Khmer Art Sold Overseas:
Europe has been a rich hunting ground for private collectors and art galleries seeking to gain access to Khmer antiquities. Throughout the last fifty years, middlemen like Douglas Latchford and Peng Seng in Bangkok have orchestrated the distribution of looted Khmer artworks from Thailand to locations around the globe, including Europe. Today, auction houses in Europe hold regular sales of Khmer artifacts, such as Galerie Zacke in Austria and the auctioneer I’m focusing on in this post, the Cologne-based family business of Van Ham in Germany, one of that country’s leading auction houses. Here are a few sales and catalogue pieces, with basic provenance details, from the Van Ham website, though I cannot vouch for their authenticity.
