Dressing for the American Dream

 

[Clothes make the man (and woman, I warrant), some people believe.  Maybe so, but Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic of the New York Times, wonders what that looks like, especially with the changing fashion of the oft-invoked American Dream.

[That’s actually her job.  She chronicles what clothing says about American women and men over the past two-and-a-half centuries.  Of course, Friedman doesn’t look at li’l ol’ you and me.  She looks at the people who make fashion.]

“250 YEARS OF DRESSING FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM”
by Vanessa Friedman

[Vanessa Friedman’s article appeared in the New York Times of 5 July 2026, in the “Sunday Styles” section.  An undated (probably 6 July), cut-down version (with photos, but severely edited text), under the same headline, is posted on the Times website. 

[The only other online version of the article with the complete text that I could find is on the ProQuest New York Times database on the New York Public Library website; if you have access to this service through your library, it’s at 250 Years of Dressing for the American Dream: [Style Desk] - New York Times - ProQuest (text only).]

Over 250 Years, What We Wore To Break Free And Show Off.

For 250 years the American dream has been fodder for a potent national brand. Little wonder that since he began running for president, Donald J. Trump [b. 1946; 45th President of the United States: 2017-21; 47th President: 2025-2029], perhaps the most active executive brand manager in history, has repeatedly invoked the idea: declaring it dead, positioning himself as its champion, announcing it has been restored.

Often he seems to be talking about a purchase of some kind, like a home, a yacht, a freshened-up face, an ever more gilded fantasyland of success.

Yet when the American dream — or at least the idea that later became the American dream — was born along with the country, it looked very different.

Initially defined by the founders as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” that dream was reimagined by each generation and wave of immigrants. As a collection of values (like any brand) it often had less to do with material value than abstract values like liberty, revolution, aspiration, security and reinvention.

Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a “mythic construct,” said Jim Cullen [b. 1962], the author of “The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation” [Oxford University Press, 2004]. One in which, he said, “freedom is the currency of self-realization, which gets reflected in outward presentation that ratifies one’s hope, or one’s status in culture.”

In other words, one way to understand the way the American dream has evolved may be to consider the different styles Americans designed for the world they were inventing.

Freedom and Revolution

It began with the chance to define a new set of laws and governance, to reject the inherited trappings (or traps) of class.

“To escape from Old World fetters and start over again,” said Sean Wilentz [b. 1951], a professor of American history at Princeton University and author of “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln” [W. W. Norton & Company, 2005].

The founding fathers dressed the part, taking their cues from the fashions of Britain and France and simplifying them.

“In terms of silhouette, in terms of embellishments, there was always a sort of underlying sense of, not puritanism per se, but pulling back,” said Andrew Bolton [b. 1966], the curator in charge of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the man behind the show “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity” [5 May-10 August 2010].

George Washington [1732-99; First President of the United States: 1789-97] may have powdered his hair, but he rejected the wig. Benjamin Franklin [1705-90; a Founding Father of the United States], who built a printing empire in Philadelphia, “was as attuned to self-presentation as anyone in American history,” Cullen said. It was not an accident that when he was ambassador to France [1779-85], Franklin represented his country with a beaverskin cap.

He understood the story that was being constructed had to do with the promise of new frontiers. A century later, the same promise was embodied by Buffalo Bill [aka: William Cody; 1846-1917; soldier, bison hunter, and showman] and his fellow pioneers, who helped build the myth of the West and created an enduring style of their own, albeit one that borrowed heavily, and without acknowledgment, from the Indigenous cultures that were being displaced. Throughout the 1800s, that myth helped turn functionality and practicality into a virtue in dressing symbolized by the jeans [aka: “Levi’s”] invented by Levi Strauss [1829-1902; German-born American businessman; founded Levi Strauss & Co. in 1853].

That same spirit was adapted by the Gibson girls of the late 19th century, whose clothes reflected a newfound independence and love of action, captured for posterity by artist Charles Dana Gibson [1867-1944; illustrator for magazines and books], whose work gave them their name. And it was taken to an even further extreme by the flappers of the early 20th century, represented by Clara Bow [1905-65; film actress in silent films and early “talkies” (1921-33)] and Josephine Baker [1906-75; American-born French dancer, singer, actress (1921-75), and spy for the French Resistance (1940-44)], who rejected the corset with all its real and metaphorical limitations in exchange for unprecedented physical emancipation. Four decades later, the hippies would carry that torch, shrugging off fashion niceties the way they shrugged off antiquated ideas about sex and society.

[The Gibson Girl was the personification of the archetypal feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by Gibson’s pen-and-ink illustrations that spanned the late Gilded Age [from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s] and Progressive Era in the U.S., from the 1890s to the 1920s. The character became iconic and came to embody the concept of the New Woman.

[Flappers were a subculture of young Western women prominent after the First World War (1914-18) and through the 1920s who wore knee-length skirts (then considered short), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for prevailing codes of decent behavior. Icons of the Roaring Twenties, flappers have been seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

[Hippies (for those too young to remember the ‘60s) were followers of a youth subculture associated with the counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s that began in the United States. Hippies were the generation that followed on the beatniks (fl. 1950s). The hippies of the 1960s and 1970s inherited the Beat Generation’s rejection of materialism, embrace of Eastern religions, and interest in altered states of consciousness—though they carried the Beats’ style, scale, and substance several steps further. While the black-clad beatnik was dark, cynical, and emotionless, the tie-dyed hippie was sunny, joyful, and enthusiastic.]

At the same time, the Black liberation movement [mid-1960s through the end of the 1980s] created a modern version of the militant, challenging conventional notions of what rebellion looked like. Their disciplined fashion communicated a powerful message of revolutionary intentions and solidarity.

Affluence and Aspiration

Still, the term “American dream” wasn’t officially coined until 1931, when the popular historian James Truslow Adams [1878-1949; writer and historian] wrote the best-seller “The Epic of America” [Little, Brown, and Company, 1932]. It codified the idea of the dream as “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Which later came to mean material attainment and conspicuous consumption.

“Making it was a big part of it,” said Valerie Steele [b. 1955; fashion historian, and curator], the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology [a division of the State University of New York, in Manhattan, New York City]. Or rather, being “self-made.”

The foundation was originally laid by the second and third sons of the British aristocracy who emigrated to the new colonies [from the mid-17th through the 19th centuries] to build the estates that primogeniture denied them. In the south especially, they recreated the grand homes and the elaborate fashions of England (as well as its worst caste structures). Later the trappings of immense and visible wealth became the provenance of the self-made men of the gilded age, whose fortunes ushered in the era of generational wealth and created an archetype that was, Bolton said, “exported around the world.

