 It's my great pleasure to welcome our speaker this morning, Disappong Net Lamon. I'd just like to say a few words about Disappong. He's a senior curator of the Office of National Museums within the Fine Arts Department of Thailand. And as director of the research division, he supervises academic research projects and exhibition integratives. For example, at the Prachinburi National Museum, the Bunkow National Museum and the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Exhibition, which was held in Nordkapp in Norway. He's also assistant secretary of ICOM, Thailand National Committee. He completed his undergrad degree in Art History at the Faculty of Archeology, Silpecourne University. And he has a postgraduate diploma in preventive conservation of cultural property from the University of Paris I, the Sorbonne. He was curator of three museums, the Thelang National Museum in Phuket, 2001 to 2004, the National Museum Bangkok, 2004 to 2010 and the National Gallery of Thailand 2010 to 2014. He has undertaken several interesting collaborations with international exhibitions, which include a passage to Asia, 25 centuries of exchange between Asia and Europe, with Bozar Brussels in 2010, with this interesting sounding exhibition, Thrones of Kings, Authority and Its Symbols at the Chateau de Versailles in France in 2011. And of course, we collaborated together on Enlightened Ways, the many streams of Buddhist art in Thailand at the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore in 2012. His ongoing research addresses the reinterpretation of foreign artifacts in the collections of the National Museums of Thailand. And today he's going to, we're really lucky actually, I've just caught sight of some of this upon the slides. We're really lucky. We're going to have a preview of some of the new displays at the National Museum of this really interesting figure as he says in his abstract in 1961, the head of an unidentified Bodhisattva was unearthed at Bantanord village in Nonsum district, Lacon-Rashtrasima province, together with several parts. The head is 70 cm high and is regarded as the largest bronze Bodhisattva ever found in Thailand and in the Playa Bacchon Chai art style. It was sent for restoration in France and returned to Thailand after that and has since been exhibited at the National Museum in Bangkok in the Lok Boori Gallery where it was interpreted as Khmer art in Thailand. The other sections, the six other sections were kept in storage for more than 60 years. However, recently, the National Museum developed a plan to renovate the Lok Boori Gallery which included a proposal to reconstruct and permanently exhibit the whole Bodhisattva which is what we're going to see. The reconstruction team included curators, conservators, artists and sculptors and new technologies such as 3D scanning and printing were employed. Now standing at 275 cm high the reconstructed statues exhibited in order to give the visitor an original perspective on the Bodhisattva. During its reconstruction, curatorial discussions addressed not only the rejoining of the physical body of the Bodhisattva but also the revival of its spiritual power. This lecture will discuss this new interpretation, ritual implications evidenced by 3D scanning and the visual perceptions of worshippers who associate closely with the statues of the original form and gesture. And it will also demonstrate how these interpretations led the curatorial plan to relocate the Bodhisattva in the new gallery. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome you Disapong and invite you to share your screen with us. Thank you very much, Heidi, for your introduction and good morning and good afternoon, everybody. Let me share my slide. The reconstruct of the Bandhanon from Bodhisattva is a project that we created during the pandemic. At that time, we have a plan to renovate the permanent exhibition gallery in National Museum Bangkok. One part of the building is the Loboli Gallery or the Thame Art in Thailand Gallery. As we are working for the structure of the building, we have to move all the objects outside the building. Then we have a plan to create a special exhibition in another building. So we don't have to keep all the objects inside the storage and the museum can be opened for the public. Even at that time, not much visitor to come to the museum because of the pandemic. But the exhibition room, the temporary exhibition room is the ancient throne hall of the museum. The ceiling was really high and had bigger space than the permanent exhibition room. So, as far as we're looking for some camera sculpture, the big size camera sculpture to exhibit in this gallery. But as you know, the stone sculpture is really heavy and really fragile to carry from the museum outside Bangkok to Bangkok. So we think about the object that we have in the permanent collection. And the head of Bodhisattva Award also in the permanent collection. But the other part of this statue never exhibited before. Maybe it has to show for a short time but never seen before. But never exhibited in the permanent exhibition before. So this is the beginning of our project. Okay. So I will go into the history of Bodhisattva. In 1961, the village have found the part of Bodhisattva at the mountain