James Clark told the New York Times that he had surrendered over two dozen Southeast Asian antiquities after federal investigators discovered they had been traffickers.
The New York Academy of Art held a ball to honor Will Cotton.
Paul Bruinooge and Patrick McMullan are pictured.
The Department of Justice did not refer to Clark by name, but it did say that he surrendered 35 antiquities from Southeast Asia, including Cambodia.
Clark told the Times that he gave up the pieces after federal investigators showed him evidence of theft from their years-long investigation into Douglas A.J. Latchford, a British art dealer who died in 2020.
According to the DOJ statement, Latchford convinced Clark to buy artifacts using false statements and fake provenance documents.
Clark said he paid $35 million for the collection that once furnished his $21.5 million Miami Beach penthouse, but he told the Times that most of the pieces ended up in storage in South Florida.
Clark told the newspaper that he stopped working with Latchford in 2008 after the dealer failed to provide a Cambodian government certificate.
The New York Times reported that Cambodia will take control of 28 items in the collection.
It is hard for people to give up something they paid for, but for me, why would you want to own something that was stolen? Clark told the New York Times.
The number is big.
A total of $3.6 billion. According to a Forbes estimate, Clark is worth more than that. The art collection of Clark is estimated to be $300 million.
The key background.
Clark told the Times that he had acquired one of the nicer private collections of Cambodian antiquities after traveling through Cambodia. The handover of Clark's collection to Cambodia marks a milestone in Cambodia's effort to recover lost artifacts. According to the New York Times, most of the Khmer Empire antiquities that ended up on the market were taken during the country's civil war and subsequent decades of political instability. Latchford denied dealing in antiquities that had been stolen.
The New York Times reported that the Netscape founder gave up $35 million in art.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
