The second story from the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM) in Cologne,

Khmer Art Overseas: The second story from the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM) in Cologne, Germany has an interesting twist to it. In 2013 a team led by ethnology professor Dr Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin visited Bangkok and Phnom Penh to investigate how the UN Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property was being implemented in Cambodia and Thailand. A colleague was so taken with a Khmer statue that he paid around USD9,000 to purchase it from a dealer in the Thai capital. Back in Germany, the buyer showed his acquisition to Hauser-Schäublin, who suspected its authenticity. A thorough investigation by geologist Esther von Plehwe-Leisen then brought certainty. She unmasked the hack marks, allegedly created during the excavation, as artificial, as well as deposits and cleavages of the sandstone that are caused by natural weathering. The three certificates of authenticity, purporting to show it came from an old collection, weren’t worth the paper they were written on. The disappointed buyer complained and was refunded, with the dealer ‘regretting’ their mistake. That fake sculpture is now in the RJM collection, having been the focus of a 2017 exhibition called ‘Crime scene Cambodia? On the trail of a forgery’, and a lecture by Hauser-Schäublin, both showing how the forgery was unmasked, the stonemason's workshops in which they are made and the tricks of the fake trade in how new becomes old. It certainly seems that the RJM in Cologne are a forward-thinking and proactive museum, especially when considering my earlier story of them returning a Vishnu head before being asked by the Cambodian authorities.https://www.facebook.com/andy.brouwer.71