of Nonsung, Nakhon Lashasinma province, not even part of Thailand. It is said that the mountain is the ancient stupa but we cannot find the style or the shape of the stupa correctly because it was abandoned and destroyed by Buddha Singh. But the villagers collect all of this piece and ask the fine art department to collect them, the head of the village called the fine art department to see and to collect them. This is from the survey of the fine art department at that time in 1962, I guess. At that time it was kept at the museum in Nakhon Lashasinma. I think it was the Mahaviravong National Museum, not in Pimai, not in Pimai, but it's another national museum. They also found the brick, probably the part of the stupa. And in the paper, they mentioned that they also found the clay votive tablet in Thawarawati's style. But I never seen that votive tablet so so I cannot confirm that the votive tablet is also in Thawarawati's style. As for when they found, they don't even know when it was built in the paper, in the report, they said it was the Sri Vijaya Bodhisattva or something. And after that, it was lastly restored by the metal wire and put it in the Mahaviravong Museum in Nakhon Lashasinma province. This is the leg and the hand of the bodhisattva. You can see the size of the part, the leg part is even bigger bigger than the human size. So after that, it was sent for restoration at the Reparatura, the Khechev Archaeology, the Noxie in France. And it's a bit at Musée Chenusim in Paris in 1964. And after that, it was returned to Thailand and extricated in the National Museum Bangkok. In 1965, in Thailand, they have the new of the discovery of the brown bodhisattva from Khao Paibat II in Buriram province. But unfortunately, all of them were smuggling out of the country. It was published in Illustrate, London News that they found about 300 brown statues in Prasad on a border of Thailand, Cambodia. At that time, it's not yet confirmed which Prasad. But later on, from many paper, many scholar research, we know that it was the Prasad Khao Paibat II in Buriram province nowadays. So this is the first time that some scholars suggest that the statue from Bantanot is probably similar to the bodhisattva from Khao Paibat II. And the scholar who mentioned it, Professor Song Bo-silie, he mentioned in a North Sulak-du-brung download chain combo in Attibut, I say, in 1967. And later in 1971, in Thailand, we also found the two bodhisattvas at Ban Phai, Lam Phai Mard, Buriram province also. So these two pieces were given to the museum by the villagers. So this is the first time that we have an example of the bodhisattva, almost complete bodhisattva in our collection. And we believe all of the three groups from the bodhisattva from Ban Phai, bodhisattva from Khao Paibat II, and bodhisattva from Bantanot, maybe they share the same characteristic and same culture. Most of the scholars mentioned that the style of this bodhisattva is the pre-Angkorian pre-Kham Phong Pla style. And most of them is Maitreya, some bodhisattva. And they also found together the standing Buddha to Vittraka Buddha on the boss hand. You can see, this is the map, so that the Bantanot is here. And Pasatimai is not far away, and Mung Seima Ancient Town is also not far away. I'm not Mung Seima Ancient Town because some scholars believe that this culture belong to the ancient city called Sijanathakura according to the inscription found at Mung Seima mentioned about the king of Sijanathakura who ruined the city there. And also it can be related to the bodhisattva carving by the stone at Khao Tamarat in Hechabun province also not far away. And Bantanot and Ban Phai is also Ban Phai in Burlilang province, it's also not far away from the area. So at first we have a theory that all the objects come from the same culture. And this is how they exhibit it when I was a curator at the National Museum of Bangkok. The height is about 70 meters high, but when we display, when I'm standing, my eyesight is higher than the object. So it's like when I see the object at the gallery, it's like I'm looking downward to see the object. But the good thing is we can observe, we can see how beautiful, how they decorate these beautiful bronze. But the problem is not much people will understand how important of this object because it was kept on the corner. The size is not big compared to the standing bodhisattva beside him. And the other part of the bodhisattva kept in the storage. So some visitors cannot imagine how important and how beautiful of this bodhisattva if we not display this. So this is why we decide to privatization of their spiritual life. So the objective of this reconstruction is to present the original form of this image, how it will be, how many hands they have and hand gesture, how he's standing. We would like to portray it as much as we can. And to make the visitor to understand how important of this image. And to study and understand the process of making this image because making this kind of image consume a lot of time and energy and budget to create it. Imagine people in thousand years ago create the big image like this. So it should be really, really important. We start the project by survey again. Check everything, check the condition, do the conservation for