Ho Chi Minh City
Museum of Vietnamese History
Modern Vietnamese Culture and Society | Final Project
Ho Chi Minh Museum of Vietnamese History
Museum Curation
Problems and suggestions to improve the organization of Champa exhibiton room
in HCMC Museum of Vietnamese History
Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Vietnamese History consists of historical and cultural parts.
Champa culture is one of the cultural rooms in the museum. Champa was an ancient kingdom consisting of many polities that developed in present-day central and southern Vietnam. The Cham was one of several peoples who inhabited the territory of Champa.
The Champa exhibition room in HCMC Museum of Vietnamese History not only exhibits artifacts but also deliberates intentions in religion significance and hierarchy, sculpture organization, modernist display, and nationalist narrative of the Kinh curators.
Our question for the project is “What would we do differently if we were the curators of the Champa exhibition room in the HCMC Museum of Vietnamese History?”
Through intensive research and analysis, we come up with multiple improvements aiming to convey a comprehensive story of Champa not only in terms of culture but also its history with respect to mainstream Vietnamese history.
We believe that the room after being re-curated can revive the forgotten Champa Kingdom and express its cultural and historical complexity along with aesthetic delicacy.
As young students and curators, we also view curation as the act of making the museum more fascinating and relevant for young visitors and the technological era.
Therefore, we suggest some useful technological adoptions such as enhanced QR code or 3D tour that not only serves the aforementioned curation goal but also helps solve other problems such as minimal signage interpretation.