Future Exhibition:
Royal Bronzes of Angkor, an Art of the Divine Exhibition - at the Guimet Museum in Paris, France from 30 April – 8 September 2025.
The Guimet Museum in Paris is dedicating the exhibition, Royal Bronzes of Angkor, an Art of the Divine, to bronze. The highlight of this exhibition is the statue of the reclining Vishnu from the Western Mebon - an 11th century sanctuary west of Angkor - found in 1936, which originally measured more than five meters in length. This national treasure of Cambodia will be exhibited for the first time with its long-separated fragments, after benefiting in 2024 from a campaign of scientific analysis and restoration in France, with the patronage of ALIPH. It will be accompanied by more than 200 works, including 126 exceptional loans from the National Museum of Cambodia, whose presence makes it possible to draw up a chronological journey of bronze art in Cambodia, from the 9th century to the present day, through a journey leading the visitor to the major sites of Khmer heritage.
Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire that dominated part of continental Southeast Asia for more than five centuries, has preserved from its past glory monumental remains of incomparable magnitude and beauty. But if the architecture of the temples of the Khmer Empire (9th-14th centuries) and the stone statues housed there have been celebrated many times, who remembers that these Buddhist and Brahmanic sanctuaries once preserved a whole population of divinities and objects of worship cast in precious metal: gold, silver, gilded bronze?
A subtle and noble alloy notably combining copper, tin and lead, bronze has given birth in Cambodia to masterpieces of statuary testifying to the loyalty of the Khmer sovereigns to Hinduism as well as Buddhism. The prerogative of the king – whose know-how was carefully preserved in workshops near the Royal Palace – metallurgy was a sacred technique, whether in Angkor (11th - 12th centuries), Oudong (16th - 17th centuries) or Phnom Penh (19th - 20th centuries).
For the first time, this exhibition-event considers the special role of the sovereign, the sponsor of large bronze castings, from the Angkorian period to the modern period, where, in an astonishing continuity, art and power have remained associated in this field more than in any other.
The exceptional loans from the National Museum of Cambodia, granted by the Royal Government within the specific framework of the cooperation established between the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia, the C2RMF (Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France), the EFEO (École française d’Extrême-Orient) and the Guimet Museum, bring together for the first time in the framework of this exceptional exhibition masterpieces (statuary, art objects or elements of architectural decor) as well as photographs, casts and graphic documents allowing these works of art to be placed in their cultural context, as well as in an archaeological and historical perspective. [Courtesy of the Guimet Museum website].Credit By :Andy Brouwer