Thailand welcomes the return of trafficked antiquities from New York’s Metropolitan Museum

By JERRY HARMER
Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s National Museum has hosted a welcome-home ceremony for two ancient statues illegally trafficked from Thailand by a British collector of antiquities that were returned from the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The objects — a tall bronze figure called the “Standing Shiva” or the “Golden Boy” and a smaller sculpture called “Kneeling Female” — are thought to be around 1,000 years old. The Metropolitan Museum had announced last December that it would return more than a dozen artifacts to Thailand and Cambodia after they were linked to the late Douglas Latchford, an art dealer and collector accused of running a huge antiquities trafficking network out of Southeast Asia.