The U.S. plans to return to Thailand four sculptures thought to have been taken illegally from Prasat Hin Khao Plai Bat II in Buri Ram, stated Phnombootra Chandrajoti, the director-general of the Fine Arts Department.
He mentioned that on April 26, the department received notification from a U.S.-based officer at Homeland Security Investigations. The communication indicated that the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco had taken the four artifacts out of their collection with the intention of returning them to their home country.
The four artifacts consist of three Bodhisattva statues and one Buddha statue. These pieces were part of multiple relics found in Thailand’s Prakhon Chai district within Buri Ram province before being illicitly removed from the nation in 1964. Collectively, these artworks are referred to as the Prakhon Chai sculptures.
According to Mr Phnombootra, evidence suggests that Douglas Latchford, an American art dealer who died in Bangkok in 2020, excavated the sculptures from Prasat Hin Khao Plai Bat II on Plai Bat Mountain.
A department committee tracking the stolen Prakhon Chai artefacts learned that they were in San Francisco and asked David Keller, an investigator with the HSI, to help back in 2017.
The museum reviewed the evidence submitted by Mr Keller and acknowledged that the artefacts had been smuggled out of Thailand. A months-long process of gathering public input resulted in the museum’s decision on April 22 to remove the items from its inventory.
Last November, the United States repatriated four 3,000-year-old Ban Chiang artifacts to Thailand, which included a piece of clay pottery, a bracelet, and two tube-shaped beads.
In May of the previous year, two ancient statues — known as the ‘Golden Boy’, which depicts a standing Shiva, and an image of a kneeling woman — were also returned to their origin from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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