Anderson Cooper on "60 minutes" uncovers looted, ancient art on billionaire's mansion

[milotic2]

@60minutes A missing Cambodian sculpture was discovered in a billionaire’s home in Florida after it was featured in Architectural Digest. #cambodia #stolenartifacts #60minutes #architecturaldigest ♬ original sound - 60 Minutes
On a resurfaced 2008 issue of Architectural Digest, featuring the mansion of Douglas Latchford in Florida, a series of

Comments

[gabzillaz]

He didn't love Asian art, he just loved to steal it.

[anterrabre]

Some people honestly don't know; they go to a dealer requesting a certain type of art and they think the dealer is going through legit channels but some of them aren't. Other people don't care. And then there's those who don't use their heads; common sense would tell you anything coming down the war pipeline (Ukraine, Palestinian territories, The Congo, etc) right now will have a sketchy as fuck provenance usually looted from museums, palaces, national monuments, etc. And then you have those completely unscrupulous folks who have the deep pockets to say "Get me a Picasso/Dali/what the fuck ever" to folks who have an in with art thieves who have no qualms about robbing someone's house (who often have items acquired in a similar fashion) or "know someone" at a museum; a lot of art heists and recent incidents at the British Museum were inside jobs. The trick is to get art from a artist/sculptor/area that isn't something well known; no one is housing the Mona Lisa or Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" from their respective museums because

[niyarav]

Rich people are a disease and they must be eradicated

[pseudonygma]

"We offered him a road to redemption"???

Oh fuck off. That looter committed treason. The only way he can get redemption is from his own government and all its citizens.

"Other statutes being returned date from as far back as the 7th Century, including an over-life-size head of Buddha."

Can some fellow Asians shine some light on this? This is the type of cultural appropriation that seems like pure White colonialist nonsense. In Chinese culture, we would never have statues of just heads, especially not when it comes to deities of worship--it's seen as a severed head. It's not only super bad feng shui, it's incredibly inauspicious. They only have the heads because it's been chipped off its body right?

[milotic2]

Regarding your last question, probably.
The same investigation says that there’s a reason why so many statues have their feet hacked off, because looters find it very troublesome to take them with their pedestals, so it’s easier to just hack them away leaving their feet on site

[pseudonygma]

Urgh. That sounds about right.

I've always gotten the icks when I see Buddha heads at places like Home Depot. It's the equivalent of displaying a giant Jesus head in your living room and feeling super proud and cultured about it. Blergh.

[akty52]

It's the same with deity worshiping statue in Viet Nam. We do have a no head deity though.

We also have Ho Chi Minh statue with only the upper half lol. I think it's only applied to statue of historical figures, not religion's deities.

[kawaiiairbender]

Once again billionaires shouldn't exist.

Sadly governments have no interest in dealing with them :(