Word: museum
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...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...
...current exhibition of ancient Buddha statues and sculptures includes imitations made by the staff, says Nguyen Xuan Tiep, who has worked at the museum for the past 28 years and is a former deputy director there. The museum, a private collector, and the artist himself all own an "original" of New Year's Eve on Ho 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...
...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...
...noteworthy works was originally carried out to rescue the country's artistic heritage during wartime. "The Americans said they were going to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age, to wipe out Vietnamese culture," says Nguyen Do Bao, chairman of the Hanoi Fine Arts Association, who was a young museum staffer in 1966 when the first B-52s appeared overhead. "It was a national imperative to keep the museum open." So the staff - and in some cases, the artists themselves - started to make copies. The reproductions stayed in Hanoi while the originals were spirited away and hidden in caves...