Curating and Collaborating with Cambodia at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian

Emma Stein, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art

Chair: Jinah Kim, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art is currently engaged in a multi-year collaboration with the Kingdom of Cambodia. Focusing on capacity building and knowledge exchange, the collaboration will lead to a co-created touring exhibition about the tenth-century temple-city of Koh Ker. In this talk, join NMAA curator Emma Natalya Stein to hear about this collaboration and the decades of partnership leading to it, including the establishment of a bronze conservation laboratory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia-focused exhibitions in Washington, DC, and a recent return of three sculptures to the Kingdom of Cambodia from the NMAA collections.

Emma Natalya Stein is Jeffrey P. Cunard Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Her exhibitions include Vishnu’s Cosmic Ocean; Prehistoric Spirals: Earthenware from Thailand; Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain; and The Art of Knowing in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas. She is author of the monograph Constructing Kanchi: City of Infinite Temples (2021) and articles on topics including yoginis, temple networks, and cultural heritage. She regularly conducts fieldwork in South Asia and Southeast Asia and contributes to workshops, conferences, and collaborative projects, and she currently serves on the board of the journal Ars Orientalis