the object that we kept in the storage. We do the HIF XLA-14 to check the composite of the object, of the part. Because even we found it in the same place, but there is no confirmation that all the part is belong to one statue. So we do the HIF checking and the result is believe that all of them are the same pieces. Are the same image, yeah. And we also doing the 3D scan. This is when we doing the 3D scan because the side and the weight of each part is really heavy. It's really difficult to manipulate, to move up and down. We cannot put it on the table and do it in one time. So the documentation by 3D scan will be help us in this case. And accidentally, accidentally when we doing the survey, we found the engraving under the foot, the right foot of Bodhisattva. We see the engraving like a wheel. Underneath the foot. That actually it not show when the statue standing. This is a tank, this is under the foot. It will be face to the outer or the stand. It will not show to the people, but they engrave this wheel on the foot of the Bodhisattva. It mean there are some literal during the making to make this culture. That's put the spiritual or literal art on this culture during their making, their casting this image. So we do the documentation of it. And we wait. We put it on the scale to know how much weight that we have to prepare the support. We try to measure every part of the part. How long is the tank? And compare the both feet in the same level if we put it. Yeah, this is the result from the 3D scan. So we can use this file, we send this file to our artistic designer to observe to see how it will be. I mean, when we assembling this part together. And after that, we print the 3D scan into the 3D models. This is the head of Bodhisattva. Because the size is really big. It takes one week continuously, 24 hours, seven days to compete one part. And we cannot do it in one time because the size is bigger than our printer. So we print it in a small part and stitch it together. But we would like to keep the broken part for the sculptor. Because when we print it out, we will send it to the sculptor to complete the whole body. So the most important part of the model is the broken part because when you're assembling it, it will be joined really seamlessly if you use the 3D print. Yeah, this is the face. Only the head, we use five parts to connect together. This is when we're assembling it. And send it to the sculptor. And we also doing the X-ray photography because it was restored for a long time ago. And we don't have the documentation of the restoration because it wasn't to restore in France. Then we decide to took the X-ray photography to see that the restoration part is still solid or is still in place in good condition because we will put it on the top of the sculpture that tall, three meter tall. So we have to be careful. This is the comparison before restoration, after restoration and the X-ray photography. This is another side. You will see that the light part is the broken part that have been fixed. For example, you can see the light part here is the broken part here. It was fixed by some material that we cannot detect by the X-ray. So I think it's not the metal, maybe some kind of plastic fiber or something. But it's really strong. Our conservator decided that it was strong enough to put on the top of the head. And the concept of reconstruction, we want to keep it most accuracy of form and the dimension behind the gesture. And we want it to be stabilized, stability, not moving, not shaking. We also think about security of the people or the visitor who came to the exhibition room and also the object itself not falling out of the structure. And we decided that we will make it, can be removed and reinstalled because when we reconstruct this sculpture, we put it in the temporary exhibition. But after the gallery, the permanent gallery is finished, we will remove and reinstall it into the permanent exhibition. So it can be take off and put it again. And I think this way is easier for transportation because for transport that kind of sculpture, if you not remove it, it will take a lot of budget to transfer to transport it for transportation. And it should be solid enough for long-term exhibition. And we are also consider about the beautiful and harmony. At first, we are considering how we will make the losing part, for example, the body. We have the head and the hand, the legs, but the biggest part in the body, we did not file. At first, we also think that we will make it completely different, like put the body in another color or another texture to show that this is the new, this is the old. But we came into that, we wanted to look into one piece, not separate. So we decided to make it the same color and similar texture. We cannot make it 100% the same as the original part. So even if we try, we still recognize the difference. Anyway, then we try to do it. As much as we can, because we want to, when it's finished, we want it look like the big sculpture. This is when we doing the survey of each part. Well, even when a scholar said that this is the standard of the body, we want to make it the same color. This is the standing bodhisattva, but not much mention about the arm. We are lucky that the part that we left has