Located in No. 66 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, just across the street from the Temple of Literature, the Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi can be easily spotted from afar. First built in 1930s as a Girl School for French high-ranked officers in the Indochina, in 1966, it officially became Vietnam Fine Arts Museum where stores many of Vietnamese artistic essences. The museum is valued as one of important national museums that keeping and promoting the cultural heritages of Vietnamese ethnic groups. Let’s take your step here to discover the whole development of Vietnam’s fine art history via abundant collections of documents, objects, paintings, ceramics, lacquers on display not only in modern Post-war but also dated back so far to pre-history and feudalism time.
The museum was renovated since 1962 by Vietnamese Government; therefore, its original architecture had been modified quite a lot in accordance with the Vietnamese standard. Completed in 1966, the museum welcomed its visitors in a large precinct of about 4,200 m2 while the exhibition area is 1,200m2. During 1997-1999, the museum was continued to be upgraded to 4,737m2 with exhibition area of more than 3,000m2.
With more than 2,000 objects and collections classified logically and attractively, tourists will understand the Vietnam’s fine art history so clearly thanks to the following interesting main themes:
– Fine arts in prehistoric time
– Fine arts from century 11th till century 19th
– Fine arts from century 20th till now
– Fine arts in traditional usage
– Folk fine arts
– Vietnamese ceramic from century 11th to century 20th, including precious ceramics excavated from 5 ancient boats.
There are more than 30 exhibition rooms in the Vietnam Fine Art Museum with plentiful objects: every objects is chosen carefully with unique shape, from a splendid patterns on an ethnic clothes, to the sophisticated bamboo hand-made works, or beautiful “Dong Ho” folk naive paintings, meticulous bronze statues, stone statues, wooden statue etc., all of them seem to reflect the quintessence of Vietnamese multi-ethnic groups.
Besides, the museum also has a biggest room specialized for exhibition activities, fine art exchanges between Vietnam and others foreign countries. Moreover, there are a lot of objects currently maintained in the museum’s warehouse, which have been classified into interesting collections, too:
– Collection of paintings: more than 6,000 artworks
– Collection of sculpture: more than 1,000 objects
– Collection of traditional fine arts: more than 2,000 objects
– Collection of ceramics: more than 6,000 objects
– Collection of foreign fine arts: more than 400 objects
Unfortunately, nowadays, you can find that some of the art works found here are replicas, because the originals has been destroyed during Vietnam war. However, Vietnam Fine Art Museum is really a priceless treasure of Vietnam’s fine art and an attractive cultural destination for tourists all over the world.
Opening hours: 8.30-17.00 every day except Monday
Entrance fee: $1.3
