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Missing golden crown found in usa - Paknam Web Thailand Forums
Tuesday March 1, 10:14 PM
Thai prime minister orders investigation of golden crown allegedly taken from temple
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Tuesday ordered an investigation into how an antique crown _ allegedly stolen from a Buddhist temple and now on display at a U.S.
Museum _ can be returned to Thailand.
The pure gold, 5-kilogram (11-pound), 19-centimeter- (7.5-inch-) tall crown, currently on exhibit at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, reportedly disappeared in 1957 when a temple in central Thailand was robbed by antiques thieves, local television station ITV reported Monday.
Pattaratorn Chirapravati, a California professor and curator of the exhibition titled "The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand, 1350-1800," told ITV that a museum in Philadelphia obtained the crown in 1982 and before that, it was in a private U.S.
Collection.
"It was probably taken out (of Thailand) when Wat Ratchaburana was broken into," Pattaratorn said of the crown, which is intricately etched and surrounded with pearls, rubies and other gems.
According to Thai art historians Quote: d Tuesday in local media, thieves in 1957 broke into the temple in Ayutthaya province, 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of Bangkok, and stole royal gold antique urns, accessories and other artifacts.
There were no laws at the time prohibiting the trade of Thai antiques.
Prime Minister Thaksin ordered the culture and foreign ministries to check the veracity of the television report and if it was accurate, see how the crown could be returned to Thailand.
"We may have to buy it back.
I told the culture and foreign ministers to discuss if this is possible," Thaksin told reporters.
In the past, similar reports of major artifacts taken abroad have became the object of intense public and media interest, with the government engaging in negotiations for their return.
In 1988, the Art Institute of Chicago returned a 1,000-year-old stone carving of a Hindu god, which had vanished from northeastern Thailand in the 1960s and later was displayed at the museum.
The case triggered a surge of nationalist sentiment, including some lyrics in a hit song by a Thai pop singer decrying its theft and the reluctance of the institute to return it.
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Self-confessed thief endures a life of regret
The Nation, Published on March 03, 2005
He wishes that he had never done it, but now all Li Kasemsang - battered by time and what he believes are curses - can do is hope that the government succeeds in bringing back from the United States a centuries-old crown he believes he stole from an Ayutthaya temple almost 50 years ago.
I havent had a happy life, said Li, 78.
I have been jailed seven times on different charges.
My family has never been happy either, no matter how much merit I have tried to make and how much I apologised to the spirits guarding the treasure.
One of 21 Thais who allegedly raided an Ayutthaya temple, Li said he was confident that the crown, currently on display in a San Francisco museum, was one of the many items he and his friends took and sold on the black market.
I want Thai people to help bring it back to Ayutthaya, said Li.
He claims he was one of a group of thieves that raided the then abandoned Wat Ratburana on October 27, 1956.
Eight of the 21 were arrested after the raid, but the rest, including Li, lived life on the run.
All, except Li and one other called Wi who is ill and unable to speak, are dead.
The Cabinet has asked the Foreign Ministry and the Culture Ministry to negotiate with the US authorities and ask for the return of the crown.
Li told yesterday how he and his group managed, amid a sudden downpour of rain, to force open the head of the temples main Buddha image and climb inside the hollow body to find gold ornaments, including the crown and a sword that appeared to have belonged to a king.
We were surprised to see so many golden objects and Buddha statues.
There were swords and crowns.
We told ourselves they must have belonged to kings.
I got away with some gold ornaments, while my friends took and shared the other items.
It took about three days to take it all out by putting the items in small sand bags and hauling them up with a pulley, he said.
Some of the items were returned when eight of the group were arrested, but the crown was passed on until it reached a foreign buyer.
The crown is believed to have belonged to King Borom Rajathiraj II, from the Ayutthaya period, and is presumed to have been made in 1424.
It is reportedly on display at the Asian Art Museum as part of an exhibition showcasing 89 surviving works from the period, which ended when the former Thai capital was sacked by a Burmese army.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra alerted the Cabinet to the crowns existence after seeing a television documentary about its theft.
Samrit Jiamchareonporn
The Nation
AYUTTHAYA
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Stolen crown theory mars Thai exhibit
TV reporter in L.A.
Creates stir that reaches Bangkok
San Francisco Chronicle
Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 5, 2005
Since 1982, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has owned and displayed a 15th century gold Siamese crown that's intricately decorated with scrolls and vines and studded with rubies and pearls.
That exquisite object, now on view at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum in the exhibition "The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand, 1350-1800,'' became a hot topic in the Thai press this week when a Thai TV reporter in Los Angeles filed a story saying the crown was probably stolen from a crypt at the famous Buddhist temple of Wat Ratchaburana at Ayutthaya, once the capital of Siam.