give us some information about the size of this bodhisattva. Because we have, for example, we have the hand that we have completely, we have a complete hand, yes. And from the hand to the elbow, we know that the length is about 64 centimeter by this part. You can see the corner of the elbow, it still exists on this part. And we know about the diameter of the arm by this two parts, the upper arm and the lower arm. And we have the shoulder that tell us this bodhisattva has four arms because this is the shoulder that show the two arms separately from here. So this is the left shoulder. So it should be symmetry, right? So we suggest this bodhisattva should have four arms and it can be compared to the bodhisattva from band five that we have in the exhibition. We also found the part of the leg that we have the length of the size of the lower leg and under the knee. After this part, the surface is a little bit higher to the part of the knee. So we know that the scale, we don't love the scale of this image by this part, the size of the finger, the size of the leg, the size of the arm. And then we also have the part that can assume the size of the back bone. You can see this is the shoulder and this is kind like the spine, the spine, the spine line. So we know the why of the body. This is when we try to put all the parts together with the body. We use the body of bodhisattva from band five as the model and put and replace it with the head of band and note. The head part is here. This is the upper arm, the arm. And the other hand, we just copy the size of the finger and put it, this is the lower arm. This is the shoulder with two hand, two arm. The left foot, the right foot that have engraving of the wheel underneath. Sorry, I forget to mention that I only found the wheel engraving on the right foot, on the left foot, we cannot find. I didn't know maybe it was lost during the restoration or it was lost by the damage or it never existed, I don't know. And we have the artistic director, I will say that. He's the artist work with art in the Office of National Museum. He came from the exhibition design team. He said he will separate the scale of the body into seven and a half part compared to bodhisattva from band five in the exhibition room. You can see the first part is from the top of the head to the chin. The second part is the chest. The third part is the lower chest to the belly. The fourth part is the belly to the upper leg, the five is upper leg, six is shoulder, seven is leg and the half part is the foot, the feet. Then we decide in a paper. So we measuring this image without tank is 3.35 centimeter high. This is how we imagine, we design the look, the shape, the form of the bodhisattva but how we put it together. So because we don't have the body, we have to build the body that strong enough to carry all the parts and make it stand still. But we also think about the two lower part, the two feet. We cannot put it, put the weight straight to both legs because if it's very fragile and we don't know it's still strong enough to carry the weight of the body. So we decide to make the metal flame and put the weight back on the back of the bodhisattva. This is the left foot part that we print out and send to the sculptor. This is when we send the 3D print to the sculptor with the design in the paper. The sculptor, they will make the body by, they use the metal flame to make the body. Sorry. They use the beeswax to create the body and use the part that we print out, connect with the body. This way is really convenient for the sculptor and for us too because the sculptor is working outside of our museum behind the private sculptor. So we are not happy to send the real object to them and make or even invite them to make it inside our museum because our space is very limited. So we send the 3D print for them to connect the outer part and we go there to check the collect of the style or the hand gesture or something. The guy in the red t-shirt is the sculptor, the head of sculptor that we hide. We also ask him to design the metal flame that will support the whole part and support all the way to the back of the sculptor. This is when we send the comment to the sculptor that we want to adjust hand up a little bit, something like that because he is the modern sculptor at first he tried to start everything from the realistic but this kind of image is not that realistic so we change a little bit something like the body should be thinner, the hand maybe not like natural but it should be like this, we send them the photo and to collect as much as we can. And this is the part that I mentioned earlier, the shoulder and the back. What I said that we are lucky to have this part because you can see the shoulder help to separate here. You can see the list over here and you can see the backbone, the spine a little bit higher here. So we know the size of the body by all of the parts. This is before we go and check from the West model. When we decide it is good enough for casting we ask the sculptor to cast it into fiberglass cover. This is the fiberglass cover. They use the plaster to cover the wax and then remove the wax and casting the fiberglass. Underneath the fiberglass they put the metal Y to keep the shape still because the fiberglass