NY Times Ignores Facts about Metropolitan Museum’s Proactive, Principled Return of Cambodian “Attendants”

As my readers know, I’m all in favor of hard-hitting investigative reporting. But I was astonished by the NY Times‘ focus on the Metropolitan Museum’s two 10th-century Koh Ker “Kneeling Attendants” (repatriated in 2013) as the principal objects of contention in its long P.1 exposé—Cambodia Says It’s Found Its Lost Artifacts: In Gallery 249 at the Met.

First, let me expose the sculptures in question. While repeatedly referring to these twin guardians as Exhibit A in its indictment of the Met’s collecting practices in the field of South and Southeast Asian art, the Times article never “exhibited” them. Let me fill that pictorial void with my own photo, as published in this May 8, 2013 CultureGrrl post—Campbell/Cambodia: Metropolitan Museum’s Principled Repatriation of Looted Khmer Statues:

Flanking the entrance to Gallery 249 (until 2013): The Met’s 10th-century Koh Ker “Kneeling Attendants,” now returned to Cambodia
*Photo by Lee Rosenbaum*

Here’s what I then wrote about that commendable giveback:

In deciding to repatriate two important 10th-century Koh Ker stone statues of “Kneeling Attendants,” on public display in its permanent collection galleries for almost 20 years, the Metropolitan Museum has set a gold standard [emphasis added] for museums’ cultural-property policy, going far beyond what the Association of Art Museum Directors mandates. (AAMD’s antiquities guideslines refer to future acquisitions, not to dicey objects that are already in museum collections.)
But the Met’s salutary influence on future practice could be even more powerful if the Met had been more transparent about the facts and circumstances that it weighed in arriving at its highly principled decision.

It’s not until you’ve read through 2,100 words of the Times’ 2,700-word article (and most readers probably won’t make it to the middle of the second jump page) that you learn that the Met in 2013 “returned its Kneeling Attendants…after evidence surfaced that they were stolen.” If reporters Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley (whose work on cultural-property issues I have greatly admired) weren’t playing “gotcha,” they might have, in fairness, put that exculpatory information up at the top, where readers first encounter the “Kneeling Attendants.”

I’ll likely have more to say about the cultural property wars in a future post, but for now I’ll leave you with the approach that I favor, as enunciated by Timothy Rub:

Timothy Rub speaking on cultural-property issues at Penn Museum
*Photo by Lee Rosenbaum*

Here’s a nugget from my long post quoting his October 2011 lecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum on “The Shape of Things to Come” for antiquities:

American museums will have to direct their resources—human and financial—towards establishing stronger working relationships with source countries…that can facilitate the granting of long-term loans of objects that…have the potential to greatly enrich the experience that our visitors have at our museums. To put this more bluntly: Collaborative relationships across national boundaries are not simply desirable; they are the new order of the day if American museums are to continue to fulfill their missions….
To put this question in purely economic terms: Why shouldn’t I be willing to pay a reasonable loan fee…for the opportunity to study and display, for an extended period of time, objects designated as national treasures, especially if they are not generally available for the public to see?

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