the place these statues have been situated, “reconstructed with the assistance of data from mates within the worldwide artwork world.”
One statue within the piece is attributed to Latchford, Bunker’s shut buddy and collaborator. A second is credited to the Fleetwing Assortment, which business watchers consider to be Latchford’s as nicely. (He owned an organization known as Fleetwing Estates Ltd., in line with the “Pandora Papers” investigation.)
And Latchford is the primary particular person thanked within the acknowledgments on the finish of the article. This piece, she wrote, “couldn’t have been written with out (his) recommendation and encouragement.”
Artwork students and Thai officers marvel, although, simply how Bunker’s scholarship happened. Why, after years of writing completely about Central Asian and Chinese language artwork, did she out of the blue wade into Thai antiquities? How did she know to take a look at the Plai Bat II temple?
“Spink, Emma Bunker and Douglas Latchford — there’s one thing unsuitable with this image,” stated Chiu, the impartial artwork scholar.
Latchford used Spink & Son repeatedly all through the many years to promote looted items, American investigators and Cambodian officers have stated.
By now, the Bangkok supplier’s historical past of promoting plundered antiquities has been well-documented. However this foray into northeast Thailand “may need been Latchford’s first massive heist,” stated Bradley J. Gordon, an legal professional main Cambodia’s efforts to reclaim its pillaged historical past.
Gordon, an American working in Phnom Penh, might know extra about Latchford’s life than anybody outdoors his speedy household. After the Bangkok supplier’s loss of life, his daughter gave the Cambodians correspondence, a gesture of goodwill that has helped the Southeast Asian nation reclaim scores of historic artifacts.
It’s not clear when Latchford and Bunker initially met. The Colorado scholar as soon as stated they have been first launched in 1978 at Spink & Son in London and went to a celebration.
However Hiram Woodward, a former Baltimore museum curator and buddy of Bunker’s, stated she advised him that she knew Latchford previous to her 1972 article about Prakhon Chai.
“He was related, sure, together with her curiosity and information of the location,” Woodward stated.
Ashley Thompson, a specialist in Southeast Asian artwork historical past at SOAS College of London, stated the 1972 article “was clearly in cahoots” with Latchford.
“There’s no method that she wrote that piece and so they didn’t know one another,” Thompson stated. “If she stated ’78, she was making an attempt to cowl the connection.”
It’s additionally unsure when or what number of instances Bunker visited the temple or the close by villages. Locals advised The Publish that whereas they remembered Latchford and his frequent journeys, they couldn’t recall Bunker.
In her 2002 article, Bunker stated she lately had visited Thailand to see the temple together with her personal eyes.
Hanwong, the Thai archaeologist, stated a villager advised him that Bunker and Latchford got here collectively not less than as soon as.
The villager, Chuai Mulaka, has since died. However in a 2016 go to earlier than his loss of life, the archaeologist stated he confirmed Mulaka an image of the 2 shut mates.
“That is Latchford,” Mulaka stated, in line with Hanwong, pointing to his picture. “And that is Emma Bunker.”
It’s clear, Hanwong stated, that the pair have been working collectively.
“She was somebody who helped legitimize the Prakhon Chai statues,” he stated.
“She was his artwork historic confederate”
An enormous a part of this effort, artwork crime specialists say, was the writing of articles and books in regards to the Thai treasures.
“Publishing images of looted antiquities is a typical laundering follow,” a federal agent wrote in a 2016 legal grievance for an accused New York gallery proprietor.
Bunker’s articles checked all of the packing containers for what the artwork market wants, stated Chiu, the impartial Asian artwork professional. Establishing a definite “Prakhon Chai” type, establishing a chronology for the items, publishing images and itemizing homeowners to create supposed provenance for the items.
“The aim of those articles is basically to assist improve the advertising and marketing,” she stated.
Along with the 2 articles, Bunker printed a number of Prakhon Chai objects in her and Latchford’s 2011 e-book “Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Previous.”