“Henry James [1843-1916; American-British author] wrote about it, Edith Wharton [1862-1937; writer and designer] wrote about it,” Bolton said. All that opulence in environment and fashion was preserved in oils by John Singer Sargent [1856-1925; American expatriate artist; considered the leading portrait painter of his generation] and William Merritt Chase [1849-1916; painter; known as an exponent of Impressionism]. A more exuberant counterpoint was created during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which challenged stereotypes and canonized Black style. Zoot suits, silk, satin and pearls dominated the dance floors.

[A zoot suit is a men’s fashion ensemble featuring a long, broad-shouldered jacket and high-waisted, wide-legged pants. Originating in African-American comedy shows of Black vaudeville in the 1920s, it became an iconic, rebellious cultural symbol for African-American men in the 1930s. it later became popular with Mexican, Filipino, Italian, and Japanese Americans in the 1940s, who used the dramatic, defiant style to assert their visibility and independence.]

The second gilded age arrived in the 1980s [through the 2010s], with a bigger-is-better ethos reflected in the grand talk and grander shoulders of the time, all of it memorialized in Tom Wolfe’s [1930-2018; author and journalist] “Bonfire of the Vanities” [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987] and embodied by the taffeta-clad gala-going wives of the new Wall Street robber barons.

By the late 1990s, the video maestro Hype Williams [b. 1970; music video and film director, film producer, and screenwriter] was ushering in the shiny suit era of hip-hop, followed by Jay-Z [b. 1969; rapper, businessman, and record executive] and Co., sailing into the sun on a mega-yacht in “Big Pimpin’” in 2000 [song by Jay-Z from his 1999 album Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter; released as a single]. As the millennium turned, bling and brands were remixed into cultural currency by artists like 50 Cent [b. 1975; rapper, actor, television producer, record executive, and businessman], Missy Elliott [also known as Misdemeanor; b. 1971; rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer], Biggie Smalls [also known as the Notorious B.I.G.; 1972-97; rapper and songwriter] and Lil’ Kim [sic; b. 1974; rapper, singer, songwriter, and model; referred to as the “Queen of Rap”], who built images and empires out of the totems of the one percent.

Security and Reinvention

Along with financial success came another version of the American dream, one that had less to do with bling and more to do with security. It was a sense of belonging expressed through assimilation, as well as the acquisition of actual belongings.

It was after 1945, Wilentz said, when snagging the brass ring started to resemble “owning your own home, preferably in the suburbs, having stable year-round employment and making sure your children would do better than their parents’ generation.”

In the 1950s, that fantasy took the real-life form of the man in the gray flannel suit, picket fences and poodle skirts — at least until Doris Day [1922-2019; actress and singer; known for her girl-next-door image on screen] gave way to the dependably preppy style of the Ivy League. In the early and mid-1960s, the Kennedy clan dressed up their political ambitions in the crew necks, polos and chinos of the Boston Brahmins. And the self-respect conveyed through the dignity of Sunday best became a weapon wielded by Black Americans in the fight for basic freedoms during events such as the March on Washington in 1963.

[Preppy (or preppie) is a fashion style associated with the alumni of college-preparatory (“prep”) schools in the Northeastern United States. It has its roots in, and substantially overlaps with, the “Ivy League” style of dress (see below), in a more casual, youthful interpretation of Ivy style. Preppy menswear relies on quality tailoring and natural fabrics. Key staples include Oxford cloth button-down shirts, chinos, tailored polo shirts, unlined blazers, and leather loafers or boat shoes (often without socks).

[Preppy style for women centers on timeless staples like pleated skirts, cable-knit sweaters, tailored blazers, and collared shirts, often accessorized with loafers, Mary Jane shoes, headbands, and pearl jewelry. Just as the preppy male attire was a boy’s take on the clothes of the students at Ivy League colleges, the female version was the girl’s take on the dress of students at the Seven Sisters colleges, the women’s counterpart to the Ivies.

[Ivy League style—or “Ivy”—is a timeless menswear aesthetic blending British tailoring with relaxed, sporty American collegiate wear. The style evolved on the campuses of the eight elite Eastern universities dubbed the Ivy League from the 1920s through the 1940s, and became mainstream in the 1950s. Key elements include natural-shoulder blazers, Oxford cloth button-down shirts, flat-front chinos, and leather loafers. It prioritizes casual elegance, quality fabrics (wool, tweed), and a comfortable, lived-in feel.

[Women’s Ivy League style blends tailored menswear elements with smart, collegiate basics. It relies on crisp Oxford shirts, cable-knit sweaters, and trench coats, balanced with pleated midi skirts, loafers, and a refined, earthy color palette. The women’s Ivy style developed on the campuses of the Seven Sisters about ten years after the men’s style began.

[John F. Kennedy [also known as JFK; 1917-63; 35th President of the United States: 1961-63], along with the extended Kennedy family (i.e., “the Kennedy clan”), epitomized everything preppy during its mid-20th-century heyday. JFK’s effortless blend of casual sophistication—polo shirts on the sailboat, chinos at family gatherings, and sharp suits in the Oval Office—set a benchmark for a style that feels as relevant today as it did in the 1960s.

[The Boston Brahmins are members of Boston's elite, wealthy, and educated historic upper class. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. The term, derived from brahmin, the chief priestly caste in the Hindu caste system, refers to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) of old English and Puritan descent who built America’s closest equivalent to an aristocracy. They were known for a style of “quiet luxury” that favored conservative, high-quality attire (such as navy or charcoal suits combined with well-polished vintage leather shoes).]

Not quite two decades later, Martha Stewart [b. 1941; retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality] cooked up a new version of suburban life, repackaging her kitchen in Connecticut as a kind of apple pie paradise and herself as a domestic goddess.

The one thing all of these versions of the American dream have in common, however, is the belief in the power and right of every person to reinvention and optimization in any way available. It was the premise on which Hollywood was built, starting in the Golden Age with the soft focus, idealized and manufactured beauty of stars like as Jean Harlow [1911-37; film actress], Lena Horne [1917-2010; singer, actress, dancer, and civil rights activist] and Greta Garbo [1905-90; Swedish and American film actress], whose fame was its own kind of fortune.

Not to mention the promise inherent in the high-wattage sparkle of disco, where every song and sequin was electrified, as well as the physical perfection dangled by the aerobics age that followed, channeled most effectively by Jane Fonda [b. 1937; actress and activist] in her 1982 VHS workout tape [Jane Fonda’s Workout], which became one of the best-selling home videos of all time.