It's not news that in 1957, thieves looted a previously unknown sacred chamber deep within that central Thai temple, or that the Thai government recovered much but not all of the booty, excavated the site and found many more valuable objects.
But when Jom Patch of the Thai network ITV learned from interviewing curators here that the gold crown probably came from the sacred crypt and, in his words, "might be stolen,'' he thought he had himself a scoop.
"I thought it was news,'' says Patch, who lives in Los Angeles and is somewhat fluent in English.
His story was picked up by the Associated Press in Bangkok and reported in a number of daily papers.
They include the English- language Bangkok Post, which reported on Thursday that Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra "learned about the crown after seeing a television documentary about its theft, and asked his ministers to investigate.''
So far, nobody from the Thai government has contacted the Asian Art Museum or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which bought the crown at a Sotheby's auction in 1982, has had it on view ever since, and features it in publications and on its Web site.
The whole affair baffles officials at the Asian Art Museum.
They've spent a good part of the last five years working with Thai institutions and other museums to create this landmark exhibition, the first show of Thai art presented in the United States in 33 years and the first to focus on the art of the Kingdom of Siam.
"I am kind of brokenhearted,'' says Forrest McGill, the museum's chief curator, a Thai art scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan on the kingdom of Ayutthaya.
"A group of American and Thai scholars has been working together on this for years, produced a major scholarly catalog and an exhibition of material that has hardly ever been seen before.
And we can't get the focus on that because, for now at least, the focus seems to be on this one object.''
McGill and co-curator Pattaratorn Chirapravati, a Thai American woman who teaches at Cal State Sacramento, think the hammered gold crown, which dates from 1400 to 1450, "probably'' came from the sacred deposit chamber at Wat Ratchaburana (because Americans think crypts are tombs, he says, the term crypt was dropped).
"But there's no proof,'' says McGill.
When Thai officials started taking stock of the recovered and newly unearthed objects, he adds, no photographs were taken and "there was no systematic record of what was there.''
The show's catalog and wall text mention the probability that the crown came from the sacred chamber and talk about the looting of the chamber in 1957.
One could surmise that "if it was originally in that chamber, and since we know that it's not part of what Thai officials recovered, what's left?'' McGill says.
"It must've been secreted out at that time.''
All of this information, he says, "has been in the public realm for years.
I don't see what the big deal is.
I don't see why it's coming up now.
None of us feels comfortable about stolen property.
None of us feels comfortable about an archaeological site that's looted before it can be studied.
However, the Philadelphia Museum bought the crown fair and square at public auction -- the Sotheby's catalog has a full-page color photograph of the object -- and they've had it on display ever since.
Why have they waited 23 years to investigate?''
The director of Thailand's Office of National Museums and the director general of the Thai Fine Arts Department were part of the delegation that flew here from Bangkok last month for the opening of the "Kingdom of Siam.'' Neither questioned the provenance of the crown, which the Sotheby's catalog notes was acquired by a dealer named Klejman in 1965.
"We take issue of provenance very seriously,'' Philadelphia Museum of Art director Anne d'Harnoncourt said in a written statement, "and would of course be ready to explore any questions about the history of the object with the appropriate Thai officials.''
Jom Patch says he doesn't know much about art.
But he knows a good story when he sees it.
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Stolen crown renews interest in Wat Ratburana
The Nation, Published on March 07, 2005
Ayutthayas ancient Wat Ratburana was the centre of a tourist rush yesterday, following news reports that it was plundered for treasure in 1957, and that part of the booty, a 15th century gold crown, has turned up in a San Francisco exhibition.
The reports triggered a sudden fascination with Thai cultural heritage.
Heavily loaded buses arrived not only at Wat Ratburana, but also at the Chao Sam Phraya National Museum, which displays other artefacts from the same period.
The area around the temple suffered from traffic congestion and a constant flow of visitors, including old people and children, who climbed the steep stairway to the temples main tower in the hope of seeing where the treasure had been concealed.
Many then climbed down a steep 42-step ladder into the chamber that had held the treasure.
Officials said many tried to rush back up the ladder because of a lack of fresh air at the bottom, and some fainted.
Visitors with heart conditions and respiratory problems were asked not to go down.
Pawinee Meeachaya, 27, from Nonthaburi, said the news prompted her and her family to visit the temple.
I am impressed how the ancient people kept treasures in divided rooms, hidden underneath, she said.
But we had to leave the bottom floor because there was not enough air.
She said the authorities should do something about the poor ventilation.
A tourist police officer, Sergeant Rachod Wanangtan, said that over the past few days, daily sales of entrance tickets to Wat Ratburana had increased from about Bt3,000 a day to about Bt30,000.
The government is attempting to reclaim the ancient crown from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has loaned it to San Franciscos Asian Art Museum.
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