Thursday 12 November 2015

Viet Nam museum presents rich Asian cultures

An exhibition entitled "A Glance at Asia" at the Viet Nam Museum of Ethnology is showcasing rich cultures in Asia through original items.

The exhibition features Chinese kites, Indonesia religious objects, Indian masks, Japanese pottery and costumes from many countries. All of them are donated by Professor Kaneko Kazushige.

Kazushige is President of the Institute of Asian Ethno-Forms and Culture in Japan. He has toured all the prefectures of Japan to research traditional handworks. In the past 40 years, he made nearly 400 field trips to conduct research studies and collect ethno-forms.

He received a honorary medal "For the Development of Social Sciences" from the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences.

The museum also received valuable material from Prof Le Thanh Khoi, a Vietnamese researcher and lecturer at the University of Sorbonne, France. An exhibition comprising his objects has kicked off with the title "Around the World".

The exhibition helps visitors learn more about Asia, Africa, America and Oceania through hundreds of objects made from paper, leather, bronze, silver and gold.

The two exhibitions will run until the end of this year marking the museum's 20th founding anniversary.

Located at Nguyen Van Huyen road, Cau Giay district, the museum was established in 1995 under the National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities.

The museum is divided into two parts: an indoor and an outdoor exhibition. The indoor section consists of the exhibition building, office, research centre, library, storage, technical lab and auditorium.

These offices cover 2,480sq.m, including 750sq.m for storage of artefacts. The outdoor exhibition highlights different types of houses built by ethnic people in all parts of Viet Nam.

The museum has conducted over 300 collection trips at home and abroad with nearly 30,000 objects, of them 27,000 objects from Viet Nam's ethnic groups and more than 3,000 from other countries; 115,000 photos, nearly 2,500 videos and over 900 tape recordings.

Vo Quang Trong, director of the museum said that the museum not only preserves the cultural heritage of Viet Nam's 54 ethnic groups but also introduces the cultural values of countries in the region.

In 2013, the Kite Building was inaugurated for exhibits on Asian countries.

"We will hold more exhibitions to introduce the culture of all Vietnamese 54 ethnic groups and other countries," he said.

"The displayed intangible cultural heritage will help visitors discover the distinctive and diversified cultures around the world and compare their similarities and differences with Vietnamese culture.

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