is really thin. When we finish it, it can be shrink or roll up together then we put the metal Y inside to protect it not to shrink because if it's shrink it will not fit with the real object in the gallery. This is how we design the structure of the sculpture. We consider about the long-term exhibition. So we use the stainless steel structure because it is maybe more expensive but we can ensure that it will not have the corrosion inside because we cannot open and see the structure often. Then we decide to use the stainless steel and you can see this is the head support. The head will be put on the top like the way we are wearing a coat mask and this is the forehand and the leg. The leg does not support the structure but it is just put on the base and the body is just sitting on the structure and put the weight behind the sculpture. This is the backside. You can see the first point that supports the weight from the head and from the leg, the two legs. This is the base of the sculpture that we have to put the tank inside. After that, we make a hole and put the tank of the sculpture inside. This is when we assemble the body cover with the stainless steel structure. We do it outside the museum. This is when we want to make sure that the scale is correct and how much we have to leave for the head. We just make sure. After that, we put the frame before the body with the base. Like this. We put the stainless steel structure and the weight go directly to the basement to the base of the sculpture. This is before we put it in the exhibition room. You can see the leg part is just put on the floor and the body is just sitting on the foot. No weight put on both legs. This is when we are doing the installation inside the temporary exhibition at that time. You can see only the body, not yet the artifact put on the body. This is when we put the head on the body. We never try to put the original head into the body before. But we also worry that I'm not sure the scale of 3D print is 100% as the original or shrink a little bit, but the result came out really excellent. This is how we display in the exhibition in the temporary exhibition. The exhibition is called Evolving Civilization from locally to a UTR period. We exhibit the object that sends the command period to a UTR and shows the influence from a UTR. As I mentioned, the sculpture should be beautiful and harmonized, but at the same time you can recognize which part is the real and which part is the reconstructed. When you look from afar, you will see the standing bodhisattva completely. You can imagine how big and how strong it will look like. But when you take a look closer, you can easily recognize that this is the bronze part. This is the fiberglass. The color is similar, but still different anyway. After finishing the temporary exhibition, we move it to the permanent gallery, which is now still in the process. We open really soon. This is the locally-opened art in Thailand, in Mahasutthana building, not yet open to the public. Maybe you are one of the first visitors to have a chance to see the photo of the installation. Yeah. What we have learned from this project is for me to put the head and the part of bodhisattva together and make him standing in front of me. It reminds me that the bodhisattva is the God of compassion. Look down to the earth, look down to the people with the compassion. To put him standing three meters higher and look down to us, it seems like we return his spiritual life to him. We can understand how important this sculpture should be. And to build this kind of sculpture is not easy. Even I do this project in the modern day art. We have many technologies. We have 3D scans. We have many materials to finish this job. It still consumes a lot of budgets and time. Really difficult. Many persons to involve in one project. Imagine about 1,000 years ago, more than 1,000 years ago, they cast this image with bronze and put it in a temple that we don't know yet where it comes from. Because when we found it inside the stupa, it was demolished and put inside the stupa. The place that keeps this image should be really important. But unfortunately, maybe they have changed the politics or have changed the religion. So they remove everything put in the stupa to hide it from someone. I don't know. This is the thing that we have to consider more after we finish the... This is the question that following after we finish the reconstruction. And also as I mentioned before, this sculpture was grouping in the Vakonthai style Bodhisattva which it found in Banthai and Khao Paibat too. But as you know, the Bodhisattva form Khao Paibat to never exist in Thailand. For the Thai scholar, sometimes we are still not sure because we never seen it. When they found it, it already sent to abroad. But later than that, Banthai, which is really similar, but we only found the two objects. Then I think the reconstruction of Vatano Bodhisattva can be point out that this group of sculpture is the special group, the special set of the Bodhisattva that worship in the area of the north-eastern part of Thailand around the Kholat Plateau to the Buriram province because we found amount of the objects even if not in Thailand anymore. So we think we can go further to the importance of this sculpture, this group of sculptures. We will have a good lesson for us to repatriate the Bodhisattva, the Banthai Bodhisattva in Pakonchai style from the museum abroad, both in Europe and the United States. And I think it can be inspire people to post the question, to ask the question about the existence of this image, how they made it, how and where it should be being placed and worshipped by something like that. For me personally, I think this is probably the biggest and the most important Bodhisattva in that group as the prototype, the most important one and they made the miniature and sent it to the other people. This is just my question after I finished reconstructing this image. Okay, I think I've finished my presentation for now. Thank you, Disappong. