How the Denver Art Museum became a “laundromat” for stolen Asian relics

Latchford over and over again sold, loaned and gifted pieces to the Denver Art Museum — and that was no accident.

In the case of the four Denver items, Bunker “facilitated the sale and donation… including by vouching for their provenance,” the court document read. But he gave the museum contradictory provenance information, authorities alleged. At various times, Latchford told the museum that he acquired the Prajnaparamita from a man prosecutors called the “false collector” — Ian Donaldson — in 1999, while also providing the museum documents purporting to show that both pieces were shipped from Latchford’s Bangkok apartment to London in 1994.

A museum curator emailed Bunker 11 days after the sale, according to the complaint, noting the 1970 UNESCO Convention restrictions on removing objects during war. The curator asked the scholar for more details on the Prajnaparamita and where it was “dug up.” He previously had tried to sell two similar bells to private American collectors, authorities alleged, sending photos of the artifacts encrusted with dirt and minerals, “a sign of recent excavation.”

Museum officials told The Post that a grant allowed for provenance research in its Asian art collection, but that this research wasn’t specific to Latchford’s pieces., museum officials said they contacted Cambodian authorities immediately after Latchford’s 2019 indictment to bring the four pieces “to their attention, and gather additional information.”

“We hope that with this information and your resolving issues with the U.S. government, we can move forward with a positive relationship between Cambodia and Denver Art Museum,” Gordon wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Post.“We’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Gordon said, likening each looted temple to a crime scene. “For them to be hiding information doesn’t seem ethical.”

Latchford loaned, gifted or sold 14 pieces to Denver’s museum between 1999 and 2011, according to museum records. They included the four relics returned to Cambodia in August and two objects from Thailand — a neolithic vessel and cabinet — that remain in the museum’s collection.

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