[In addition to the musical style, disco was a lifestyle and fashion movement. It was a radical, counter-cultural celebration of escapism, self-expression, and democratization that peaked in the mid-to-late 1970s. It was characterized by a sharp rejection of mid-century social conformity, the ruggedness of rock culture, and the anxieties of a turbulent economic era.

[Disco as a lifestyle was defined by a specific set of cultural shifts. It provided a deliberate sanctuary from the grueling economic recession, inflation, and political disillusionment of the 1970s. It originated as a safe haven for marginalized communities—specifically Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ individuals—before breaking into the mainstream. 

[As a cultural movement, it transformed nightlife into a theater of radical self-invention. It used fluid, high-glamour fashion and uninhibited physical movement to challenge traditional social barriers and offer a hedonistic escape from everyday reality.

[It shifted the cultural focus toward physical fitness, dance athleticism, uninhibited sexuality, and public display. It allowed working-class individuals to transform into glamorous, larger-than-life celebrities for a night just by stepping past a velvet rope.

[Disco fashion was built for performance, movement, and capturing the reflections of artificial light. It relied on lightweight, stretchy materials like Jersey knit, Lurex, and Qiana nylon that clung to the body and flowed during dance. It popularized shimmering sequins, metallic fabrics, satin, and bold jewel tones designed to gleam under flashing strobe lights. 

[It featured iconic structural elements like wide bell-bottoms, towering platform shoes, wrap dresses, and dramatically pointed collars unbuttoned to the chest. It blurred traditional style boundaries, encouraging men to wear cosmetics, silk shirts, and jewelry, while women embraced menswear-inspired tailored suits. 

Reinvention was the basis of the rejection of the old corporate uniform by the social media pioneers of Silicon Valley, who introduced the “zero dress code,” redefining office wear to suggest they were redefining industry, making it accessible to all. By the 2010s, it became the platform on which the Kardashians introduced themselves, becoming the ultimate avatars of the influencer economy in which celebrity through self-modification was an end in itself.

[“Zero dress code” serves as a general term describing workplace environments or events that enforce no restrictions on clothing. When used in a professional or event context, a "zero dress code" policy means there’s no formal mandate on what you must wear.

[In the early 1990s, employers institutionalized “Casual Fridays” on a wide scale. The actual concept of a true “zero dress code” emerged, however, in the 2000s and the 2010s alongside the dot-com boom and the rise of Silicon Valley. 

[Tech company CEO’s popularized the idea that success doesn’t require being buttoned up. Wearing t-shirts, hoodies, and flip-flops became a badge of innovation. Traditional institutions were eventually forced to match tech culture to retain talent.

[The ultimate transition into “zero dress code” policies solidified during the shift to remote and hybrid work in the 2020s. As professional meetings moved onto video screens, the standard for corporate clothing became highly contextual. 

[This move was reinforced and accelerated by the COVID pandemic practices, when many people worked from home and conferred over Zoom. Modern companies frequently replaced complex rules with a single, simplified mandate: “Dress for your day.” This relies on employee maturity to choose comfort for internal work and dress up only when facing clients.

[The Kardashian family, also referred to as the Kardashian-Jenner family, is prominent in the fields of entertainment, reality television, fashion design, and business. Through different ventures, several members of the family are reported to have assets of over $1 billion. From October 2007 through June 2021, they appeared together on the highly popular, albeit controversial, reality television show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The show’s 14-year run gave and maintained media exposure to each member of the family, allowing them to start and build their individual careers in multiple businesses. (The family has been criticized as being “famous for being famous.”)]

In many ways, Trump’s version of the American dream is simply a throwback to the set dressing and costumes of the former gilded ages, viewed through the lens of televised materialism.

But even as it may seem increasingly stale and commodified, kitschy and tainted, the American Dream continues to endure — rewritten, revived, and reinterpreted by the figures shaping our lives and imaginations.

Because ultimately the look of the American dream is no more static than the dream itself. As Cullen said, it is “most authentically experienced as a struggle to achieve, not a destination.” And it is worn that way, too.

[Vanessa Friedman has been chronicling the relationship of clothing to identity, power, and politics for the New York Times since 2014.  She focuses on fashion as an expression of political, social, and cultural identity at a specific moment in time, especially how it is used by those in the public eye to communicate values and influence opinion.  

[She looks at how designers translate that into products for all of us on the runway, as well as the evolution of fashion into a part of pop culture.  She also examine the way all of that influences the larger business of fashion, one of the world’s biggest industries.

[Prior to joining the Times, Friedman spent 11 years at the Financial Times, five of them in London.  She was the FT’s first fashion editor, and the FT was my first all-fashion job.

[Before that, Friedman focused on culture coverage at magazines such as InStyle, The Economist, and The New Yorker.  She’s won the Fashion Group International’s Media Award, the Front Page award for fashion writing, and the Fashion/Beauty Monitor award for fashion journalist of the year.

[For “250 Years of Dressing for the American Dream,” she spoke with historians and museum curators about the patterns they saw in its seams.]

The Looting of Cambodia, Part 2

 

[This is the second part of the transcript of a 60 Minutes (CBS News) segment originally broadcast on 17 December 2023 and rerun on 28 June 2026.  As readers of Rick On Theater know, I have a strong interest in art in general, and in the preservation of art in particular.

[Other ROT posts on that subject include: “‘How High-Tech Replicas Can Help Save Our Cultural Heritage‘“ by Jeffrey Brown of PBS News Hour (28 May 2017); “Conserving Modern Art“ (11 December 2018); “‘Smithsonian and U.S. Army join forces to save works of art and culture threatened by war‘“ by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport of PBS News Hour (15 September 2022); “Greenwood Pond: Double Site“ (22 February 2024); ”Two Restorations“ (4 November 2024); and “Replicating Classic Art Works“ (21 February 2026).] 

“HOW CAMBODIAN ARTIFACTS STOLEN FROM TEMPLES
ENDED UP IN AMERICAN MUSEUMS, PRIVATE COLLECTIONS”
(continued)
by Anderson Cooper

[Cooper’s 60 Minutes report, with video, is posted on the CBS News website.  I have split it into two parts for republication on ROT, with Part 1 posted on Wednesday. 8 July.  As always, I recommend that ROTters go back and read the beginning of the transcript before turning to Part 2, below.  (There’s a brief précis of Cambodian history in the afterword to Part 1.)]

