30 years after Khmer Rouge, killing fields, Cambodia grows new generation of art conservators

Metals conservator Huot Samnang at the National Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is part of a new generation of art conservators and educated professionals rising from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge, who, in the killing fields of the 1970s, killed most of the country's intellectuals and educated elite because they were considered a threat to the Maoist regime. (Photo: Irwin Loy)

The Khmer Rouge caused the deaths – by killing, starvation, and disease – of an estimated 2 million Cambodians, including an entire generation of art conservators. With the killing fields in the history books, skilled professionals are now reemerging.

June 12, 2010
By Irwin Loy, Contributor
The Christian Science Monitor
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

In a side wing of Phnom Penh’s National Museum, Noeun Von is slowly bringing a piece of his culture back to life.

He casts a cloth over a bronze Buddha, removing the dust that has settled on the figure. When this piece was first unearthed, the figure’s head had been detached from its body. But now the piece has been meticulously repaired, allowing the intricate details on the centuries-old bronze to be revealed.

Mr. Von’s handiwork, and that of his colleagues in the five-year-old metals conservation laboratory, will be on display this year in the United States as part of “Gods of Angkor,” a major exhibition of the work of Khmer bronze casters hosted by the Smithsonian Institution.

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