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| Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee Phan Ngoc Tho (on the right) giving flowers to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the establishment of Hue Fine Arts Museum |
That is exactly what Mr. Phan Ngoc Tho shared at the scientific conference themed “Outlining the exhibition space for fine arts works of Hue Museum of Fine Arts” taking place on the morning of December 6th in Hue City. The event is part of a series of activities to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the establishment of Hue Museum of Fine Arts (2018-2023).
Attending the event were Nguyen Khoa Diem, poet, Former Member of the Politburo, Former Head of the Central Committee for Ideology and Culture, along with representatives of agencies inside and outside the province, a large number of experts, researchers, and artists, etc.
5 years of establishment and 20 years of “incubation”
Hue Museum of Fine Arts, established at the end of 2018, includes 3 exhibition spaces, namely Le Ba Dang Art Gallery Space, Diem Phung Thi Art Gallery Space (also located on Le Loi Street, Hue City) and Fine Arts Exhibition Space (still without a headquarter).
Speaking at the conference, Mr. Phan Ngoc Tho said that the fine arts museum is one of the indispensable institutions in the museum system of cultural and artistic life. This is especially true in the case of Hue, a land rich in unique cultural sediments of Vietnam.
Once witnessed the formation and development process of the museum from scratch, Mr. Phan Ngoc Tho said that 5 years was too short a journey for an art museum. However, achieving that title required a journey of 20 years of “incubation” and anticipation of many generations of Hue art makers and art lovers.
Hue Royal Arts in particular, and Hue Fine Arts with unique values accumulated and interfered within the flow of Vietnamese culture have become the identity of the ancient capital. The journey of hundreds of years of art is being accumulated, converging from the hands, wisdom and will of many generations of museum makers so that today’s generation can admire and be proud of the value of the artworks.
According to Mr. Phan Ngoc Tho, the model of Hue Fine Arts Museum will be oriented towards collecting and exhibiting, meeting the world’s fine arts museum model. However, the values of Hue Fine Arts, ranging from folk, religious beliefs to the royal court , will be the unique features of the Ancient Capital’s Fine Arts Museum. Each museum artifact will tell a story about the culture, nature and people of this land through talented hands across generations.
“With what we have today, we always appreciate the constant efforts of the museum’s team in the early days of its establishment as well as being grateful to the contributions of organizations and individuals who have donated works of art to enrich and elevate the museum space,” emphasized Mr. Phan Ngoc Tho with expectations that the museum will receive more meaningful acts of organizations and individuals for Hue Fine arts.
Concern about the exhibition space of fine art works
According to Mr. Phan Thanh Hai, Director of the Department of Culture and Sports, a lack of an exhibition space for fine art works causes many difficulties and cannot ensure the full implementation of the assigned functions and tasks in the field of collecting, displaying and promoting the cultural and artistic values of Hue Ancient Capital in particular, and of the Vietnamese peoples in general.
The fine art works collected by the museum in recent times are only stored and preserved, so they cannot serve the viewing, research, and learning needs of the public, tourists, and art enthusiasts to promote the artistic values of the works. This also brings about a lot of concern from the public, dedicated artists, and art lovers.
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| Works of famous Hue artists being collected by Hue Museum of Fine Arts and introduced to the public for the first time |
However, at the conference, many delegates also discussed issues such as development orientations and perspectives on building exhibition content; implementation plans and solutions; integration of science and technology into activities of displaying, preserving, storing and promoting the value of collections, etc.
Artist Nguyen Thien Duc, Dr., Chairman of Thua Thien Hue Fine Arts Association, said that exhibition space and content are normally the basic conditions for proposing a suitable and optimal exhibition solution. However, Hue Museum of Fine Arts still does not have an official headquarters or exhibition space, so if you want to discuss a solution, you must suppose an “ideal” exhibition space in theory to continue the talk about it.
Orienting the exhibition content of Hue Museum of Fine Arts, the researcher Nguyen Xuan Hoa (Former Director of the Department of Culture and Information) believes that the museum should focus on a few main but systematic axes, which are contemporary fine arts, Hue Royal Art, Ancient Hue Art, Hue Folk Art and Hue Applied art.
Elaborating further on the collection of artworks, Mr. Hoa proposed that it was necessary to invest in reprinting all 154 paintings of Le Van Nhan’s An Nam Court Dress, 145 paintings of Kim Van Kieu Tan Truyen, 530 paintings of Le Duc Trach’s Luc Van Tien Tan Truyen. Immediately after that, Hue Museum of Fine Arts would have 829 unique paintings during the reign of Emperor Thanh Thai. In addition, it is possible to select and propose to the Provincial People’s Committee to bring valuable sculptures in Thuy Tien Park and Lake, Thuan An to Hue Fine Arts Museum, then we will immediately have a collection of sculptures.