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The reconstructed figure before the exhibition, the permanent gallery has even opened. But thank you for raising so many difficult, tricky questions and different perspectives. I'm conscious that there are a few questions now coming up in the Q&A and we'd like to move on to that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. My colleague from Sohas, who's a lecturer at Tamasat University, will chair this next Q&A session. Thanks. Thanks, Heidi. It seems we have a few questions now from the lecturer as well. She is working on bronze at the in her dissertation. Her questions are quite interesting. I will read through. Disappong, you can answer separately or read through that. You can answer that later. It's okay. The question also. The first question is how do you the fine arts department make of an old colossal body sculpture found in an unusual fragmentary condition. It appeared to have been smashed rather than naturally corroded? Well, we don't have much evidence of the at that time in 1961. Right. But I think they try to put it together. I think maybe some part is lost during the process. Not all of the part. This is what we left after renovation. We sent it together. If you see the old photograph we put it together with the metal wire. So it can probably put it lovely together by the decoration of the face. Yeah. And the head it can be broken into four or five parts. I think it might be thanks to the French conservator that doing such a really good job. We still see the trace of the conservation from the French conservator. It seems like you try to identify all of these fragmented parts by using the XRF technique. Because we found the object in the same place but there is no evidence it belongs to one piece. Maybe many times we found the Buddha image broken head with the body inside the stupa. Maybe they are not the same piece. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes smaller or maybe it's the same size but different fragments cannot join together. In this case, no part that can connect is the head part. So the French conservator done a very good job but the other part is separate. So what have we done? We use the model of Buddha form in our exhibition to compare with this part and assemble it. It seems to reconnect that your answer to the third question from the fight is why should see the large one file sculpture as a base model? Not many of us supposedly emerged from Buriram, province of this Thailand or even some of them that were given to Silicon Valley University. Why? Why should see that as a sculpture? Well, there's in the paper many scholars have mentioned about and doing the study of it for a long time and we don't have much example that's really limited. But it's obviously when you look the hairstyle when you look into the hairstyle the curvy hair with the bead inside the curvy hair with chattamukut a little beard over the lips and I look downward the hand gets it can be related to and the area is not that far away there are also some sculptures found in Cambodia that can be related but not so much I think from and that can be dated in the same period but it's different because it's the Harihara, the Hindu god and one thing that I believe this belongs to the North Eastern Tawarawati or Khmer in Thailand because in the North Eastern part of Thailand we found many Buddhists Mahayana Tantric Mahayana evidence for example the same stone carving into many with Bodhisattva, the Bodhi tablet depicting the Bodhisattva there are many compared to the sculpture even they don't have the monument, the big monument like in Cambodia but the side of Sima stone that show the Buddhist influence there are many almost all of the parts of the North Eastern in Udon Thani in Khon Gan so I think it can be related to the Tawarawati in the North Eastern part in Thailand too or maybe this is my question the reason that you use the large Bandphai sculpture as the best model to compare Bodhisattva is because this is the only side that you mention, only two sculptures from Bandphai that you can prove actually we use many we are not sure this is Bodhisattva or Mahayana but the hand gesture the hairstyle is really similar to the Bandphai one but they are also different we also use the sculpture from the MED from the Asia society to compare but mainly we use the body of the Bandphai because it is quite complete and the last question is that stylistically what are the common features or characteristics