Thread by @ben_hallman

Now you see it … now you don’t. The mystery of ancient statues edited from the pages of Architectural Digest sparked a deep dive by @ICIJorg w/@PeterWhoriskey @maliapolitzer into the opaque art trade & surfaced big questions about who should own a nation's cultural heritage.🧵

Our latest was sparked when @ICIJorg reporting fellow @NicoleSadek noticed Khmer statues in a photo of a mansion's courtyard on an architect's website ... and compared it to the version in a 2021 magazine spread, where the statues were missing. icij.org/investigations…

Architectural Digest said it did not show the relics because of “unresolved publication rights around select artworks.”

The Cambodian government says the statues appear to match several that were looted from temples and sold into the black market. It wants them back.

The owners of the San Francisco mansion are Sloan Lindemann Barnett and her husband, who did not respond to comment requests. Several of the same relics also appeared in an *earlier* Architectural Digest spread of a Florida mansion built by Lindemann Barnett's parents.

This latest follows more than a year of reporting on the antiquities trade, led by @spencerwoodman. Cambodian art became a major focus, owing to vast numbers of trafficked relics - and the indictment of an accused smuggler, Douglas Latchford.

We previously reported on Latchford's secret offshore accounts, used to hold money and art.

We found that the Met and other esteemed institutions hold relics that passed through Latchford's hands. Many refused to discuss their collections with us. icij.org/investigations…

See ICIJ's #HiddenTreasures collection for more #PandoraPapers, #PanamaPapers and #FinCENFiles investigations on how the secretive art and antiquities trade can provide cover for looters, thieves, money launderers, sanctions dodgers, tax evaders and more bit.ly/3AjPWKG