Casting for the King – Honoring the Gods. The Art of Bronze at Angkor

Conference at 18:00 p.m. by Thierry Zephir, Research engineer, National Museum of Asian Arts – Guimet.

From April 30 to September 8, 2025, the exhibition “ Angkor Bronze. An Art of the Divine ", will allow a wide audience to discover in the temporary exhibition rooms of the Guimet Museum an exceptional collection of works reflecting nearly 2000 years of creation around a prestigious material in the ancient Khmer civilization: bronze. Surrounding the famous reclining Vishnu of the Western Mebon, some 200 works, including 126 loans from the National Museum of Phnom Penh, will pay tribute to the creative and artistic genius of Cambodian founders.

 This conference aims to revisit the history of metal art in Khmer country. We will particularly focus on the richness of Brahmanic and Buddhist iconographies, in the light of works that have been known for a long time or, for some, unpublished.