Socialist Republic of Vietnam

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND VIETNAM MUSEUM OF ETHNOLOGY ANNOUNCE HISTORIC EXHIBITION VIETNAM: JOURNEYS OF BODY, MIND & SPIRIT

Landmark Exhibition Opens in New York City in March 2003 and in Hanoi in 2005

HANOI, MARCH 19, 2002—The American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi, announced today a landmark exhibition, Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind & Spirit. This historic exhibition, the first comprehensive exhibition on Vietnamese life to be presented in the United States, examines Vietnamese culture in the early 21st century only a decade after the country began opening to the global market.

Dr. Nguyen Van Huy, Director, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, and Dr. Laurel Kendall, Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History, are jointly curating the exhibition.

"This is the first ethnographic exhibition about Vietnam to be organized in the United States of America," said Dr. Huy. "Through it, we hope that the American people, as well as visitors to the exhibition from around the world, will develop a more comprehensive understanding of the life and culture of contemporary Vietnam. From an ethnographic perspective, the exhibition will present the daily life of Vietnamese people in the north, the center, and the south of the country; in cities as well as the countryside; in the delta as well as the mountains and highlands. It will show that Vietnam is a diversified culture of more than 50 ethnic groups, all of which are respected and nurtured."

"The American Museum of Natural History is honored and proud to announce this historic exhibition celebrating the richness and diversity of contemporary life in Vietnam," said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. "Vietnam: Journey of Body, Mind and Spirit is part of the Museum's long tradition of presenting exhibitions that illuminate world cultures. In this case, and very importantly, we are also re-introducing Vietnam, its culture and its people, to the American public in a current and comprehensive way."

"Today, more than ever, the importance of understanding and appreciating the beauty and variety of the cultures that exist on our tiny planet is the predicate to the peaceful co-existence we all so fervently seek. It is our hope that this exhibition will foster respect and admiration for the breadth and meaning of human experience around the world. The collaboration between our Museum and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology has made this a unique and especially gratifying undertaking for both institutions."

"In this exhibition, we invite the visitor to travel through Vietnamese culture—not as a tourist but as a participant," says Dr. Kendall. "As the title suggests, we are presenting journeys in a broad sense. Some are literal, such as people crowding onto buses to go home for the New Year, or the journey of ceramics from village kiln to bustling marketplace in bicycle baskets. Others are spiritual, such as gods being carried in festival processions, spirits of ancestors traveling home for holidays, and ritual events such as weddings and funerals."

The exhibition, primarily drawn from the collections of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, will reflect Vietnam's multi-ethnic population. Most of the items—nearly 300 will be exhibited—are produced and commonly used in Vietnam today. They include handmade textiles, ceramics, wooden sculptures, lacquer festival paraphernalia, and a variety of lanterns, toys, and votive objects imaginatively fashioned out of paper and bamboo. Some of these items reflect changing times—votive motorbikes and VCRs, for instance, join traditional money and clothing items in being ceremonially burned, so that spirits of the dead can use these objects. Ethnic textiles are reconfigured into products for the tourist trade. New markets and goods have affected various domains of contemporary social life across a broad spectrum of Vietnamese experience, from handicraft production to dealings with the spirit world. Therefore, in the exhibition, culture is presented as a dynamic process that responds to changes and incorporates new material.

Also in the exhibition are a wide selection of photographs and video footage of daily life in Vietnam. Parts of the video were shot by Vietnam Museum of Ethnology staff in the communities where they conduct field research, and some offer an intimate portrayal of their own families and neighbors. Additional materials from the anthropology collections of the American Museum of Natural History will be included in the exhibition. The layout of the exhibition suggests the meandering road that journeys might follow in contemporary Vietnam—bodily journeys, spiritual journeys, symbolic journeys, and temporal journeys might all be experienced.

Vietnamese culture has absorbed and responded powerfully to the war that is the shared history of both Vietnam and the United States. The war appears in the exhibition as impinging upon everyday life in Vietnam—in portrayals of death rituals and the problem of retrieving war dead who would otherwise suffer as "wandering ghosts." Such cultural examination of the impact of the war has never before been undertaken collaboratively by organizations in Vietnam and the United States.

The American Museum of Natural History has a significant history of scientific and scholarly involvement in Vietnam, beginning with zoological expeditions in the early 20th century. In 1997, the American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, under the directorship of Dr. Eleanor Sterling, initiated a collaborative project in Vietnam that included the American Museum of Natural History, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources in Hanoi, and the Vietnam National University, Hanoi. In 1998, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology became the local sponsor of an ethnographic component of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation's Vietnam project. The American Museum of Natural History's collegial relationship with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology began in 1990 when Dr. Nguyen Van Huy visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1991, Dr. Kendall went to Hanoi to meet with the future staff of the then still-to-be-built Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which opened in 1997. Since then, American Museum of Natural History staff members have held training workshops in Hanoi on textile and object conservation, ethnographic field methods, collection cataloging and curation, exhibition design and photography, and communications.

The American Museum of Natural History and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology have worked even more closely together for the past two years to produce Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind & Spirit. This endeavor has helped build a strong, educational relationship, where each institution has benefited from the experience and expertise of the other. The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and its staff has provided many objects in the exhibition and the scholarly expertise to interpret them. The American Museum of Natural History has lent its skills in conservation and curatorial expertise and years of experience of developing permanent and temporary exhibitions. The partnership also includes an internship program, in which Vietnam Museum of Ethnology staff work in residence at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, further strengthening ties between the two institutions.
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