among the Bandhanot the Bandphai and the Pleibach Prakonshai Bodhisattva figure stylistically the common features most of them is the standing Bodhisattva some seated but not much standing Bodhisattva three-dimension not on the back casting by bronze with lost technique standing straight some have a little tripangka but not much the hand gesture is the vitraka, mudra with both hands holding the water bottle holding the water bottle and the head wearing Chhattamakut or Chhattamakut the face has a little beard the eye looks downward maybe for the smaller piece we cannot recognize much because the detail is only for the big size sculpture that we can recognize the detail of the eye of the face but most of them casting by bronze and standing to leg with tang I think most of them have a tang standing on the tang moving to another question from Steven Murphy is displaying this as Khmer art in Thailand or library art the best way to define it perhaps it would be better to call it art from northeast Thailand with Khmer influence you mentioned many times the importance of Muang Se Ma and other locations in the northeast where a similar material is formed so again the reference to library art is also confusing and in the bracket library art style is a problematic concept anyhow if you understand it as art from northeast Thailand you can change how and where you display it good question because we also have some discussion on it when we have a meeting and Steven knows really well the concept globally art maybe it's starting from the concept of nationalism but for me for the new generation scholar we understand Khmer art is expand really far we can see the Bayon temple in Kachanamburi near Thailand up north we can see that Khmer art up to Sukho Thai and maybe more than that to talking about the Khmer art for me it seems like when we're talking about Roman art in Europe Roman art is not only in Italy like it's spread around Europe so we can I don't have any problem to call it Khmer art but for the name at that time it's the name that needs to be more to be more we have to define we can call it anything we will call it globally art we can call it the Kola Prato art and it may be make it easier to understand so I accept that if we call it the Kola Prato or something will be more understandable but the problem is we need to do more research for example why you don't call not in Thailand or Kola Prato we have to prove we have to do more research to give some of the scholars in Thailand believe that but for now I use both of them locally art and Khmer art in Thailand for me the question seems like we have to revise all the art history in the National Museum is a National Museum that has in the North is in Thailand in Korat many scholars try to propose the definition of this kind of art but we cannot find the conclusion so we just use the old by respecting the things like that it doesn't mean that we don't believe in the new theory or not because we cannot find the conclusion like now but I think it can be discussed in the future okay thank you for that question that challenge question for the future for the finance department so move to the next question from Bryce Vincent are you planning a publication on this conservation project interest to publish let's see when we doing the catalog for the exhibition maybe we will include the part of the animation of this okay thank you another question from Ashley Thompson have you been able to undertake any comparative work with Ak Yung materials in Angkor Ak Yung not yet okay okay and then Stephen have a lot of hard work that is very similar to this why are you calling it but that's okay I think Heidi you have a question that you said maybe outside just propose to use the action term maybe yeah many scholars also propose that we long to see that but for me it's probably but I think it's not much evident to to have the conclusion to summary that okay we will call it because the question will come how far is it go I don't know in Laos or something for me I think this culture I think we call Pakonchai style is quite understandable and acceptable for now but I don't mention about the but there are comparison studies in the past that is similar to the but maybe it has the same origin same time it's the fashion of that time yes I understand what Stephen talking about yeah I understand okay the next questions from Bryce Vincent you mentioned XRF analysis did you perform any other type of analysis on the fragments in 3D for now we just doing the XRF because we want to make sure that the metal composition is the same so we do X-rays can you know because but after that maybe because now we put this image into a light many people will interest in it to find the answer for that question maybe some scholar some researcher will do it in the future okay we have all questions now and think Heidi you have your own questions right I just had a question actually about be interested to know because you have said it a few times and I noticed in this this urge to recreate the whole image and to present something as complete as possible even going to the extent of commissioning a sculptor to make the whole the remaining parts filling the gaps with wax you know and then plastered cast with fiberglass torso