Art Vietnam

Besieged with calls complaining of censorship, the director of an Orange County museum on Thursday decided to restore a controversial painting to an exhibit of Vietnamese contemporary art set to open this weekend. Bowers Museum Executive Director Peter Keller reversed a decision made earlier this week to withhold the work, titled "Young Woman Forging Steel."

There has been a lively resurgence of art--and artists--in Vietnam in the last decade, but little of it has been seen in the United States because diplomatic relations were suspended until 1995. Now "A Winding River: The Journey of Contemporary Art in Vietnam," a show organized by the nonprofit Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., has come to the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, with 75 works made over the last six decades by 53 Vietnamese artists.

When the smoke clears, the art remains. "A Winding River: The Journey of Contemporary Art in Vietnam" is a meander through the last 70 years of Vietnamese art, and despite well-publicized protests by anti-Communist Vietnamese activists, the exhibit at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana is surprising for being both aesthetically accessible and politically benign. The exhibit includes some 75 works from 53 artists in a range of media--from ink on paper or silk to woodblock prints to oil paintings.

Santa Ana City Councilwoman Alberta D. Christy stood Sunday before a painting entitled "Mother's Heart." In the brightly colored work, a mother and daughter are praying at what appears to be a family altar decorated with pictures of lost loved ones, soldiers--some wearing Communist caps. To Christy's right, Nancy Pham, 19, argued that the 1994 painting is nothing more than "propaganda."

Outside an art exhibit that has reignited anti-Communist passions in Orange County, Hao Nguyen told a story that immigrants have repeated time and again. He and his wife came to the United States from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, five years ago for all sorts of things--for food, work, a good bed.

Besieged with calls complaining of censorship, the director of the Bowers Museum on Thursday decided to restore a controversial painting to an exhibit of Vietnamese contemporary art set to open this weekend. Museum executive director Peter Keller reversed a decision made earlier this week to withhold the work, titled "Young Woman Forging Steel."

Santa Ana City Councilwoman Alberta D. Christy stood Sunday before a painting entitled "Mother's Heart." In the brightly colored work, a mother and daughter are praying at what appears to be a family altar decorated with pictures of lost loved ones, soldiers--some wearing Communist caps. To Christy's right, Nancy Pham, 19, argued that the 1994 painting is nothing more than "propaganda."

There has been a lively resurgence of art--and artists--in Vietnam in the last decade, but little of it has been seen in the United States because diplomatic relations were suspended until 1995. Now "A Winding River: The Journey of Contemporary Art in Vietnam," a show organized by the nonprofit Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., has come to the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, with 75 works made over the last six decades by 53 Vietnamese artists.

About 70 activists in the Vietnamese American community protested Friday outside the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art on the eve of a Vietnamese art exhibit opening today in Santa Ana. Carrying picket signs and flags of the former South Vietnam, the group quietly demonstrated against the contemporary art exhibition they are calling Communist propaganda.

Bowers Museum officials have removed one painting from a planned exhibit of Vietnamese art and may pull others after anti-Communist activists threatened to picket the show when it opens Saturday. Mindful of massive demonstrations organized by Vietnamese activists earlier this year to protest a Communist flag in an Orange County video store, officials at the Santa Ana museum say they are trying to balance community concerns with the 1st Amendment.

When the smoke clears, the art remains. "A Winding River: The Journey of Contemporary Art in Vietnam" is a meander through the last 70 years of Vietnamese art, and despite well-publicized protests by anti-Communist Vietnamese activists, the exhibit at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana is surprising for being both aesthetically accessible and politically benign. The exhibit includes some 75 works from 53 artists in a range of media--from ink on paper or silk to woodblock prints to oil paintings.

Outside an art exhibit that has reignited anti-Communist passions in Orange County, Hao Nguyen told a story that immigrants have repeated time and again. He and his wife came to the United States from Saigon five years ago for all sorts of things--for food, for work, a good bed.

Outside an art exhibit that has reignited anti-Communist passions in Orange County, Hao Nguyen told a story that immigrants have repeated time and again. He and his wife came to the United States from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, five years ago for all sorts of things--for food, work, a good bed.

About 70 activists in the Vietnamese American community protested Friday outside the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art on the eve of a Vietnamese art exhibit opening today in Santa Ana. Carrying picket signs and flags of the former South Vietnam, the group quietly demonstrated against the contemporary art exhibition they are calling Communist propaganda.

Besieged with calls complaining of censorship, the director of the Bowers Museum on Thursday decided to restore a controversial painting to an exhibit of Vietnamese contemporary art set to open this weekend. Museum executive director Peter Keller reversed a decision made earlier this week to withhold the work, titled "Young Woman Forging Steel."

Besieged with calls complaining of censorship, the director of an Orange County museum on Thursday decided to restore a controversial painting to an exhibit of Vietnamese contemporary art set to open this weekend. Bowers Museum Executive Director Peter Keller reversed a decision made earlier this week to withhold the work, titled "Young Woman Forging Steel."

As Hoang Nhu Mai sees it, the big problem with teaching Vietnamese literature is that love has been tagged as bourgeois. Mai, a slightly rebellious professor of literature in a Communist state, loves a good love story. And while his compatriots may seem tough on the outside, they're pushovers for romance, he insists. "During wartime (which has marked most of Mai's 72 years), we had to use literature to stimulate patriotism . . .

Outside an art exhibit that has reignited anti-Communist passions in Orange County, Hao Nguyen told a story that immigrants have repeated time and again. He and his wife came to the United States from Saigon five years ago for all sorts of things--for food, for work, a good bed.

Bowers Museum officials have removed one painting from a planned exhibit of Vietnamese art and may pull others after anti-Communist activists threatened to picket the show when it opens Saturday. Mindful of massive demonstrations organized by Vietnamese activists earlier this year to protest a Communist flag in an Orange County video store, officials at the Santa Ana museum say they are trying to balance community concerns with the 1st Amendment.

Even when he came south as a soldier with the North Vietnamese army, Ngo Dong carried a sketch pad. During lulls in the battle, he would draw pictures of flowers and rice paddies and dream of being a great artist. However, life was unimaginably hard after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, and no one could survive as an artist. Dong got a job painting store signs by day. By night he painted for his own pleasure in the humble apartment he shared with three generations of his family.