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ART in situ 118 Gongs and Trumpeting A REEVALUATION OF VIETNAM’S MUSEUM PATRIMONY By France-Aimée Nguyen Huu Giao On November 21, 2011, at Buon Ma Thuot (just 100 kilometers from the village of Sar Luk, where Georges Condominas spent two years immersed in the culture of the Central Vietnamese Highlands starting in 1948), Jean-François Girault, the French ambassador to Vietnam at the time, was invited to speak at the inaugural ceremony for the new museum in Dak Lak: “… Allow me, Mr. President, to pay homage to the know-how, the energy, and the perseverance of the French team that, with the unwavering support of the embassy’s cultural arm, participated in the creation of this museum; to Mrs. Christine Hemmet, curator at the Musée du Quai Branly; to Mrs. Véronique Dollfus, the display designer; and to Monsieur Patrick Hoarau for his work with graphics …. With the opening of this museum, France and Vietnam arrive at the culminating point of the adventure of museum creation that has been nearly twenty years in the making.” Today, the province of Dak Lak is home to some forty cultural groups, three of which are indigenous: the Ede, the Mnong, and the Jorai. In 1975, when Vietnam was reunified, eighty-five percent of the inhabitants of Dak Lak were mountain people. Now eighty-five percent are Kinh (Vietnamese) from the plains. Members of the Nung, Tay, Hmong, Yao, and Muong groups came from the north and FIGS. 1–4 (top): View of the Dak Lak Museum from its garden, July 2012, Buon Ma Thuot, Central Highlands, Vietnam. Figs. 1, 2, and 3 © France-Aimée Nguyen Huu Giao; fig. 4 © Nguyen Tien Thuan. FIG. 5 (above): Logo of the Dak Lak Museum, inspired by Central Highlands textile motifs. © Patrick Hoarau. Sedang and Bru-Van Kieu came from neighboring provinces. In under forty years, Buon Ma Thuot, the capital of Dak Lak province, has quadrupled its population and now has more than 300,000 inhabitants. The new Dak Lak Museum is situated in a grassy vale in the heart of a park. It resembles an Ede long house on stilts, covered with linearly disposed dew-colored ribs that stretch toward the sky in parallel volutes. Perhaps the architecture reflects the mineral and vegetal stratifications so characteristic of the indomitable and feared highland areas of the Annamite mountain range. Proud to have been able to contribute to the beauty of this area, architect Nguyen Tien Thuan certainly drew inspiration from these immense mountains, where the sounds of ringing gongs and of trumpeting elephants still resound. Inside the building, the elegant and rhythmic signage,created by P. Hoarau, leads visitors into the heart of a stylized village. The region is a mosaic of languages and cultures, so social unity has long existed only on the village level. In light FIG. 6 (right): Pounder, Buon Ma Thuot, Central Highlands, Vietnam. Prehistoric era. L: 24 cm. Dak Lak Museum. Photo © Noï Pictures.


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