After a decades-long journey through the hands of art smugglers, dealers and collectors — including billionaires and North America’s largest museum — dozens of ancient Khmer objects have been returned home to Cambodia.
On Thursday, the country’s prime minister led a ceremony to celebrate the repatriation of 70 artifacts that were stolen during years of bloody civil war and later transferred to Western art institutions and private collectors.
In a statement, the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts described the return of the artifacts as akin to the return of “Khmer ancestors’ souls.”
