via ArtNet News, 06 July 2021: Issues of restitution, reconciliation and disruption – this article looks at colonial plunder across the world and the widening conversation about what to do with these collections.
In 1812, Sir Raffles sacked the Palace of Yogyakarta; in 1885, British troops looted the Mandalay Palace; that same year, French troops took wagons full of antiques from the Imperial Palace of Hue (the already-defunct 11th century Imperial City of Thang Long was destroyed by the French during the same period). The Dutch looted the Lombok Palace in 1894, and the 1903 Younghusband expedition to Tibet effectively created the collections of Tibetan art in most British museums—just to name a few.
In the fight for restitution, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Cambodia have been particularly outspoken, and the latter nation has been particularly successful in its quest for restoring lost Khmer heritage. Earlier this year, deceased art dealer and smuggler Douglas Latchford’s daughter announced she would return 125 Khmer sculptures worth $50 million from her father’s collection.
But that’s not always the case—the situation of Vietnam, which was under colonial rule as French Indochina, poses a stark contrast. Troves of Vietnamese antiques are located in France. The Musée Guimet houses part of the Imperial Treasure taken to France in 1885, a formidable collection of Bronze Age Dong Son drums and myriad sculptures from the ancient kingdom of Champa.
