Traveling Exhibit Focuses on Vietnamese Women Artists

While researching an article on performance art in Vietnam, I came across an interesting art exhibit currently traveling around the United States. “Changing Identity: Recent Work by Women Artists from Vietnam” is comprised of 52 works by ten female Vietnamese artists “who challenge the stereotypes and traditional roles of women in Vietnamese society.” The exhibit’s [...]

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HCMC Fine Arts Museum

Like many cities blazing the capitalist path in developing nations, Saigon lacks an established cultural apparatus. However, of all the museums in Saigon, the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum might be the one most worth seeing, even if the quality of its collection and exhibition is inconsistent.
Predictably, war paintings and lacquer work are [...]

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T in Vietnam

Just about any Vietnamese language guide will tell you that you need to address men and women of different ages by certain titles. And just about every guide gets the titles wrong or neglects to mention a few. Here’s a quick guide to abiding by Vietnam’s culture of respect.
The titles don’t correspond to specific ages. [...]

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The Cu Chi Tunnel Mantra: How Killing Fields Became a Jungle Gym

If any stage of the Cu Chi Tunnels was going to activate my claustrophobia, this was it. I had answered the tour guide’s call for a skinny tourist, but now they were asking too much, this tour guide and military-drab chaperone. Yes, I will pose inside the tunnel entrance with trap door held aloft while [...]

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Reading Geoff Dyer at the MET

It turns out the Walker Evans Archive at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is named thusly for a reason. If it were on exhibit, it would be called the Walker Evans Exhibit.
I visited the MET after finishing The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer’s not-quite-comprehensive survey of photography. Dyer writes considerably on Evans, and I [...]

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