NEW YORK: A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December.
The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree that’s delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot (4-meter) tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world.
This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,” which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago reshaped life on Earth.
Talo Kawasaki, the tree’s co-designer, said the tree’s theme is “New Beginnings,” in reference to the new world that followed the mass extinction.
Located off the museum’s Central Park West entrance, the artificial tree is topped with a golden, flaming asteroid.
Its branches and limbs are packed with origami works representing a variety of animals and insects, including foxes, cranes, turtles, bats, sharks, elephants, giraffes and monkeys. Dinosaur favorites such as the triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex are also depicted in the folded paper works of art.
“We wanted to focus more not so much the demise of the dinosaurs, but the new life this created, which were the expansion and the evolution of mammals ultimately leading to humanity,” Kawasaki explained on a recent visit.
The origami tree has been a highlight of the museum’s holiday season for more than 40 years.
Volunteers from all over the world are enlisted to make hundreds of new models. The intricate paper artworks are generally made from a single sheet of paper but can sometimes take days or even weeks to perfect.
The new origami pieces are bolstered by archived works stored from prior seasons, including a 40-year-old model of a pterosaur, an extinct flying reptile, that was folded for one of the museum’s first origami trees in the early 1970s.
Rosalind Joyce, the tree’s co-designer, estimates that anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 origami works are embedded in the tree.
“This year there’s a lot of stuff stuffed in there,” she said. “So I don’t count.”
Holiday tree featuring thousands of origami works opens at NYC’s American Museum of Natural History
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Holiday tree featuring thousands of origami works opens at NYC’s American Museum of Natural History
- The Origami Holiday Tree at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday
- This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibit chronicling how an asteroid crash killed the dinosaurs and reshaped life on Earth
Cambodia takes back looted historic artifacts handled by British art dealer
- The objects were returned under a 2020 agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and the family of the late Douglas Latchford, a British art collector and dealer who allegedly had the items smuggled out of Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Cambodian officials on Friday received more than six dozen historic artifacts described as part of the country’s cultural heritage that had been looted during decades of war and instability.
At a ceremony attended by Deputy Prime Minister Hun Many, the 74 items were unveiled at the National Museum in Phnom Penh after their repatriation from the United Kingdom.
The objects were returned under a 2020 agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and the family of the late Douglas Latchford, a British art collector and dealer who allegedly had the items smuggled out of Cambodia.
“This substantial restitution represents one of the most important returns of Khmer cultural heritage in recent years, following major repatriations in 2021 and 2023 from the same collection,” the Culture Ministry said in a statement. “It marks a significant step forward in Cambodia’s continued efforts to recover, preserve, and restore its ancestral legacy for future generations.”
The artifacts were described as dating from the pre-Angkorian period through the height of the Angkor Empire, including “monumental sandstone sculptures, refined bronze works, and significant ritual objects.” The Angkor Empire, which extended from the ninth to the 15th century, is best known for the Angkor Wat archaeological site, the nation’s biggest tourist attraction.
Latchford was a prominent antiquities dealer who allegedly orchestrated an operation to sell looted Cambodian sculptures on the international market.
From 1970 to the 1980s, during Cambodia’s civil wars and the communist Khmer Rouge ‘s brutal reign, organized looting networks sent artifacts to Latchford, who then sold them to Western collectors, dealers, and institutions. These pieces were often physically damaged, having been pried off temple walls or other structures by the looters.
Latchford was indicted in a New York federal court in 2019 on charges including wire fraud and conspiracy. He died in 2020, aged 88, before he could be extradited to face charges.
Cambodia, like neighboring Thailand, has benefited from a trend in recent decades involving the repatriation of art and archaeological treasures. These include ancient Asian artworks as well as pieces lost or stolen during turmoil in places such as Syria, Iraq and Nazi-occupied Europe. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the prominent institutions that has been returning illegally smuggled art, including to Cambodia.
“The ancient artifacts created and preserved by our ancestors are now being returned to Cambodia, bringing warmth and joy, following the country’s return to peace,” said Hun Many, who is the younger brother of Prime Minister Hun Manet.
