For 50 years, Douglas Latchford (Fig. 1) was the world’s premier expert on Cambodian art, supplying priceless statues to Western museums and rich collectors. But his fame masked a dirty secret. Douglas had colluded with the Khmer Rouge (Fig. 2), a genocidal regime, to loot Cambodia’s entire cultural heritage.
As the country descended into bloodshed, Douglas stole almost everything.
A network of art world cronies were on hand to help him sell these blood statues (Fig. 3), including a senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. When a band of art sleuths get on their case, Douglas and his co-conspirators mount a rearguard action to save themselves.
Unlike the Elgin Marbles, and other brewing controversies over stolen art, our story isn’t ancient history.
A British conservator comes across a pair of stone feet in a Cambodian jungle temple. His sleuthing leads him to deduce the feet belong to a statue in a U.S. museum and the trail ends at Douglas, the most serious scrutiny yet. Emma Bunker helps Douglas create fake documents to cover up his looting. But when a Cambodian statue goes on sale in Sotheby’s in New York, Douglas is tied up in a lawsuit and his name splashed in the newspapers for the first time.
© 2023 Dynamite Doug Podcast by Project Brazen & PRX.
