Will Brehm, Repatriation or political theatre? How the return of stolen artefacts can distort history, The Conversation, 26 September 2025
In late July, during a visit to the National Gallery of Australia, three Buddhist bodhisattva statues caught my attention.
All three were created in the ancient Champa Kingdom that flourished from the 2nd to 19th centuries across present-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. They were purchased by the National Gallery (NGA) in 2011, before being “repatriated” to the Kingdom of Cambodia in 2023 (and displayed in the NGA on loan).
But the Champa Kingdom bore little resemblance to Cambodia’s current borders. What does repatriation mean when the political geography of a place has entirely transformed?