As part of the Cernuschi Museum’s Vietnamese summer, two temporary exhibitions, from June 14 to October 2, 2022, highlight the country’s graphic art and ceramic collections.
Two major acquisitions in 2018 and 2021 brought together the work of the students of the Gia Đőnh school, one of the first art schools established by the French in Indochina. In the 1930s, the school’s Vietnamese students took part in a major project, the Monograph drawn from Indochina, consisting of 750 open-air drawings and then transposed into lithography. A selection of original watercolours and printed plates illustrate scenes from everyday life, temples and famous sites of South Vietnam by combining artistic quality and ethnographic interest.
Not far from the painting room, at the feet of the Great Buddha, a selection of newly restored Vietnamese ceramics testifies to the result of the participatory patronage operation launched from October 5 to December 10, 2019 to prepare the reopening of the museum after its renovation. It’s called "Let’s Glue Together Fragments of the Past!" , this campaign could be carried out thanks to the support of the Society of Friends of the Cernuschi Museum and that of many French-Vietnamese friendship associations. The successive steps will be extensively illustrated in order to explain the ethical issues involved in heritage restoration and the choices that had to be made.