New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art expelled an attorney for the Cambodian government from a Tuesday meeting between museum officials and the representatives of Cambodia’s culture ministry, heightening tensions in a yearslong campaign to press the museum to return Khmer treasures to their home country.
The attorney, Brad Gordon, has been one of the most prominent faces of Cambodia’s national effort to trace lost ancient artifacts looted during years of turbulent civil war. Gordon has worked for the Cambodian government in that capacity for a decade. Many of the pieces were trafficked to the United States and other Western nations and sold to ultrawealthy art patrons and some of the world’s largest museums, including the Met.
Officials from Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts visited the Met on Tuesday as part of a U.S. State Department program that provides tours of U.S. institutions for foreigners. While the Cambodian delegations’ itinerary included stops at multiple American museums, their visit to the Met held special significance — and sensitivity — because of Cambodia’s extensive push to reclaim cultural objects from the museum.
