Slippery Slope

Cambodian cultural bureaucrats, no doubt emboldened by the US Government's case against Sotheby's, have now set their sights on more Cambodian statuary that has been on display at the MET for years.  See

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/arts/design/cambodia-to-ask-met-to-return-10th-century-statues.html

The statuary in question apparently arrived in the US years before import restrictions on undocumented Cambodian artifacts were imposed.  Moreover, unlike the Sotheby's case, there does not appear to be any hard evidence that the statuary came from a specific site.  Accordingly, at this point any Cambodian claims would seem to be based on little more than speculation and a cultural nationalist view that anything of Cambodian manufacture "belongs" to the modern nation state.