Museum to return stolen relics
11 pieces to be repatriated to Asia from Denver collection
DENVER — The Denver Art Museum plans to return nearly a dozen antiquities from Southeast Asia that passed through the hands of indicted art dealer Douglas Latchford or his longtime Colorado collaborator, Emma C. Bunker.
The 11 pieces soon will be repatriated to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, senior provenance researcher Lori Iliff wrote in an announcement on the museum’s website Thursday.
All of the objects came from Bunker, who played a critical role in Latchford’s decades-long illicit antiquities trafficking operation, The Denver Post found in a threepart investigation published in 2022.
At least five of the pieces passed through Latchford’s hands originally, the museum publicly acknowledged for the first time by publishing provenance information for each of the objects now being returned.
Officials at the Denver Art Museum previously had acknowledged six Latchford pieces in the institution’s permanent collection, four of which were returned to Cambodia last year after the U.S. government moved to seize them. Latchford had also loaned an additional eight objects to the museum over the years.
The Denver Art Museum’s announcement comes five months after The Post reported that government officials from the three Southeast Asian nations had pressed the institution last year to return their stolen heritage. The museum last March deaccessioned — or formally removed from its collection — all 11 pieces.
Bunker donated five of the relics to the museum in 2018 as part of a naming agreement that would cement her legacy with the Mile High institution she worked closely with for six decades. She and her husband served on the museum’s board of trustees, and Bunker spent many years as a research consultant, connecting the museum with notable antiquities dealers such as Latchford.
But after The Post’s series in December 2022, the museum removed Bunker’s name from its gallery wall and returned $185,000 that she and her family had donated as part of the naming agreement. Museum officials acknowledged for the first time in March 2023 that Bunker helped Latchford mislead the museum into acquiring illegally trafficked art.
The latest news comes as the Denver Art Museum continues to face fallout from its association with Bunker and subsequent reckoning over how it collected its 7,000-piece Asian art collection. The Post found Latchford and Bunker used the museum as a way station for looted works.
The items set for repatriation include a 2,000-year-old green Vietnamese dagger from the ancient Dong Son culture, a pair of 12th-century iron palanquin hooks, a 13th-century bronze Buddhist sculpture, a bronze 12th-century finial and a 12th-century figurine depicting Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist goddess of wisdom.
Museum records show Latchford held five of the relics in Bangkok before Bunker acquired them. She then loaned or gifted them to Denver’s museum between 2004 and 2016.