Cambodia tracking down thousands of priceless looted antiquities

It’s taken a team of Cambodian investigators led by Brad Gordon, an American lawyer, more than 10 years to document the theft of thousands of ancient statues and relics by a British collector named Douglas Latchford. As we reported in 2023, they’ve managed to get some of what he stole back, but many of Cambodia’s greatest treasures are still out there, hidden away in the mansions of millionaires and billionaires, and hiding in plain sight, on display in some of the most prestigious museums around the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one of the most important collections of Cambodian antiquities in the world. But many of the finest pieces on display here in the Southeast Asian art wing [the South and Southeast Asian Art collection, housed in the Florence and Herbert Irving Asian Wing] . . . are stolen. Like this one. And this one . . . This as well – all passed through the hands of Douglas Latchford. 

Latchford sold this one to the Met in the early 1990s . . . This one he donated. 

Anderson Cooper: Do you think people visiting the Met, know that these were looted? 

Brad Gordon: I think most people walk through the Met, they have no idea those are blood antiquities. They have no idea what– what the history is behind those pieces. They don’t know– the temples they came from. They don’t know the people who were killed to get them here.

Anderson Cooper: The dirt has been brushed off. There’s a little note that says where it came from. Should people believe what’s on that little note?

Brad Gordon: No. Absolutely not.

In 2023, we went with Brad Gordon to see where in Cambodia the Met and other museums’ collections really did come from. 

Anderson Cooper: This is incredible.

This seven-story pyramid is more than 1,000 years old . . . and rises out of the jungle in Koh Ker in northeast Cambodia . . . It’s one of dozens of temples in what was once the capital [928-944 CE] of an ancient Khmer empire.

Anderson Cooper: –looters have been all over this site for– for decades.

Brad Gordon: Correct. 

Anderson Cooper: Douglas Latchford loved the statuary . . .

Brad Gordon: In love with the beauty, in love with the artistic–

Anderson Cooper: The statues from here are–

Anderson Cooper: –have a distinctive style that he particularly loved?

Brad Gordon: Correct. 

And perhaps the most famous statues in that distinctive style that Latchford stole from Koh Ker were nine stone warriors once arranged together in a battle scene [10th century; stolen from the Prasat Chen temple at Koh Ker]. When we were there, seven had been returned to the National Museum in Phnom Penh, including this 500-pound sandstone sculpture — it’s the one Sotheby’s tried to sell in 2011. They’re back on their original pedestals, their ankles reunited with their feet, hacked off by looters.

Anderson Cooper: This was at Sotheby’s. This is at Christie’s.

Hab Touch: Norton Simon’s.

Anderson Cooper: Norton Simon Museum [Pasadena, California]–

Hab Touch [b. 1965] is the secretary of state in Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture [2019-present]. He is working with Brad Gordon to bring back the two Koh Ker statues who’s empty pedestals sit in the museum.

Anderson Cooper: So do you know what are supposed to be on–

Anderson Cooper: You know what are supposed to be here, and you know what’s–

Hab Touch: We know–

Anderson Cooper: –supposed to be here?

Hab Touch: Among nine sculpture, we have seven already. Only two missing.

One of those missing sculptures was discovered in the glossy pages of Architectural Digest in 2008 . . . this mythical army commander and a stunning number of other stolen works . . . were all together in the Palm Beach mansion of the late billionaire George Lindemann [1936-2018; businessman; CEO of a fossil fuel infrastructure and pipeline company] and his wife Frayda [b. 1939]. 

[The referenced article and photo spread was “Striking a New Note in Palm Beach” by Judith Thurman in the January 2008 issue of AD. (nb: The link to the slide show that includes the Cambodian statues seems to be broken. Some views are shown on the 60 Minutes video. If a reader is a subscriber to AD, or wishes to become one, back articles are available on the magazine’s website.) There are two later articles that comment/report on this one: Spencer Woodman, Malia Politzer, Peter Whoriskey and Nicole Sadek, “Hidden Treasures: Magazine spread of ‘most beautiful house in America’ conceals allegedly stolen Cambodian relics,” International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (website) 15 Aug. 2022,  <https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/lindemann-cambodia-relics-altered-photo-magazine/>, 12 July 2026, and Sarah Cascone, “An ‘Architectural Digest’ Spread About Two Art Collectors Was Photoshopped to Obscure Potentially Looted Cambodian Statues in Their Home,” artnet 16 Aug. 2022, <https://news.artnet.com/art-world/looted-cambodian-art-architectural-digest-2160490>, 12 July 2026.]

Anderson Cooper: The ancient treasures of Cambodia were sitting in the living room of an incredibly wealthy family in America, in Florida, on display, while people were having cocktails and–

Brad Gordon: The one thing that I’m always struck by is how many people witnessed it and have been silent and continue to be silent today.

The Lindemann’s spent an estimated $20 million building the collection with the help of Douglas Latchford . . . Frayda Lindemann didn’t respond to our request for an interview.

But in Koh Ker . . . we showed her home to two former looters.

Anderson Cooper: What do you think of this house?

It’s a beautiful house, he said, it looks like it belongs to a king.

The former looters pointed out another statue in the Lindemann’s living room they said they helped steal . . . this reclining figure of the Hindu God Vishnu. They said it was dug out of the ground from this exact spot in late 1995.

Anderson Cooper: You’re 100% sure this was taken from here by you and others in 1995?

Lida (translated): Yeah, I’m sure. 

They also identified a number of other statues they say they stole that appear in books published by Douglas Latchford. They say they found this copper statue using a metal detector.

Anderson Cooper: This is Bodhisattva at Ease [late 10th century to the early 11th century; looted from the Koh Ker temple complex]? 

[In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has attained, or is striving towards, bodhi (meaning ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’) or Buddhahood. In this sculpture, the word refers to a class of powerful, semi-divine savior deities (here, specifically, Avalokiteshvara, a celestial being of infinite compassion and mercy) who forgo or delay personal liberation (nirvana) or bodhi in order to help other individuals reach Buddhahood.]

Brad Gordon: Yeah. 

They dug it out of the ground here in 1990. J.P. Labbat, former special agent with Homeland Security, found photos of the statue covered in dirt on Douglas Latchford’s computer. Latchford sold it to the Met in 1992. When we visited, it was still on display.

Anderson Cooper: You were able to get access to some of Latchford’s– emails?

J.P. Labatt: Yes. And in there– there are d– detailed– stories about the manner in which he obtained pieces, the fact that he was having them reassembled– and repaired, that dirt and– and crustaceans were being– cleaned off of them.

Anderson Cooper: They were freshly dug out of the ground?

J.P. Labatt: Fresh. The– these were fresh pieces that he would describe in his emails that needed a level of restoration before he could even attempt to sell them. 

