{"id":169553,"date":"2025-12-05T13:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/169553\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T13:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T13:00:08","slug":"cambodia-requests-records-from-disgraced-denver-art-museum-board-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/169553\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambodia Requests Records from Disgraced Denver Art Museum Board Member"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Cambodian government formally reached out to the family of Emma C. Bunker, an art historian who died in 2021 and who sat on the board of the Denver Art Museum<\/a>, for her records and archival materials, the Denver Post <\/a>reported.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe request follows on from the repatriation of 11 Asian artifacts<\/a> by DAM in recent years to Vietnam, Cambodia<\/a>, and Thailand. The works had primarily been donated by Bunker, who came under scrutiny several years ago after it was found that she sourced acquisitions of several works from Douglas Latchford, an art and antiquities dealer accused of smuggling<\/a> and dealing in looted Southeast Asian antiquities. Latchford died in 2020 before he could stand trial, while Bunker died a year later and was never officially charged with any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Denver Post, however, continued to report on Bunker\u2019s ties to Latchford after her death, releasing a three-part investigation in 2022 alleging that Bunker helped Latchford use DAM as a \u201cway station for looted art.\u201d Bunker had established an acquisitions fund for DAM to help set up its Asian galleries. The Post alleged that she used her scholarly reputation to vouch for Latchford and even helped the dealer forge provenance records to faciltiate the sales through the fund. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe museum cut ties with Bunker in 2023, removing her name from its Southeast Asian gallery wall and returning a sizable donation to her family. <\/p>\n

\n\tNow the Cambodian government, through attorney Bradley Gordon, sent an email to Bunker\u2019s son, Lambert, asking for his mother\u2019s \u201cextensive notebooks concerning Cambodia,\u201d as wellas photographs of Cambodian statues that Bunker arranged for several publications co-written with Latchford. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are very eager to consult these materials as we continue our search for several important statues originating from the country,\u201d Gordon wrote in the email, which the Post reviewed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Denver Art Museum did not respond to a request for comment at press time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cambodian government formally reached out to the family of Emma C. Bunker, an art historian who died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,25098,37059,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-169553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-cambodia","13":"tag-denver-art-museum","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-il","17":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}