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122 ART in situ An Interview with Christine Hemmet In 2006, just before the opening of the Nous avons mangé la forêt (We have eaten the forest) exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly, Georges Condominas confided, “I have finally been able to make it established that context is capital. Christine Hemmet, the curator of my exhibition, has done much innovative work and has gone well beyond that.” Hemmet, an ethnologist with a specialty in Vietnam and former curator of Asian art at the Musée du Quai Branly, was central to the development of the Dak Lak Museum and continues to play a vital role in the conservation, study, and diffusion of Vietnamese patrimony. We had the opportunity to meet with her in August of 2012. France-Aimée Nguyen Huu Giao: What is your background? Christine Hemmet: After having completed a master’s program at the Sorbonne, I attended Professor Georges Condominas’ seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He had long expressed the desire to create a large ethnographic museum in Hanoi. He apparently was able to convince the Vietnamese of the importance of such a project because when I arrived in 1992, the construction of the museum was already underway. It was inaugurated in 1997 at the Francophonie Summit Conference. Although devoted to all of the populations of Vietnam, the museum was still lacking. After arriving and examining the content of the installations, I left again, accompanied by my Vietnamese colleagues, to visit the peoples of the northern mountain areas in order to collect. F.-A. N. H. G.: Jean-François Girault talked about the long and exciting adventure that this twenty-year museum collaboration between France and Vietnam represents. Am I right that you personally played a seminal role in orchestrating all of this? C. H.: Indeed, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnography in Hanoi initiated a cooperative effort in 1992, which bore fruit with the creation of the Dak Lak Museum in November of 2011. During this period, we also participated in the creation of other museums, notably the Women’s Museum of Vietnam in Hanoi, the funding for which came entirely from Vietnamese sources. I would like to emphasize that, while France’s financial support was far from negligible, the Vietnamese government put a great deal of money into these projects. F.-A. N. H. G.: Can you give us any additional details about the history of the collaboration between France and Vietnam in this project and about the realization of the Dak Lak Museum? C. H.: Yes. One particular aspect of the story needs to be told. After we finished the Hanoi Museum of Ethnography, I was aware of the importance of following up on its creation. Far too often, once a project has been completed, the various participants in the enterprise depart, prematurely leaving those who will direct it on their own. That can be unfortunate. I wanted to continue to help those who would be responsible and whom we had been training. We trained them to be museum professionals and conservators. My goal was to succeed in establishing a three-way cooperation between France, the Hanoi Museum of Ethnography, and a provincial museum. That is what has been accomplished with the creation of the Dak Lak Museum. In fact, it was actually the Dak Lak Museum that asked to be part of this collaboration. The Hanoi Museum of Ethnography had already worked closely with teams in this province in putting together its own collection of objects. F.-A. N. H. G.: In your opinion, can the Dak Lak Museum’s collection be favorably compared with other major Vietnamese or Western ethnographic collections? C. H.: In the area of ethnography, I do not compare Vietnamese collections with Western ones. If, for example, one looks at the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly, it consists of objects that were collected in the colonial period. After that time, nothing remained in Vietnam, at least where ethnographic material is concerned. The Vietnamese began to build collections much later. That means they were automatically less good—and that’s not a secret. I would add that appreciation for ethnographic objects did not develop until much later in Vietnam. While fine collections of art and historical and archaeological works have long existed in Vietnam, interest in ethnographic objects and the acquisition of them there did not start until the 1960s. For this, one must also bear in mind that the war lasted until 1975. FIG. 17: Christine Hemmet at the Dak Lak Museum before its inauguration in November of 2011. Photo © Vo Thi Thuong. FIG. 18: Dr. Luong Thanh Son, director of the Dak Lak Museum, during the construction of the permanent installation, November 2011. Photo © Christine Hemmet.


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