The Quiet Edits: Curating Around Controversy in the 1969 Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Exhibition

The Quiet Edits: Curating Around Controversy in the 1969 Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Exhibition

by Phuy Meychean

This case study is part of research in U.S. archives by three CO-OP interns from October 2024 – March 2025. Find the other case studies on the project page.

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Introduction

The 1969 Ancient Cambodian Sculpture exhibition, curated by Sherman E. Lee and hosted by the Asia Society in New York, marked a significant moment in the presentation of Khmer art to Western audiences. Featuring stone and bronze sculptures from the Angkorian period, it sought to highlight the aesthetic and cultural achievements of Cambodia while positioning Southeast Asia within broader narratives of art history. Archival records from the Rockefeller Archive Center reveal that many of the objects had incomplete or ambiguous provenance, circulating through private collections and informal dealer networks, a factor that posed ethical and legal challenges for curators.

This article examines how curators and collectors negotiated these challenges through two case studies. Georges Halphen’s refusal to lend a sculpture illustrates early apprehension about potential repatriation. Sherman E. Lee’s selective exclusion of works with ‘grey provenance’ demonstrates curatorial risk management in absence of formal legal frameworks. Together, these cases illuminate the subtle strategies in what this paper terms ‘quiet edits’ through which museums mediated ethical uncertainty while presenting Southeast Asian art to American audiences.

Curating the Grey Zone: Two Case Studies from the 1969 Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Exhibition

Georges Halphen’s Refusal: Anticipatory Provenance Anxiety

In 1969, the Asia Society’s Ancient Cambodian Sculpture exhibition sought to introduce American audiences to the aesthetic and spiritual sophistication of Khmer art. Among the invited lenders was Georges Halphen, a prominent French collector with extensive holdings of Khmer sculpture. In correspondence with then Director of Asia House Gallery, Gordon Washburn, Halphen declined to lend a sculpture, citing concern over its origins in a Thai collection and expressing fear that the Thai government might pursue a repatriation claim if its provenance were publicised (fig 1).¹ This moment of hesitation, documented only in private correspondence, encapsulated the emergence of what may be termed ‘anticipatory provenance anxiety’, a pre-emptive recognition of the political risks embedded in cultural property transactions. Halphen’s decision unfolded during a transitional moment in the global art market. The 1960s witnessed a growing awareness of the illicit antiquities trade in Southeast Asia, as armed conflict in Cambodia and regional instability provided fertile conditions for the looting of temples such as Koh Ker and Banteay Chhmar.² Dealers including Douglas Latchford and Doris Wiener capitalised on porous borders and weak enforcement mechanisms, channelling Khmer antiquities into European and American collections.³ Within this environment, the provenance of many objects was neither fully documented nor overtly illegal, in a liminal condition now conceptualised by scholars as grey provenance, where legal ambiguity becomes a feature rather than a flaw of the market system.⁴

 

Halphen’s refusal illuminates how collectors internalised this ambiguity as a reputational risk. His apprehension about potential claims reveals a pre-UNESCO 1970 Convention awareness that the legitimacy of ownership could be contested not only legally but diplomatically.⁵ By withholding his sculpture, Halphen engaged in a form of self-censorship that reflects the growing intersection of cultural property, international relations, and curatorial ethics. Although these decisions were made privately, they had institutional consequences, as the absence of key lenders limited the exhibition’s scope and in turn shaped the narrative of Khmer art presented to the public.

This episode thus functions as a case study in the early articulation of provenance as a form of cultural diplomacy. In the mid-twentieth-century, museum exhibitions often functioned as legitimizing stages for unprovenanced objects, transforming private holdings into publicly sanctioned heritage. Halphen’s refusal disrupted that legitimising process. His letter acknowledges that cultural property carried potential liabilities, a recognition that collectors, curators, and institutions would increasingly confront after the 1970 UNESCO Convention codified restrictions on the illicit transfer of cultural objects. Halphen’s act of restraint can therefore be read as ethically problematic and pragmatically self-protective. It reveals how private collectors navigated the emerging moral economy of cultural heritage, balancing personal prestige against the risk of exposure. Within the broader historical trajectory of provenance ethics, Halphen’s correspondence marks a subtle but significant shift in the acknowledgement that what could not be proven could, in time, become perilous.⁶

Sherman E. Lee and the Management of Grey Provenance

 