Douglas Latchford was indicted in 2019 but died [of complications of Parkinson’s disease in Bangkok at 89] before he could be put on trial. Federal prosecutors in New York however continued tracing his looted artifacts . . . they believe at least 18 of them have landed up at the Met.

Andrea Bayer: I am very involved in our work on provenance.

Andrea Bayer [b. 1957] is deputy director for Collections and Administration at The Met.

Anderson Cooper: The Met has said that they will return objects based upon rigorous evidentiary review. What rigorous evidentiary review was done before acquiring these pieces?

Andrea Bayer: Not enough.

Anderson Cooper: It seems like the Met had a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. They wanted to build up their collection. And nobody was really asking questions where it came from.

Andrea Bayer: For people, many people in the art world, there was a sense of protecting great objects that stood a chance of being destroyed. We no longer feel about it that way.

Under pressure 13 years ago, the Met did return two statues called Kneeling Attendants [10th century; stolen from Koh Ker during the civil war of the 1970s], which had been donated to them by Douglas Latchford. 

Anderson Cooper: In 2013, when you returned the kneeling attendants, did you investigate the other items that Douglas Latchford had brought to this museum?

Andrea Bayer: I don’t know the answer to that question. I can only pick up the story several years later, when Doug– Douglas Latchford was indicted in 2019, when we immediately and proactively went to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and offered our full cooperation.

Anderson Cooper: Well, I can pick up the story actually in 2013, because a spokesman for the Met, said that “No special effort was gonna be made to check the provenances of any other Douglas Latchford donated work.” Why wouldn’t the Met want to look into everything else that Douglas Latchford had brought to this museum?

Andrea Bayer: I can’t speculate about why that didn’t happen.

Anderson Cooper: But no one investigated all the other items that Douglas Latchford gave?

Andrea Bayer: Not to my knowledge.

The Met is not the only major museum with looted Cambodian artifacts, but its collection is one of the largest in the world. In 2023, the museum announced it would create a research team to examine the provenance or acquisition history of all its collections. 

Anderson Cooper: It’s taken 10 years since Douglas Latchford was shown to have given stolen property to the Met, for the Met to set up this provenance team. Why has it taken 10 years?

Andrea Bayer: It was a slow process, I’ll grant you that. It was a slow process, but– I think that the fact that we are– fully engaged now, fully cooperative now is– is our only answer to this really. it’s a moment of reckoning, and we’re ready to do what it takes now– to right whatever the wrong is. 

Anderson Cooper: Four years ago, when Douglas Latchford was indicted by prosecutors, did you set up a team to check the provenance of every Latchford work–

Andrea Bayer: Yes. We started, absolutely we started to dig in right then and there. It’s not easy. I mean the fact that we don’t have much information has to do with the fact that it’s very hard to find the information–

Anderson Cooper: But there’s enough information for federal prosecutors- to charge Douglas Latchford with stealing and looting and trafficking in smuggled items. How much more evidence do you need? You haven’t–

Andrea Bayer: We need–

Anderson Cooper: –returned any of the– any Douglas Latchford-related items since he’s been indicted, and that was four years ago.

Andrea Bayer: But we are on the verge of– of– of returning a number of them.

Anderson Cooper: All of them?

Andrea Bayer: That I can’t say.

Four months after that interview, just two days before we went to air in 2023, prosecutors announced the Met would return 13 antiquities that came through Douglas Latchford.

But the Met has not returned this statue, which was specifically cited in the indictment of Latchford, or this one, which Latchford sold to the Met in 1992.

Cambodia’s Culture Minister called the Met’s announcement a “first step” and says she looks “forward to the return of many more of our treasures.”

Anderson Cooper: Shouldn’t museums have thought twice about buying things that were coming out of Cambodia in– during the genocide and civil war and decades of strife?

J.P. Labatt: And this question that you raise is really– the– the crux of– of what we’re wrestling with. 

J.P. Labatt: You– acquired pieces from a known smuggler who– used a team of looters that the government has interviewed and taken statements from. They have emails which refute the information in your own provenance at the museum. You have items in the museum which were named in the indictment of Latchford that are still there. And so these pieces should go back.

Anderson Cooper: There’s no question.

J.P. Labatt: It’s the right thing to do.

In 2023, the Lindemann family, whose collection was showcased in Architectural Digest, struck a deal with federal authorities . . . voluntarily agreeing to return 33 stolen treasures. In a statement to the New York Times [Tom Mashberg, “Lindemann Family Returns 33 Looted Artifacts to Cambodia,” 12 Sept. 2023 (online only)], the Lindemann’s said: “Having purchased these items from dealers that we assumed were reputable, we were saddened to learn how they made their way to the market in the United States.”

Anderson Cooper: Why did the Lindemanns agree to return their collection to Cambodia?

J.P. Labatt: The pieces were dirty. I– I think they finally came around to the– the fact that– Latchford was dirty, their collection was– was all looted pieces. It was obvious. And– and so they– they– decided to surrender them.

We got a peek at what was the Lindemann collection shortly after the deal was done. It was sitting in a warehouse in upstate New York. A nation’s living gods and ancestors waiting for a ride home.

Brad Gordon: This is like a whole wing of a museum.

A wing of a museum that only the Lindemann’s and their friends had access to. 

Anderson Cooper: If the Lindemann’s hadn’t published these in Architectural Digest back in 2008?

Brad Gordon: I think there’s a good chance we maybe never would have found it. 

Brad Gordon: We always say, the gods want to come home. We feel like the gods have spoken today. They want to come home.

As one of the biggest crates was being opened . . . waiting eagerly was Muikong Taing and Thyda Long . . . two members of Brad Gordon’s investigative team. This would be their first look at the mythical army commander taken from Koh Ker . . . they were likely the first Cambodians to set eyes on it since Douglas Latchford stole it more than 50 years ago.

Thyda Long: He’s here.

Anderson Cooper: There’s a look in his eyes and on his face.

Thyda Long: It’s much bigger than I expected it to be.

Anderson Cooper: His presence is extraordinary.

Thyda Long: I did not expect to feel this way. 

Even the commander seemed to be smiling. 

Then it was time to see the rarest piece in the Lindemann’s collection. The Cambodian team knelt in reverence as the Hindu god Vishnu [10th century; looted from the Prasat Krachap temple in Koh Ker] was uncrated. Despite all the fuss, he appeared unperturbed . . . reclining in a cosmic slumber. When this statue arrived in Cambodia, it was welcomed as one of the most important ever returned.

Earlier this month, the Met returned two more artifacts to Cambodia following a seizure by the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The Cambodian government is still demanding the repatriation of 30 others in the Met’s possession.

