PHNOM PENH — The Angkorian-era statue named the “Reclining Vishnu,” which was sent to France for a health heck and to feature in a major exhibition at the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet in Paris, is being treated like a super star.

In a news story about the statue undergoing tests and being restored at the highly-specialized Laboratoire Arc’Ántique in northwest France, a representative was quoted as saying that working on such a historical artwork “is an experience that does not happen often in a lifetime.” 

The story published on Jan. 20 at the site of the online news Ouest-France Presse Ocean mentioned that the laboratory was sent the bust and 82 fragments of the statue of this Hindu deity, which must originally have been more than 5-meter long. The statue was found in the 1950s at the West Mebon temple in what is today the Angkor Archeological Park in Siem Reap province. 

As Phoeurng Sackona, minister of Culture and Fine Arts, said in May 2024 during the ceremony marking the departure of the statue for France, “the project aims to repair, preserve and analyze the composition of the reclining statue…to further understand the ingenious techniques of large-scale metal casting in the Khmer civilization during the Angkorian period.” Pierre Baptiste, curator of the South-East Asia Collection at the Guimet museum, had attended the ceremony. 

The exhibition on Cambodia’s bronze antiquities is to be held at the museum in Paris from April to September 2025. The National Museum in Phnom Penh discussed sending more than 120 bronze artifacts from its collection to be displayed alongside those of the Guimet museum during the event.