Visitors scarce at most Ho Chi Minh City museums

      A couple of museums in HCM City have plenty of visitors; others barely manage to keep their doors open. At a recent workshop, museum directors and travel company representatives traded ideas for improvement.
Unattractive museums
HCM City has eleven museums, including seven under the management of the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism. In their collections are more than 180,000 rare objects.
Why is it that though the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has allocated tens of billions of dong each year to upgrade local museums, most museums still complain that they cannot draw the public?
A Saigon Times’ reporter visited five museums in HCM City and interviewed some managers of other museums there. He found that little has changed in the past two years.
Of ten operating museums in HCM City, the War Remnants Museum, the Vietnam History Museum and the HCM City Museum are top destinations of visitors. These museums have regularly invested in new services and regularly freshen up their displays.
Other museums survive by renting out part of their space, such as the HCM City Art Museum, Ton Duc Thang Museum and the Museum of the Southeastern Region Armed Forces. Some museums welcome only one or two groups of visitors per year, for example the HCM City Geology Museum.
At a workshop organized at the War Remnants Museum in early July, travel agents were invited to contribute their opinions on the development of museums. Nguyen Tam Dang, representing Vietravel, said only the War Remnant and Vietnam History Museums can satisfy his firm’s basic requirements: parking space for 45-seat buses, strict controls that preventing touts from disturbing tourists, periodic website upgrades and a central location.
Representatives from Lua Viet and Hoa Binh, also big travel companies, agreed with Dang. They said that many foreign tourists want to learn about Vietnam’s art history or about southern heroines in the Vietnam War but the HCM City Art Museum and the Southern Women’s Museum can’t satisfy them.
“Most museums are weak at promoting themselves,” Dang suggested. “We often make specific plans for new events one week or one month before the tours are launched, but we never see anything new for tourists from the museums. Museums should establish websites and regularly update information on them.”
HCM City museum officials said that they realized these problems but they couldn’t solve them because of various reasons.
HCM City Art Museum’s director Nguyen Thi Duc said: “If the museum has many artworks of famous Vietnamese and foreign painters, it will be more attractive to visitors.”
HCM City Museum’s Do Thi Hong said that her museum welcomes between 900 to 1000 visitors per week. Most are students who want to learn about the city’s history. Foreign visitors account for a modest proportion. Thanks to its nice architecture, airy space and rare objects, the museum is an ideal place for taking wedding photos and it is earning revenues from this service.
All museums said that they face difficulties in facilities and funding. Some lamented that the cooperation between museums and travel firms is weak.
Vietnam History Museum deputy director Pham Huu Cong admitted that many museums are providing the public what they have, not what the public needs.
Museums in HCM City:
- War Remnant Museum, 28 Vo Van Tan, District 3
- HCM City Museum, 65 Ly Tu Trong, District 1
- Vietnam History Museum, 6 Nguyen Binh Khiem, District 1
- Ho Chi Minh Museum, 1 Nguyen Tat Thanh, District 4
- Ton Duc Thang Museum, 5 Ton Duc Thang, District 1
- Southern Women’s Museum, 200-202 Vo Thi Sau, District 3
- Ho Chi Minh Campaign Museum, 2 Le Duan, District 1
- Art Museum, 97 Pho Duc Chinh, District 1
- Southeastern Armed Forces Museum, 247 Hoang Van Thu, Tan Binh District
- HCM City Geology Museum, 2 Nguyen Binh Khiem, District 1
A private museum, Fito, opened in HCM City in February 2007. It is the first museum of traditional medicine in Vietnam.
HCM City deputy mayor Tran Thi Thu Ha said that by 2010 the metropolis will have five private museums.
More investment is needed
According to statistics from HCM City’s museums, the War Remnants Museum was the most visited museum in the January-May 2009 period (nearly 300,000 visitors), followed by the HCM City Museum (nearly 200,000).
The War Remnants Museum counted 143,000 foreign visitors. Also popular with foreigners was the Vietnam History Museum which attracted 32,000.
Other museums welcomed several hundred to a few thousand foreign visitors during this period.
HCM City Geology Museum’s manager Do Chi Kien said that this museum was established in the early 1970s and reorganized in 1995. This museum mainly serves geology students and researchers.
“It is the time for us to learn from other museum, re-stabilise and develop the museum to attract foreign visitors,” Kien said. He added that the museum needs from 20 to 30 billion dong (upwards of $1.5 million) for this purpose.
The HCM City Museum also has an upgrade plan.
A deputy director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Vu Kim Anh, said that the city would spend 250 billion dong ($13.8 million) to improve the quality of museums. From this sum, the War Remnant Museum will get 30 billion ($1.6 million) while the Ho Chi Minh Museum will have 60 billion dong ($2.2 million). The HCM City Art Museum will be also upgraded.
Museums elsewhere in Vietnam:
Vietnam has 127 museums, including 7 national museums. Six of the national museums are in Hanoi: the Vietnam History Museum, Vietnam Revolution Museum, Military History Museum, Vietnam Art Museum, Vietnam Ethnography Museum and Ho Chi Minh Museum. The other national museum is in Thai Nguyen province, north of Hanoi: the Museum of Culture of Ethnic Groups in Vietnam). There are 26 museums of the Defence Ministry.
Since the passage of the Law on Cultural Heritage, permitting private museums in Vietnam, eight have been licenced. Fito in HCM City and Coi Nguon on the island of Phu Quoc are the best known.
Experts note that most of museums in Vietnam are about social history and the two wars of resistance against French colonists and American forces. They urge Vietnam establish more museums about natural history and science and technology.
The Government has approved a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism plan for museum development up to 2020. This plan encourages the establishment of museums about the nature. Under this plan, the country will have an additional three national museums, namely the Vietnam Nature Museum, Vietnam National History Museum and Ha Long Bay Ecology Museum.