Produced by Michael H. Gavshon and Nadim Roberts. Associate producer, Eliza Costas. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by Patrick Lee. 

[With respect to restoration of the ancient artifacts in the Cambodian temples about which Anderson Cooper reports above, looting, aside from its desecration, is an act of vandalism—the willful and malicious damaging of the sculptures. 

[In my coverage of art conservation and preservation on ROT, there are other forms of damage and potential damage against which art conservators and restorers must struggle.  I want to offer a look at another kind of conservation and restoration with which I had personal experience.

[Back in 2007, there was an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., on the conservation and preservation of experimental and innovative art that doesn’t age well or lend itself easily to cleaning.  

[As artists were experimenting with new media and techniques, they never considered how those elements would change over time.  This created sometimes immense challenges for museums and conservators, as well as private owners with fewer resources, long after the artists had probably died. 

[Some years earlier, in 1985, the Hirshhorn had mounted another exhibit in which works modern artists from the museum’s own collection that had undergone conservation treatment were shown.  The conserved pieces were accompanied by photographs depicting what they’d looked like before the treatment.  

[A later Hirshhorn display, in 2003-2004, was “intended to address the interaction of principle, practice, materials, techniques and ideas, which characterizes the preservation and care of contemporary and modern art.”

[I had a serious problem of this nature with a painting from 1958 that began to deteriorate because of the innovative technique the artist used to create it.  The fate of my little Abstract Expressionist painting, Intermezzo by Norman Carton (1908-80), is a simple, but perfect example of this issue.  

[The 18-inch-by-16-inch, heavily impastoed, multi-colored work in oil on canvas, a 14th-birthday gift for me from my parents, is one of the most cherished pieces I have and, except when I went to college and the army, I took it with me every time I moved. 

[In the 1980s, the painting began to deteriorate.  The oil paint—Carton made the painting before new pigments like acrylics were invented—had just begun to dry on the inside of the thick gobs the artist had applied to the canvas with a palette knife.  Who knew it would take three decades for oil paint to dry inside large clumps?  

[As the paint dried, the globs shrank and pulled away from the canvas, not only threatening to come off, but causing cracks and flakes (called “cleavage,” “flaking,” “blistering,” or “scaling”) in the primer (known as “ground”) and flatter areas of paint on the canvas.  I knew that if I didn’t do something, I’d lose the painting.  

[I was frantic.  I even went so far as to write to the administration of New York’s New School for Social Research (now just The New School), where Carton had exhibited and taught, because on the third floor of the old main building, the school displayed a larger Carton canvas in the same style as my small one.  I asked if they had encountered the same problem and, if so, what they did about it, but I never received an answer.

[At the time, my father was a docent at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, so I asked him to use his contacts at the museum to find a conservator who might be able to save Intermezzo and he did.  In 1987, I ended up paying five times the painting’s 1960 purchase price—but a quarter of its estimated value at the time—to stabilize it to prevent further deterioration.  To this day, I don’t regret the expenditure for a New York second.]

The Looting of Cambodia, Part 1

[This post is the transcript of a 60 Minutes (CBS News) segment originally broadcast on 17 December 2023 and rerun 28 June 2026.  Apparently, I didn’t deem Anderson Cooper’s report worth republishing on Rick On Theater two-and-a-half years ago, but on watching it again last week, I decided it is.  Given my interest in art in general, and in the preservation of art in particular, I can’t explain my first decision.]

“HOW CAMBODIAN ARTIFACTS STOLEN FROM TEMPLES
ENDED UP IN AMERICAN MUSEUMS, PRIVATE COLLECTIONS”
by Anderson Cooper

[Anderson Cooper’s 60 Minutes report, with video, is posted on the CBS News website.  I have split it into two parts for republication on ROT.  The second installment will be posted on Saturday, 11 July. 

[Other posts on ROT that deal with the conservation or preservation of art and antiquities include: “‘How High-Tech Replicas Can Help Save Our Cultural Heritage‘“ by Jeffrey Brown of PBS News Hour (28 May 2017); “Conserving Modern Art“ (11 December 2018); “‘Smithsonian and U.S. Army join forces to save works of art and culture threatened by war‘“ by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport of PBS News Hour (15 September 2022); “Greenwood Pond: Double Site“ (22 February 2024); “Two Restorations“ (4 November 2024); and “Replicating Classic Art Works“ (21 February 2026).]

Cambodia tracking down thousands of priceless looted antiquities

The theft of Cambodia’s cultural treasures . . . thousands of sacred stone, bronze and gold artifacts from religious sites across the country . . . might just be the greatest art heist in history. It began nearly a century ago when Cambodia was colonized by France [the French protectorate lasted from 1863 until 1953, interrupted from 1941 to 1945 during the World War II occupation by Japan] . . . but in the 1970s, 80s and 90s amidst genocide, civil war, and political turmoil – the looting became a global business, much of it run by a British man named Douglas Latchford [1931-2020]. He kept some of it for himself, but much of what his gang of thieves stole, Latchford then sold to wealthy private collectors and some of the most important museums around the world. As we first reported in 2023, Cambodia’s government has spent the last 14 years trying to track it all down . . . and bring their history and heritage home.

Angkor Wat [Khmer for ‘City (or ‘Capital’) of Temples’], with its towering spires, is the glory of Cambodia. Nearly a thousand years old, it’s one of the biggest and most extraordinary religious temples in the world — sprawling across 400 acres. Originally built [1122-1150 CE] to honor the Hindu god Vishnu, it then became a Buddhist temple [ca. 1181 CE], and remains a place of worship today. You can wander here for weeks, lost in a labyrinth of ancient stone corridors and sacred chambers. But the scars of plunder run deep: looters have hacked off the heads of many statues . . . they’ve stolen bodies as well . . . empty pedestals mark where gods and deities once stood . . . on some, only the feet remain.

It’s worse in the rest of Cambodia’s 4,000 temples. Nearly all have been looted. This one is a hundred miles northeast of Angkor Wat . . . on a remote mountain . . . called Sandak [established late 9th century CE].

Brad Gordon: This was hit very heavily by the looting gangs.

Brad Gordon: They found gold, they found statues, they found many, many things.

That’s Brad Gordon, an American lawyer, who’s been working for the Cambodian government for 14 years, tracking down its stolen treasures . . . he brought us to Sandak with his team of investigators, archeologists and art scholars.

Anderson Cooper: This is so cool.

In the temple’s crumbling courtyard, little remains . . . mostly empty pedestals scattered among the Sralao trees.

Anderson Cooper: It’s remarkable to me just how much stuff is just scattered on the ground. 

Brad Gordon: Yes.