A year before the exhibition opened, Sherman E. Lee, who was then the Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art and principal curator of Ancient Cambodian Sculpture, wrote to Gordon Washburn about a Khmer sculpture from the Stoclet Collection.⁷ Lee described the piece as “most desirable”, but cautioned that it “may stir up issues” concluding that it should not be included (fig 2).⁸ This brief remark, situated within the administrative fabric of exhibition planning, reveals the emergence of a curatorial pragmatics of risk in which a mode of ethical decision-making was designed not to expose or resolve ambiguity, but to contain it. The Stoclet Collection, assembled in Belgium during the colonial era, included numerous Khmer works with incomplete or obscured provenance. Many such objects circulated through intermediary dealers in Bangkok or Paris, moving through informal and opaque trading networks that concealed provenance while preserving the market’s appearance of legitimacy. Within these networks, provenance functioned less as a historical record than as a flexible narrative, tailored to institutional or aesthetic needs. Lee’s decision to exclude the Stoclet sculpture represents a form of curatorial gatekeeping that simultaneously acknowledges and conceals this system. By exercising selective omission, Lee participated in what might be described as the quiet governance of provenance. It is a practice through which curators managed uncertainty without challenging the structural mechanisms that produced it.⁹ In this sense, omission became an unethical act, allowing the museum to appear scrupulous while avoiding the reputational risks of public controversy.

The archival record suggests that Lee’s caution was informed by broader geopolitical awareness.¹⁰ Cambodia’s political instability and the increasing visibility of looting made Southeast Asian antiquities particularly sensitive. Displaying an object with uncertain or questionable origins could have made the Asia Society appear involved in the same networks of cultural extraction that were increasingly drawing attention from journalists and diplomats. Yet Lee’s decision also reinforced the museum’s authority by presenting omission as discretion rather than silence. This strategy reveals the paradox of mid-century curatorial ethics characterised by attempts to uphold scholarly credibility through the management, rather than the exposure, of uncertainty. Lee’s quiet edit exemplifies this tendency. His refusal to include the Stoclet piece was prudent, but it also perpetuated a system in which the absence of transparency was normalised as professionalism. Through this case, Lee emerges as a figure emblematic of what Mackenzie and Yates term the ‘grey zone’ of cultural property.¹¹ He was neither directly participating in trafficking nor wholly detached from it; rather his role was to curate around illegitimacy, maintaining institutional integrity by shaping what could and could not be seen. The ethics of omission that guided his practice would become foundational to later museum protocols, institutionalising discretion as a mode of ethical self-regulation.

Conclusion

The 1969 Ancient Cambodian Sculpture exhibition illustrates how museums managed the ethical, legal, and scholarly complexities of Southeast Asian antiquities. Halphen’s refusal demonstrates anticipatory caution regarding repatriation. Lee’s selective omissions exemplify the management of grey provenance within institutional practice.

Together, these cases reveal a consistent strategy of quiet edits in which decisions made through absence and exclusion mediated ethical uncertainty while constructing an authoritative exhibition. Archival evidence underscores how museums balanced scholarship, diplomacy, and ethics in ways that would influence later restitution debates. Understanding these early practices provides insight into contemporary challenges of archival scholarship in reconstructing historical curatorial strategies.

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Notes

1. Georges Halphen to Gordon Washburn, 1969, Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence: With Lenders, 1968-1970, Folder 554, Box 66, Asia Society Exhibition Files, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC). ↩︎
2. Lafont 2004, 53; Socheat et al. 2021, 66. ↩︎
3. Socheat et al. 2021; Politzer et al. 2021 ↩︎
4. Mackenzie et al., Trafficking Culture: New Directions in Researching the Global Market in Illicit Antiquities, 35-39. ↩︎
5. Halphen to Washburn. 1969, Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence, Folder 554, Box 66, RAC. ↩︎
6. Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence, Folder 554, Box 66, RAC. ↩︎
7. Stoclet Collection refers broadly to the art amassed by Adolphe and Suzanne Stoclet, including European primitives antiquities from Egypt, Asia, and the Americas, as well as African and Oceanic objects, all displayed in their Brussels home. ↩︎
8. Sherman E. Lee to Gordon Washburn, 1968, Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence, Folder 554, Box 66, RAC. ↩︎
9. Mackenzie et al., Trafficking Culture: New Directions in Researching the Global Market in Illicit Antiquities, 59-70. ↩︎
10. Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence, Folder 554, Box 66, RAC. ↩︎
11. Mackenzie et al., Trafficking Culture, 35. ↩︎

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Primary Sources

 

• • Rockefeller Archive Center, Asia Society Exhibition Files, Box 66, Folder 554, Ancient Cambodian Sculpture Correspondence: With Lenders, 1968-1970.

• • Rockefeller Archive Center, letter from Gordon Washburn to Sherman E. Lee, dated 5 September 1968.

• • Rockefeller Archive Center, letter from Georges Halphen to Gordon Washburn, dated 3 Febuary 1969.

• • Rockefeller Archive Center, letter from Ivon d’Argencé to Gordon Washburn, dated 16 October 1969.

• • Rockefeller Archive Center, letter from Sherman E. Lee to Ivon d’Argencé, dated 30 October 1969.

References

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