Among the many dozens of antiquities included within the e-book are two bronze statues which are a part of the Denver Artwork Museum’s assortment. One, an eighth-century bronze Avalokiteshvara, is presently underneath investigation by the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety and is on Thailand’s repatriation record.
“What you need to do is to have a scholarly backing to things to provide them legitimacy,” Chiu stated. “This formalizes them as a part of artwork historical past as scholarly objects of scholarly research.”
Different Thai statues featured within the shiny coffee-table e-book: Lokeshvara statues in California’s Norton Simon Museum and Asian Artwork Museum, and a Maitreya in Fort Price’s Kimbell Artwork Museum.
Thailand believes all of them have been looted, and now desires them again.
“It appears so clear that she was his artwork historic confederate,” Thompson stated. “And the Prakhon Chai was central to that relationship.”
Cambodian and Thai officers have stated Bunker and Latchford’s three books are stuffed with stolen antiquities, and so they’ve been utilizing them as treasure maps to assist them find objects in personal collections and museums throughout the globe.
Gordon introduced the books to indicate former looters working with the Cambodian authorities. Web page by web page, he stated, the looters recognized objects they remembered stealing from Cambodia’s historical temples.
One e-book, “Adoration and Glory,” included 4 relics that Latchford — with Bunker’s help — bought or donated to the Denver Artwork Museum. These antiquities at the moment are again in Cambodia after federal authorities within the U.S. filed for his or her forfeiture final 12 months and returned them in August throughout a repatriation ceremony in New York Metropolis.
Thai officers have used Bunker’s articles and books to assemble their record of looted antiquities they hope to get again from worldwide collections — together with three from the Denver Artwork Museum.
The items underneath investigation within the Mile Excessive Metropolis embody two from the Prakhon Chai hoard: the eighth-century Avalokitesvara, which the museum bought in 1983, and a standing Buddha, acquired in 1966. Each objects are included in Bunker’s articles.
A 3rd merchandise, a Nineteenth-century gilded bronze standing sculpture of standing Buddha, can be underneath investigation by U.S. authorities, the museum confirmed. The statue was a present in 2016 from Bunker.
Emails between Latchford and Bunker, acquired by the Cambodian authorities and shared with The Publish, present the pair venting about renewed curiosity in Prakhon Chai starting in late 2017 — whilst Latchford continued to promote the statues for vital sums.
Bunker, in a single 2018 e mail, acknowledged to Latchford that the Denver Artwork Museum had certainly one of these items, however “possibly (Thailand) gained’t ask for it as a result of it’s fairly small.”
In different emails, Bunker complained to him {that a} curator on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork stirred up the Prakhon Chai difficulty by arranging for a video showcasing one of many museum’s sculptures.
“Actually dumb efficiency,” Bunker wrote.
Latchford later vented in a 2018 message to a British novelist that Bunker, for all her whining, “forgets that she’s the one who pinpointed the precise location (of the Prakhon Chai items), ‘til then they have been simply floating.”
Nonetheless, Latchford continued to market Prakhon Chai bronzes for tens of 1000’s of {dollars}, utilizing Bunker’s articles in his gross sales pitches. In a single e mail, titled “PKC Information,” he described what he claimed was the primary piece found within the hoard: an Eleventh-century Buddha underneath a naga snake.
A supplier, Peng Seng, tried to chop the top off the statue, Latchford stated, leading to a slice mark beneath the placid face.
Seng was a identified collaborator of his, referred to in Latchford’s 2019 federal indictment solely as “the Thai supplier.” However unredacted letters, reported by the Australian Broadcasting Firm, present Seng helped Latchford fabricate provenance paperwork so his objects could possibly be bought on the worldwide market.
And specialists say marks just like the one on the Buddha’s neck are clear indicators of looting. Usually, with bigger objects, looters will take away the top so the relic can extra simply be transported.
“Attempting to jot down a brand new historical past”
Inserting objects in museums — by way of loans, presents or gross sales — can be a key technique for laundering plundered antiquities, specialists say.