Brad Gordon: It’s like a pedestal graveyard.

Anderson Cooper: We’ve all seen in museums these statues with no feet on them, and I don’t think people realize the feet were hacked off. Because in order to steal them, that’s the easiest way to– to get them off the pedestal.

Brad Gordon: And we know when the looters came to sites like this, the first thing they took was the heads. That was the easiest to grab. And then later on maybe they come back and get the torso. But they were not very careful, so they left behind pieces.

For Cambodians, these statues are not just works of art . . . they are sacred deities that hold the souls of their ancestors to whom they ask for guidance and pray . . .

Anderson Cooper: This is incredible. Th– these were all looted.

Phoeurng Sackona: Yes, all looted.

Anderson Cooper: All of these heads, like, cut off–

Phoeurng Sackona: And the head was cut off, yes.

Phoeurng Sackona [b. 1959], Cambodia’s minister of culture [2013-present], is in charge of the government’s efforts to track down their stolen gods. We met her in a closely guarded warehouse not far from Angkor Wat . . . ––where more than 6,000 pieces from temples across the country are stored for safekeeping . . . each one sculpted by an artisan from an ancient Khmer Empire . . . that lasted for more than five centuries [802-1431 CE] and spanned Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Anderson Cooper: So the statues have a soul? The statues are– are they living?

Phoeurng Sackona: For us, yes.

Phoeurng Sackona: And we believe that we can talk with them. They will hear. They will see. What do you want? What do you see? What do you do in your life, in your house, outside in the society, also? So that–

Anderson Cooper: They’re watching.

Phoeurng Sackona: They’re watching, everywhere . . .

Phoeurng Sackona’s entire family was killed in the genocide that began in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group took over, forcing millions of Cambodians into labor camps. Some 2 million people, nearly a quarter of the population, were slaughtered or starved to death. The Khmer Rouge lost power in 1979 [to the invading army of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam], but fighting and instability continued for decades, leaving Cambodia’s temples unprotected and vulnerable . . . easy targets for unscrupulous antiquities dealers like Douglas Latchford.

Anderson Cooper: Who was Douglas Latchford?

Brad Gordon: I would say that he was, in many ways, the mastermind behind the greatest art heist in history.

Anderson Cooper: The greatest art heist in history?

Brad Gordon: Yes, in terms of scope and multitude of crime sites and the enormous amount of statues that were taken out.

Latchford lived in Thailand . . . an enigmatic British businessman . . . he began collecting in the 1960s. He had, it seems, two great loves: Cambodian antiquities and . . . Thai bodybuilders . . . He sponsored Bangkok’s biggest bodybuilding competition, the Latchford Classic [from ca. 2004].

Anderson Cooper: How would you describe him?

Brad Gordon: He was extremely deceptive, I think in many ways, was ruthless. But he hid that behind this incredible façade of charm.

Latchford portrayed himself as a scholar and protector of Cambodia’s culture, a reputation he burnished by donating sculptures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other prestigious institutions. He also published three books filled with the finest examples of Cambodian antiquities [Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art (Art Media Resources, 2004); Khmer Gold Gifts for the Gods (Art Media Resources, 2008); Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past (Art Media Resources, 2011)] . . . many of them, it turns out, Latchford had stolen.

Brad Gordon: He was using the books as sales catalogs. You know, he was handing them out. He was using them to sell pieces. And– and he understood a certain psychology of collectors out there that if they see something in a beautiful book, they think it’s legitimate.

Those books have been an invaluable guide for Brad Gordon and his team, helping them compile a database of thousands of missing artifacts. Many of which they didn’t know existed until Latchford published photos of them. 

Gordon’s team got their big break when they met this man in 2012. He was a former Khmer Rouge child soldier and leader of a gang of looters. His name was Toek Tik [ca. 1959-2021; pronounced day duck].

Brad Gordon: That first meeting, I– I didn’t really know who we had met. You know, I knew– I knew that he was important. I knew that many people were telling me he was the best. And I knew that he was feared. 

Anderson Cooper: Why were people afraid of him?

Brad Gordon: You know, over the years, he had killed many people. 

It turned out Toek Tik had worked for decades supplying Douglas Latchford with thousands of treasures . . . and he was amazed to see them again in Latchford’s books.

Brad Gordon: He kept opening the book and going back to the front cover and– and going through and tapping and saying, “I know this one. I know this one. I know this one.” 

Anderson Cooper: And when he says he knew this one, means he– he helped loot the– those ones.

Brad Gordon: That’s what we learned later, yeah.

Toek Tik became a key confidential source for Gordon’s team. They gave him a code name, Lion, to protect his identity. And followed him to dozens of temples where he confessed what he’d found, and how he’d stolen it.

Brad Gordon: He would say to us, “I’m gonna transfer everything in my head to you. I’m gonna tell you everything. Every secret.”

Anderson Cooper: You felt like his memory was very good. It was accurate.

Brad Gordon: Oh it was unbelievable. He remembered the size of everything. Measured against his body. He would use his arm to show us how long a statue was.

Anderson Cooper: Why do you think he wanted to cooperate?

Brad Gordon: You know, he felt tremendously guilty about many things he had done in his life, about the killing, about the looting. And we offered him a road of redemption– a way to do something really good at the end of his life.

They recorded hundreds of hours of Lion’s testimony . . . he explained how gangs of looters would spend weeks at remote temples . . . using shovels, chisels, metal detectors . . . even dynamite . . . to find and dig out treasures. Dozens of men would hoist heavy stone statues onto oxcarts before transporting them across the border . . . into Thailand . . . and into the hands of Douglas Latchford. Lion never met Latchford, but he’d send him photographs of artifacts he could choose from.

Brad Gordon: We hear about them saying, “Oh we had to go to this temple and take a photo. And then sending it back.” You know, my sense is he was shopping. He had a list. The looters knew his priorities.

Like these . . . which came from a temple complex called Koh Ker [koh kay]. The statues from there had a distinctive style that Latchford loved.

It was, however, a dangerous business. Most looters only made enough to buy food for their families. And fighting between rival gangs was common. 

Anderson Cooper: People were killed over these– these antiquities. Do you look at these as blood statues?

Brad Gordon: For sure. They’re blood antiquities. Whenever I see a statue I think about, you know, who died to– to get this out of the ground or get it out of a temple and to– to move it here? So, so much of this looting was done in the shadow of the war, shadow of the genocide. 

It was this 500-pound sandstone warrior from Koh Ker that appeared in a Sotheby’s auction catalog in 2011 that put Douglas Latchford on the radar of U.S. law enforcement. Its feet were missing. And the price tag? An estimated $2-3 million.

