How does a nation’s art come to be recognised as its own? Lines of Inquiry draws on a collection of Vietnamese art donated to NUS Museum — wartime drawings and posters, ceramics, and later paintings — to follow the histories that gather around these works. Across colonial rule, revolution, reconstruction, and reform, the exhibition considers how artists, institutions, ideas, and objects shaped what we have come to understand as modern Vietnamese art. Conceived as a prospectus, Lines of Inquiry opens these histories to further questions: how art takes shape through changing circumstances, how it travels, and how its meanings shift along the way.
Image credit: Van Tho, 'Portrait of Artist as Bui Xuan Phai', 2019
Read exhibition opening speech
Resource
11 Aug 2020
Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Beverly Devakishen on the Wartime Artists of Vietnam exhibition and museum spaces
Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Beverly Devakishen on the Wartime Artists of Vietnam exhibition and museum spaces
Related Pages
Always On / Past Events
Exhibition
Free
13 Aug 2026 - 26 Sep 2027
8 am - 8 am
Free Admission
Tour
Free
15 Sep 2026 - 30 Sep 2026
2 pm - 3 pm
Free Admission
Education
Talk
7 Oct 2026 - 7 Oct 2026
6 pm - 8 pm
Free Admission
Public Art
Tour
Free
20 Oct 2026 - 20 Oct 2026
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Free Admission
Visual Arts
Tour
Exhibition
Free
21 Oct 2026 - 21 Oct 2026
2 pm - 2:30 pm
Free Admission
Literary
Tour
Free
21 Oct 2026 - 21 Oct 2026
3 pm - 3:45 pm
Free Admission