Latchford preferred to inform potential patrons the place comparable items could possibly be discovered on show, citing the Met, the Denver Artwork Museum and different outstanding collections. And Bunker gave him a revered voice with institutional backing he might use within the gross sales pitch.
All three of the Thai items within the Denver Artwork Museum which are underneath investigation stay a part of its assortment, a museum spokesperson stated, although they’re not on show. None of them, museum officers stated, have ties to Latchford.
The Denver Artwork Museum first responded in October 2020 to an inquiry from the Division of Justice, after which, a 12 months later, from the Division of Homeland Safety in regards to the “provenance and return of the three objects,” Andy Sinclair, a museum spokesperson, stated in an e mail. “Nobody from the Thai authorities has contacted or expressed an curiosity to the DAM within the return of those items.”
A spokesperson for Homeland Safety Investigations, in an e mail, wouldn’t touch upon the specifics of the Denver objects, citing the energetic investigation. The company stated its San Francisco workplace is conducting investigations into suspected cultural heritage from Thailand at “numerous museums all through the U.S.,” evaluating proof offered by specialists from the Southeast Asian nation.
The Thai committee has not been straight in contact with the Denver Artwork Museum, Hanwong stated. As an alternative, they’re speaking with an agent from Homeland Safety Investigations.
Prakhon Chai statues are nonetheless on show or a part of the collections in a few of America’s most outstanding museums, together with the Met and Asia Society in New York, the Asian Artwork Museum in San Francisco and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.
An eighth-century Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara statue, product of copper alloy and standing 56 inches tall, stands prominently on a pedestal close to a doorway within the Met’s Southeast Asian artwork gallery.
The museum proudly claims the piece to be the biggest statue from the Prakhon Chai hoard.
“Modeled in a brand new and unknown type, the sculptures discovered close to Prakhon Chai in Northeast Thailand opened a brand new chapter within the historical past of Southeast Asian artwork,” an audio description on the museum’s web site states.
One other piece within the Met’s assortment — an eighth-to-ninth-century standing Bodhisattva Maitreya — was collectively gifted in 1989 by Spink & Son and Latchford.
A Met spokesperson declined to reply questions from The Publish, together with whether or not U.S. investigators had been in contact with museum officers in regards to the Prakhon Chai items.
Not one of the museums contacted for this story — apart from the Denver Artwork Museum — stated that they had been in contact with American or Thai authorities.
An Asian Artwork Museum spokesman stated three of the museum’s 4 items on Thailand’s repatriation record had been bought from Spink and added to the museum’s assortment within the mid-Nineteen Sixties. The Asia Society acquired one piece from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Assortment.
Not one of the Prakohn Chai statues, nevertheless, are in Thailand’s museums. And that’s what motivates Hanwong and others to push for his or her return.
Final 12 months, with the assistance of American authorities, the nation retrieved two 1,000-year-old sandstone lintels from the Asian Artwork Museum that had been stolen a half-century in the past. One is now prominently displayed in a gallery subsequent to the Phanom Rung temple in northeast Thailand.
Strolling across the historical temple in August, set on the rim of an extinct volcano, Hanwong identified lacking lintels and pillars that after adorned the holy website — however now sit in worldwide collections. He whipped out his telephone to indicate footage of the looted items superimposed onto the temple, proof that these things belonged right here.
It’s data that he used to submit to Fb — making an attempt to drum up help — however now sends to American investigators and Thailand’s high authorities officers.
“He’s actually obsessed about this,” stated Lalita Hanwong, Tanongsak’s spouse and a college historical past professor.
Retrieving the Prakhon Chai statues, together with the opposite looted relics, is important to understanding Thailand’s historical past and the unfold of Buddhism — and will even assist forge a stronger relationship with neighboring Cambodia, Tanongsak stated.
“We’re making an attempt to jot down a brand new historical past of this period,” he stated.
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