that would be strong enough to support the whole thing in that effort to recreate the whole and you also mentioned that worshippers associate closely with the statues original form and gesture this revival of a spiritual power I just wondered did you have any consultation with any ritual explorers because I also noticed that your slide also included flower offerings already and I just wondered who put the offerings there are they offering or just to visualize well the flower the galen is a sculptor himself when he made it I don't know maybe they also the sculptor that made the Buddha image maybe they have their ritual thinking of that kind because when they make this image I think they make the bodhisattva making the god they don't sculpt the human so they worship them before working so you mean they have a ceremonial before they start to do it not the big ceremony but they just put the galen on it when I go there it already hang out so I think the sculptor himself believed in something maybe it's the ritual when he made the Buddha image he will do like that but I don't know but for me about the spiritual value I have talked with once before this panel when I was a curator at the National Museum of Bangkok I guide a group of Buddhist monks into the gallery and I point the head of there was the head of Buddha image in the gallery and I point how Sukkotai style look like the top not the flame the ear the nose I look it as an object in the exhibition room but the monk after hearing me he worship that Buddha image so it's still like what I'm doing about the object that they are worshiping we drown we under respect them or not because and sometimes we heard the question from the people why don't you put the head of Buddha image on the body in Ayutthaya it's a recall part there are many Buddha image without head why don't you put all the head to the Buddha image something like that because nobody correct nobody right it depends on the perspective that you look into the object for me the curator I look it as a museum object but I don't know sometimes if we think about it in the other way it can be can be give the visitor something some inspiration I think you mentioned that the way that you put the bodhisattva on the original height and form remind the audience and participants to see how spiritual power or the eye size of that statue can make you feel it's remind me about the concept of Dajna in Buddhist practice when you worship them and you see them in that position and then of course then you can carry on to talk about the life of the object biographies is something which everybody is very interested in at the moment and in fact Bunga has a question which I think will probably be the final question and his question is does the museum display the information about the reconstruction you have planned to talk about how and how you did it or if not why wouldn't you why not the detail of the reconstruction do you plan to have the detail of the reconstruction process that maybe appear somewhere in the gallery or do you have we have to do it in the temporary exhibition we have the the 3D print model put it in at the last section of the exhibition with the video showing the process time lapse video and like a photo slide like a photo slide of the process and we also have a plan to use the 3D scan file for education maybe online we will see what we can do from that which is still maybe I give to the mobile museum to use it as a material for study are there any more questions in the Q&A? it seems like from Angelashui it's gone where? sorry it's popped up did you see that? looking in the Q&A I say it's a hypothesis that it belongs to the Kingdom as I mentioned before it's one of the first person who mentioned it's related to the Kingdom but it's still some scholars believe it belongs to the Kingdom but as I say we don't have enough evidence to prove it belongs to or not belongs to it seems we have answered all the questions maybe that would pass maybe give you a suggestion about the material thank you very much we will try everything one thing that I learned from this project because I am the director of the research I have to guide the new curator about the research in the future one of the problems that they always said I don't know what to do everything was done by the older generation even we didn't find the new object but the technology has changed every day you can bring any kind of new technology to apply with your study I think it's something new from the old object in the gallery thank you very much thank you that probably brings us to the end of this session thank you very much to all the participants for your suggestions and comments it's going to be interesting to see how Disapong develops this work later on this year we will bring some of these ideas forward and discuss further just to say we are almost at the end of our program for this year our research seminar series we will have more events to go on May 18 if you are interested please sign up it's going to be a hybrid event hybrid workshop biographies and restitution of Hindu and Buddhist objects all day long hybrid symposium we look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible thank you Disapong thank you very much everyone for your attention