California museum to return statue to Cambodia

The Norton Simon Museum has agreed to return a 10th century statue that may have been looted from a Cambodian temple during that country’s genocidal civil war in the 1970s.

“Temple Wrestler,” a sandstone figure missing its hands and feet, has been displayed at the museum for nearly four decades. The five foot (1.52-metre)-high work depicts Bhima, a heroic figure in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, in a fighting pose. The sculpture is one of three being returned to Cambodia from the U.S.

Museum officials met with Cambodian officials earlier this year and are returning the statue “as a gesture of friendship, and in response to a unique and compelling request by top officials in Cambodia to help rebuild its ‘soul’ as a nation,” the Pasadena museum has said. “The Norton Simon properly acquired the Bhima from a reputable art dealer in New York in 1976,” the museum said. The decision marks the latest progress in efforts to bring back together nine figures that once formed a tableau in a tower of the temple. —AP

 

Courtesy & Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/california-museum-to-return-statue-to-cambodia/article5991269.ece