Collecting Champa Art: The Role of Charles Lemire and Henri Parmentier in the Establishment of the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture.

Tóm tắt

This article examines several arguments proposed by the art historian Julian Brown concerning the collection of Champa sculpture[1] by Charles Lemire and Henri Parmentier. Lemire is considered to have laid the foundation for the establishment of the Musée Čam de Tourane (the predecessor of the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture), while Parmentier realized Lemire’s original vision and played a pivotal role in the early collection, construction, and exhibition of the museum. The article analyzes the motivations and objectives underlying the work of each collector within the historical context of Vietnam under French colonial rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that colonial administrators and archaeologists collected Champa art for various purposes including private possession, cultural preservation, public display, and commercial sale, and that the collecting of Asian art functioned as a representation of colonial power, particularly for France and other European nation-states.