Word: arts
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...flat in Hanoi's Old Quarter, proudly says he painted Muong Kuong Market years ago in his living room, which is also his bedroom and kitchen. The vibrant lacquer brushwork of the piece exquisitely captures the bustle of market day in a Vietnamese village. The Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts, the country's national art museum, thought so too. Officials there snapped up the painting for their collection, and for the past 40 years, Niet's work has been hanging on the museum's walls...
...Niet was stunned when he came across a photograph of Muong Kuong Market in a Russian art book several years ago - the painting was allegedly hanging in the Oriental Museum in Moscow. Niet says he sent a letter to Oriental Museum officials, who confirmed that they owned the original. When Niet went back to the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts to complain, "they told me that I painted two paintings and that I had sold one to Russia," he says. Sitting by her husband's side on a plastic stool, Niet's wife says she wishes that were true...
...many paintings and sculptures in Vietnam's national art museum are actually copies, nobody knows. But rumors have swirled for years that many treasured originals by Vietnamese artists like Niet have been either lost or sold off, and reproductions have taken their place. The copies aren't exactly forgeries. During the Vietnam War, the museum's own restoration department was a virtual copy factory - a fact that museum officials past and present freely admit...
...Guom Lakeshore, a colorful lacquer painting of crowds out in their finest dress, according to Tiep. Purported originals of Playing the O An Quan, which once hung on the museum's walls, are now in galleries in both Singapore and Japan, according to Nora Taylor, an art historian and expert on Vietnamese painters who teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago...
...After years of silence, artists, collectors and museum staff are demanding that Vietnam's art officials come clean. Tiep says the museum's entire collection has been tainted because copies are not labeled. This acceptance of copying has helped devalue Vietnamese art, since collectors are never sure if they are buying the real thing. Tiep accuses the museum of failing to properly display and preserve its collection, resulting in irrevocable damage and loss. "I have had to swallow my tears," says Tiep, who resigned as deputy director two years ago to protest what he claims is mismanagement. "We have...