The human story is at the heart of history

According to Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Van Huy, who organized the famous exhibition "Hanoi Stories During the Subsidy Period" of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, human stories are important in historical exhibitions.

The stone engraved with the name of Mai Hai, an officer of the Institute of Han Nom Studies, was used to stand in line for people during the subsidy period. The "treasure" of the elephant ear fan, the dream of people living during this period. The apartment complex raised pigs to "feed people", with the pig's grunting sound. The artifacts and community anthropological films themselves tell the story of Hanoi during the subsidy period. It is one of the most successful and famous modern historical exhibitions in recent decades.

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Van Huy, former Director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, was in charge of the exhibition. He also shared how to create an attractive modern historical exhibition.

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Huy

Photo: NVCC

The exhibition "Hanoi Stories in the Subsidy Period " is still considered an honest and attractive exhibition about modern history. But at that time, did any historians object to that exhibition, sir?

No one objected. Public opinion as well as researchers all gave it a good review. International scholars considered it a special event for Vietnam, they did not understand why at that time there could be such a good historical exhibition about that period. The exhibition dared to tell the truth and tell the story skillfully. But from there, we have the experience to make a successful exhibition. The story of the subsidy period is essentially a historical exhibition, telling the history, about the social life of a historical period in the years 1975 - 1980. That was a historical period, the exhibition talked about the life of the people of Hanoi at that time, about the people's livelihood to ensure the minimum life of the family, about the life of a family in a collective housing area, about spiritual life... The historical and social aspects were all reflected, interpreted honestly, placed in the right context, so the exhibition attracted many visitors.

The advantage of subsidized exhibitions is that they focus on anthropology and ethnology. But not all museums have that advantage. So how do you think they should handle historical stories?

In my opinion, every museum needs an anthropological approach. People are the central story of museums. Historical stories are associated with people. Heroes, soldiers, commanders, and generals are all human. War has an anthropological aspect. So we reflect the human story. That is the anthropological approach. Today's historical museums increasingly focus on the social life of each era, so they need an anthropological perspective.

But when the historical story has been over for decades, the witnesses are hardly still clear-headed, so where do we get the people, sir?

The problem is that we have to know how. There are many approaches to anthropology. For example, when talking about the revolutionary and resistance periods, we need to thoroughly exploit the diaries and memoirs of the characters and the contemporary press. Vo Nguyen Giap, Song Hao, Van Tien Dung, Nguyen Chi Thanh... wrote many memoirs and research articles. We have to research carefully to find stories associated with the events that need to be told. Historians around the world are still writing about Vietnamese history, always with something new, they bring out many new documents, new perspectives, new stories. Museum workers can approach anthropology from the memoirs of the McNamara father and son (Former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara has the memoir Memoirs , his son Craig McNamara has the book Because our fathers lied ) to help the public better understand the past war.

In exhibiting the history of Vietnam in those years, we use different voices, the voice of the Vietnamese leadership and the voice of the American leadership, the intelligence perspectives of both sides when looking at an event. Because they tell together about an event like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, why it happened and how it happened. An exhibit that brings out those dialogues is certainly interesting.

There are many exhibitions and many museums that still have artifacts. From the story of Hanoi during the subsidy period , is there any formula for a successful modern historical exhibition, sir?

Many of our exhibitions are not up to par, too ambitious, especially not allowing viewers to live in the context of each era displayed. The exhibitions still lack museological professionalism. Museum exhibitions, first of all, must ensure historical honesty. If telling historical stories, they must be extremely honest. Secondly, museum exhibitions are different from history books. Historians write modern Vietnamese history, period by period, maybe hundreds of pages, but to create a museum, one cannot bring the entire history book into the museum. Instead, museums must rely on historical knowledge to create exhibitions, tell stories with documents, artifacts, and make viewers live in the context of events through their vision and senses. That is, create museological techniques. The important thing is to research deeply and create contexts that are honest to the historical period being discussed.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/cau-chuyen-con-nguoi-la-trong-tam-cua-lich-su-185250913225921198.htm