The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco bills itself as one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Asian and Asian American art, boasting more than 20,000 works from 48 countries.
But a new exhibit lays out an uncomfortable truth for the storied museum: Some of its collection was looted and sold on the illicit antiquities market with the help of a Colorado art scholar.
“Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities” — on view through March 10 — takes an unflattering look at the history of four ancient bronzes from Thailand that the museum acknowledges were illegally excavated from their home country. The museum says it it’s the process of returning these pieces to the Southeast Asian nation.
The bronzes, estimated to be more than 1,000 years old, are part of a collection known as the “Prakhon Chai horde.”
Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade
The Denver Post in 2022 published a three-part investigation that documented, for the first time, how local villagers dredged these valuable antiquities from a secret vault at the Plai Bat II temple in northeast Thailand and sold them to a burgeoning collector named Douglas Latchford.
But Latchford didn’t do it alone — he had the help of his close friend and confidant, Emma C. Bunker.
Bunker, a longtime Denver Art Museum consultant and former member of its board of trustees, helped the Denver institution assemble its 7,000-piece Asian art collection through her connections with high-rolling dealers such as Latchford.
As a respected scholar, she also played a crucial role in legitimizing Latchford’s looted collection by publishing articles and books about his pieces and fabricating provenance documents, The Post found.
In 1972 and again in 2002, Bunker published articles detailing the origins and locations of the Prakhon Chai horde — information unknown until her scholarship. Art crime experts and cultural heritage investigators say her writings helped Latchford sanitize these stolen works so they could be sold for big money at auction houses and to private collections and museums.
The Asian Art Museum exhibit explicitly mentions Bunker’s close ties to Latchford on a gallery wall plaque under the subhead “Looting.” While there’s no mention of Bunker in the Asian Art Museum’s records, the museum connected her involvement to Latchford through an article published last year by members of Thailand’s repatriation committee in the International Journal of Cultural Property.
The museum’s donor, Avery Brundage, purchased the four statues from art dealers between 1965 and 1968. Museum research indicates all four were at one time owned by Latchford, who in 2019 was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, accused of pilfering Southeast Asian temples and amassing a fortune by selling stolen works. He died in 2020 before he could stand trial.
At the time of acquisition, letters between museum staff and dealers expressed concern about the possible illegal removal of the statues, the exhibit notes. However, “these concerns were met with vague assurances the works must have been legally acquired,” a plaque reads.
In June, Thailand requested the return of the four bronzes, part of a broader effort by government officials to reclaim its plundered heritage from museums across the U.S. Two months later, the museum took the first step toward removing the pieces from its collection for their eventual return to their source country.
The museum says it will work with the Thai government to transfer title of the objects back to that nation following a second vote by the museum’s commissioners in the spring.
“This exhibition is one entry in our ongoing efforts to inspire thoughtful consideration of cultural heritage and the ethical responsibilities surrounding collection in the present day,” said Dr. Jay Xu, the Barbara Bass Bakar director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum, in a news release. “As a culturally specific institution with significant ties to the communities of Asia and the Asian diaspora, these conversations are especially meaningful for us. We are uniquely positioned to facilitate dialogues with the communities we represent, and we’re committed to presenting these ongoing inquiries in a forthright and open way.”
The Denver Art Museum, since The Post’s series, has distanced itself from any associations with Bunker, who died in 2021. The museum in March 2023 removed her name from a Southeast Asian gallery wall and returned a six-figure donation to her family.
Museum officials have also been combing through their collection to identify objects Bunker may have donated, and plan to return 11 pieces connected to the late scholar to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam
In a brief phone interview, one of Bunker’s children, Harriet Bunker, declined to comment on the exhibition, telling The Post that she’s “not going to criminalize my mother.”
Bunker was never charged with a crime, though the lead investigator on the Latchford case told The Post authorities were set to bring her “into the crosshairs” before her death.
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