J.P. Labbat: When it appeared in the market– there were a number of archaeologists, a number of people who immediately recognized the– the source of the statue as being a specific temple in Cambodia.

Anderson Cooper: It c– came from Koh Ker?

J.P. Labbat: That’s right.

Until he retired in 2023, J.P. Labbat was a special agent on the cultural property, art and antiquities unit with Homeland Security. 

J.P. Labbat: A team from the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Southern District of New York traveled to Cambodia– to inspect the site where the statue had been removed.

J.P. Labbat: And so the base– was still there with it with the feet still in the ground. And so– they were able to match that base and feet to the statue.

Anderson Cooper: And that was enough evidence to get the statue pulled off the market?

J.P. Labbat: That’s right. 

After years of legal wrangling, Sotheby’s finally agreed to send this stolen warrior back to Cambodia . . .

A ceremony was held welcoming it home . . . and investigators were able to trace its original sale back to Douglas Latchford . . . who was asked about its repatriation in a German documentary in 2014 [Die Spur der Tempelräuber (‘The trail of the temple robbers’; known in English as The Stolen Warriors; nb: film databases like IMDb list the release date as 2015)].

Wolfgang Luck: Is it a good day for Cambodia, or is it a bad day for the art market if these things are coming back? 

Douglas Latchford: It’s a good day for Cambodia, it’s a bad day for the art market.

Law enforcement in New York was closing in on Latchford, but he claimed prosecutors had him all wrong. 

Douglas Latchford: Their imagination has gone wild. They’ve seen too many Indiana Jones films. As far as I know there is no such thing as a smuggling network and I certainly don’t belong to any smuggling network.

Anderson Cooper: The attempted sale of this statue in 2011, was that a turning point in the unraveling of Douglas Latchford?

J.P. Labbat: I would say yes. That case put more of a– focus and a spotlight on him. And then efforts were– were then doubled to, like, really peel back the onion and look into Latchford’s activities.

The testimony of former looters found by Brad Gordon and his team was critical for the U.S. attorney’s case against Latchford. 

Anderson Cooper: How rare is it to actually have access to the looters? To people who actually stole these things 10, 20, 30 years ago.

J.P. Labbat: I know of no other case where– where that’s happened. And– it– it’s quite remarkable to have looters actively assisting a team of investigators to recover artifacts that they had a firsthand in helping remove from the country.

Douglas Latchford was finally indicted by U.S. authorities in 2019 for smuggling, conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges, but he died before he could be put on trial. Brad Gordon eventually convinced Latchford’s family to return his personal collection of stolen treasures . . . Among the first pieces to come home in 2021 was this statue from Koh Ker. Lion, weakened by cancer, came to inspect it in Cambodia’s National Museum to verify it was the same one he’d dug out of the ground.

Brad Gordon: And then he turned to me and he said, “It’s the real statue.” You know, it was a remarkable thing to watch. And just his– his relationship, it– it was living to him.

Anderson Cooper: Do you think he was happy it was back? 

Brad Gordon: Thrilled. So happy, he knew that he had done something good. 

Lion died a few months later . . . but the secrets he revealed continue to bring statues back to Cambodia’s National Museum . . . masterpieces that left the country long before these school children were born.

Anderson Cooper: Does the return of these statues, of these Gods, help some to heal.

Phoeurng Sackona: Yes. To get back the soul of the nation.

Anderson Cooper: The soul of the nation.

Phoeurng Sackona: It’s not only for me– but all of my family who was died [sic] during the war, and for– for all Cambodian people.

There are still many more stolen Cambodian statues and artifacts in museums and private collections around the world. 

When we return, Cambodia’s fight to get those looted relics back.

Produced by Michael H. Gavshon and Nadim Roberts. Associate producer, Eliza Costas. Broadcast associate, Grace Conley. Edited by Patrick Lee. 

[I don’t want to do a history lesson here, but I think a little background and some identifications are useful.  The Khmer Empire was established in 802 CE and by the 12th century, when most of the temples in the 60 Minutes report were built, was the largest empire in Southeast Asia.  The empire prospered and grew until 1431, when wars with neighboring kingdoms led to the sack of Angkor, the imperial capital. The empire went into decline and existed under the influence of Siam and Annam (now known as Thailand and Vietnam), reduced to little more than a vassal state.

[King Norodom (1834-1904) signed a treaty of protection with France, making the Kingdom of Cambodia a French protectorate—read “colony”—from 1863 until it gained independence in 1953 under King Norodom Sihanouk (1922-2012).  In 1970, Sihanouk was ousted in a military coup by Lon Nol (1913-85), a Cambodian politician and general who proclaimed the Khmer Republic. 

[Khmer means ‘Cambodian’ in the native language, which is also called Khmer.  Khmer Rouge, French for ‘Red Cambodian,’ is the name Sihanouk gave to the Communist Party of Kampuchea led by Pol Pot (1925-98); it became the term everyone, both inside the country and abroad, used for the CPK.  Kampuchea is the anglicization of the indigenous Khmer name for Cambodia.

[On 17 April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh, the capital of the country, and the next year established the radical Marxist-Leninist state of Democratic Kampuchea.  Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge set about removing from Kampuchea all foreign and bourgeois influences by rounding up all intellectuals, professionals, capitalists, and artists and sending them to camps in the countryside; Phnom Penh, a city of 370,000 inhabitants in 1975, was almost emptied of people. 

[By 1978, only 32,000 people lived in the city; many of the Cambodians the Khmer Rouge transported died either from execution, harsh conditions and treatment, or disease.  Between 21 and 24 percent of Cambodia’s population was lost, from 1.7 to 1.9 million people. 

[After years of hostility between the two communist countries, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam—the now-united North and South Vietnam—invaded Kampuchea in 1979 in response to border raids by the Khmer Rouge.  The Vietnamese forces defeated the Khmer Rouge and established the People’s Republic of Kampuchea; Pol Pot fled and was eventually arrested by his own Khmer Rouge in 1997 and tried in Phnom Penh.  He received a life sentence to be served under house arrest, but died, likely by suicide, in 1998.

[In 1993, the monarchy was restored and the country again became the Kingdom of Cambodia.  King Sihanouk retook the throne until his abdication in 2004; his successor is his son, Norodom Sihamoni (b. 1953).  The head of government in Cambodia is Prime Minister Hun Manet (b, 1977), in office since 2023.  

[Anderson Cooper left 60 Minutes in May 2026, announcing his departure in People magazine in February 2026.  He explained, “I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me."  He remains anchor of the CNN broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360.°]