SPECIAL TOUR OFFERS IN-DEPTH EXPERIENCE IN VIETNAMESE LACQUER PAINTING

As art-cation is increasingly attracting visitors, the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum has launched a special tour offering in-depth experiences of the country’s lacquer painting, according to the director of the museum Nguyen Anh Minh.

With this tour, visitors will have a chance to admire lacquer paintings by famous artists across the country, learn about the development history of the art through the works from the Indochina period to the years of resistance wars, as well as lacquer-related national treasures.

A colourful tour

They can also learn about the process of making lacquer paintings, directly experience a step in this process and bring home the product they make by themselves. This is also a unique gift that the museum wants to give to visitors, said Minh.

He expressed his hope that the tour will impress and bring about interesting experiences to tourists on Vietnamese fine arts, especially lacquer materials used in painting.

Lacquer painting appeared in Vietnam nearly 100 years ago. Introducing the public to the artistic value of lacquer is also the museum’s responsibility and pride, with a collection of lacquer paintings from 1939 (Indochina fine arts) to 2020 (Contemporary fine arts).

The Vietnam Fine Arts Museum displays unique lacquer paintings by some of the country’s most famous artists, namely Nguyen Gia Tri, Tran Van Can, Nguyen Sang, and Nguyen Tu Nghiem.

There are six dedicated galleries, with paintings by famous artists, giving visitors a comprehensive view of the diversity of themes, styles and techniques of lacquer painting.

The museum will focus on training and employing a team of collaborators and volunteers, and inviting experts, artists, and artisans to participate in tours to guide visitors with a deep understanding of art and fine arts, Minh said.

With the development of technology, the museum has also developed a smart virtual assistant to serve visitors. The iMuseum VFA multimedia interpretation introduces nearly 200 artifacts in eight languages.

It has also designed a Highlight tour flyer with a selection of 10 lacquer works arranged in order to suggest a route to help visitors experience the lacquer tour. Minh said that this is a result of the Museum’s digital transformation efforts to bring art closer to the public and better support visitors.

Regarding difficulties faced before launching the in-depth tour, the museum’s director said that it took more than two years to prepare the content, choose a tour itinerary in different time frames, and balance reasonable tour costs between the museum and partner units.

In addition, narrators must also choose words to explain the process of making a lacquer painting, as well as the values of the work and the story associated with its painter.

In particular, choosing suitable stages in the lacquer painting process for visitors to experience must also be considered carefully to ensure both the content and duration of the tour and reasonable costs.

Traditional lacquer materials can cause skin irritation upon contact, so the museum had to learn from the artisans and painters in Ha Thai lacquer craft village and make a few changes to meet customer experience needs as safely as possible.

Creating a space large enough in the museum’s ancient French architecture for groups of visitors to experience stages of lacquer painting is not easy, he added.

Regarding the unpopularity of art-cation in Vietnam, the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum said that in the country, not many people are interested in fine arts, and even in the educational curricula. The role of fine arts in society is also vague.

Fine arts have yet to receive attention from travel companies and tour operators, that is why the awareness of their heritage and beauty is still limited.

In addition, the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum has yet to become a chosen destination on tour itineraries. Most tourists coming to the museum are individual visitors, Minh said, adding that this is also a motivation for the museum to develop this special tour to introduce to travel and tourism companies and visitors.

In previous years, 90% of visitors to the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum were foreigners.

However, in recent years, the situation has changed in a positive direction, with the number of Vietnamese visitors increasing significantly. At present, 80% are Vietnamese, of whom more than 60% are young people and students.

Bringing art closer to the public is the motto of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum

Dr. Nguyen Anh Minh

Minh expressed his hope to develop more in-depth tours and diverse experiences to attract more visitors and bring the fine arts closer to the public.

The museum continues to promote the application of digital technology to expand the viewing experience for visitors, step up communication and promotion works, and organise events in the museum space to attract the public.

It addition, it continues to promote research to build a digital database and speed up digital transformation. Minh said that the museum’s recent pilot of 3D Mapping projection technology in exhibitions has received positive feedback, especially from young people. Coming to the museum, besides enjoying works of art, visitors can also experience visual effects thanks to digital technology.

According to the director, bringing art closer to the public is the motto of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum. Recently, it has diversified its activities so that the public won’t think of the museum as a place only for people who understand arts. But rather, the public will view the museum as a venue for leisure time and viewing the arts.

The renovation of facilities will make the museum more inviting, adding more information systems to make it easier for visitors to access the display content. The museum is also organising supplementary art activities such as music to create a connection with schools to bring children to the museum from an early age. They will also hold a quiz on the museum at schools as informal art education by the museum.

Minh stated that in fact, a museum is a cultural institution with an education function. In other words, it is a special school and the students practice their learning through watching, listening, and experiencing at the museum.

It would be difficult for the museum to carry out its tasks without the coordination of the education, culture and tourism sectors, he stressed, adding that aesthetic education takes time and the plan needs to be implemented step by step.

The resources to develop in-depth tours at the museum are still abundant. Lacquer is only part of modern art, but this is the most attractive, unique, and easy to attract visitors, so the museum chooses to start from this genre. In the coming time, the museum will consider developing in-depth tours to give visitors an insight into folk art, applied art, ancient art, silk painting, print, and sculpture.

As of October 2022, the museum had 17,404 out of 22,125 art items preserved, of which 3,102 were on display, including painting, graphics, sculpture and ceramics with materials ranging from wood, stone, bronze, oil painting, lacquer, and paper to silk.

According to experts, the first Vietnamese lacquer paintings were made by students at École Superieure des Beaux Arts de I’Indochine (Indochina Fine Art Colleges) in the 1930s.

The Vietnamese people had been using resin from the Japanese wax tree to make crafts and valuable objects for hundreds of years, including objects of religious value.

Vietnamese lacquer paintings are currently covered and ground many times with lacquer resin before the artist inlays crushed egg shells, gold, silver and other materials./.