Thailand welcomes return of antiquities from New York’s Metropolitan Museum

A photographer takes a picture of the ancient bronze kneeling woman sculpture during a repatriation ceremony at National Museum in Bangkok, Thailand (Sakchai Lalit/AP)

Thailand’s National Museum has hosted a welcome home ceremony for two ancient statues that were allegedly illegally trafficked from Thailand by a British collector of antiquities and were returned from the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The objects – a tall bronze figure called the Standing Shiva or the Golden Boy and a smaller sculpture called Kneeling Female – are thought to be around 1,000 years old.