New York's Met to Return Cambodian Sculptures

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art said Friday it was returning two 10th century Khmer sculptures to Cambodia that the country insisted had been looted from a jungle temple.

The renowned institution announced that the two Koh Ker stone statues of "Kneeling Attendants" would be sent back after 20 years on display in the Met's Asian Wing.

They were donated piece by piece to the museum in the late 1980s and 1990s and were considered legal. However, "the Met recently came into possession of new documentary research that was not available to the Museum when the objects were acquired," it said in a statement.

"The museum is committed to applying rigorous provenance standards not only to new acquisitions, but to the study of works long in its collections in an ongoing effort to learn as much as possible about ownership history," said Thomas Campbell, the museum director.

"This is a case in which additional information regarding the 'Kneeling Attendants' has led the museum to consider facts that were not known at the time of the acquisition and to take the action we are announcing today," he said.