Outrage at NGA’s Vietnamese statue silence

The National Gallery of Australia is under mounting pressure to resolve legal uncertainty over three Viet­namese statues.

The Vietnamese statues bought by the NGA in 2011.

The National Gallery of Australia is under mounting pressure to resolve legal uncertainty surrounding three thousand-year-old Viet­namese statues in its collection.

The gallery is refusing to disclose the identity of the previous owners of the collection, citing a decade-old secrecy agreement.

However, The Australian has located a book published before the gallery paid $US1.5m for the artefacts that claims they were likely to have been “recovered by illicit diggers” and attributes ownership of the statues in the years leading up to their sale to art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was facing charges in the US for smuggling and fraud related to Asian antiquities when he died last year.

An internal review of the provenance of the artefacts has been under way at the NGA for the past five years, since doubts were raised about the legitimacy of the purchase in a report by former High Court judge Sue Crennan. All documents related to the purchase of the trio of Vietnamese bronze statues in 2011 remain shrouded in secrecy owing to the deed signed at the time of the deal.

Last week, Latchford’s daughter pledged to return to Cambodia a collection of more than 100 statues she inherited from her father.

Asked by The Australian if the gallery could confirm the Vietnamese artefacts were bought from Latchford, or through an ­intermediary, the NGA said it ­remained bound by the secrecy agreement. But NGA director Nick Mitzevich said in 2019 a gallery staff member met John Guy, curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and author of the book. The Cham of Vietnam, which made the claims.

Mr Mitzevich said Dr Guy did not supply evidence that the statues had been illicitly unearthed.

“While we would not enter into (a confidentiality) agreement again, we must abide by the past agreement,” Mr Mitzevich said.

“To date the deed has not been an impediment to our ­research.”

University of Sydney adjunct professor Duncan Chappell, a member of the Cultural Heritage Committee that advises the federal government on antiquities, said adhering to the sec­recy agreement defied best practice.

“Our pre-eminent gallery is concealing something potentially unlawful,” he said.

“I’d have thought the last thing the NGA would be doing is concealing purchase information from the public.”

The NGA website describes the largest of the three Vietnamese statues, a 50cm figure of Padmapani, as “the finest and most intact Cham bronze known”.

The NGA has, since 2012, been found in possession of dozens of Asian antiquities which it cannot prove it has solid ownership of. “This is opaque and the opposite of a transparent commitment to ensuring good provenance,” Professor Chappell said.

In recent years, a half-dozen items bought for more than $10m have been forfeited to India without financial compensation.

Angela Chiu, an expert in Southeast Asian art and a keen observer of the black market in ­antiquities, told The Australian, “these remarkable statues would have been major archaeological discoveries in Vietnam — instead, they have apparently been sold to the highest bidder in Australia”.

The Padmapani figure and two 30cm tall attendants are thought to have been found together.

The Met’s Dr Guy wrote in The Cham of Vietnam: “A number of copper-alloy cast images representing Bodhisattvas have recently come to light; their provenances are unclear but it must be assumed they were recovered by illicit diggers.” He added that the statues were owned at the time of writing by Latchford, who died in August last year.

Federal prosecutors in New York had accused him of trafficking in looted Cambodian relics and falsifying documents.

The NGA’s records show that it received a copy of Dr Guy’s book in ­September 2011, a month after it bought the statues.

Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, the world’s foremost organisation combating cultural racketeering, said: “The NGA has had years to do the right thing. Any objects with any ties to (Latchford) should have long been treated as stolen property until proven otherwise.”

NGA director at the time of the purchase Ron Radford boasted in 2012 that the trio was “perhaps the most extraordinary work acquired this year”.