In June 2018, a small team based in Hue, Vietnam, began to conduct significant new field and archival research on the city’s physical and cultural history. This research was part of “Site & Space in Southeast Asia”, a Getty Foundation funded project designed to support new and innovative art and architectural histories of the Southeast Asian region.

In this conversation, members of the Hue research team will reflect on their individual and collective experiences over the past several years, and speculate about the implications for future work in the region.

Đỗ Tường Linh pursued her BA in Art History and Art Criticism at Vietnam University of Fine Art and her MA in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa at SOAS in London. Her research and curatorial practice ranges from art and politics, conceptualism and post-colonial studies. She has engaged in the art scene in Vietnam since 2005 and worked and collaborated with important galleries, art spaces, institutions and projects such as Art Vietnam gallery, Dong Son Today Art Foundation, Nha San studio, Hanoi Doclab and the Goethe Institute. Linh is currently the artistic director and co-founder of Sixspace (sixspace.vn), an independent platform for art, education and community projects in Hanoi and a member of SEA currents, a network/ platform for Southeast Asian Art in London.

Caroline Herbelin holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Sorbonne University, Paris. She has been teaching at the University of Toulouse as an Assistant professor since 2011. Her book Architectures du Vietnam Colonial was published in France by INHA/CTHS in 2016. In it, she examines the diversity of cultural exchanges embodied in the built environment thereby moving beyond analyses equating architecture with colonial power. She especially focuses on the way the Vietnamese appropriated and created the build environment during the colonial period. She is currently working on a social history of art in colonial Vietnam, focusing on the history of private collections, exhibitions, and art institutions as well as exploring the way arts and handicrafts were used and framed in colonial policies. She has co-edited a collection of essays on Vietnamese art and a catalogue about French Indochina for an exhibition held in 2013 at the Musée de l’armée in Paris. She has published several articles and book chapters on art and architecture in Vietnam and colonial culture.

William Ma is a Chinese art historian who specializes in the artistic exchanges between China and the world in the late-imperial and modern periods. His research interests include material culture, workshop practices, aesthetic pedagogy, Jesuit missionary art, and the relationship between export art and the imperial court during the High Qing. Ma received two BA degrees (integrative biology and history of art, 2006) and a PhD (history of art, 2016) from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been teaching Asian art history at the School of Art at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge since 2017.

Phi Nguyen is an architect/ researcher practicing in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She holds a Master in Architecture degree from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a Bachelor degree (summa cum laude) from Berea College in the USA. Phi has experience working in both art/design practice and research from renown firms and institutions such as the Harvard Art Museums (Boston, U.S.A), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, U.S.A.), Kengo Kuma and Associates (Tokyo, Japan), GUNDPartnership (Boston) and the Archeological Exploration of Sardis Program (Sardis, Turkey). Her research interests lie in the preservation of architecture as cultural heritage and collective identity through both traditional and contemporary design lenses. Phi is currently organising a multi-media exhibition on the neglected architectural sites of Hue City. She chaired the paper session “Architectural Preservation in Asia” at the Society of Architectural Historians’ 71st Annual International Conference in St. Paul, USA in 2018.

Ylan Vo is a designer and researcher focused on strategies that integrate social and economic development with sustainable natural systems management. Her recent investigations concern the role of natural systems and environmental discourse in post-conflict and post-colonial landscapes. This research spans a range of sites impacted by Agent Orange from the Vietnam War, as well as the cultural and infrastructural landscape of central Vietnam. Ylan earned her Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. She also holds a BA in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University. Ylan is the winner of the 2015 Deborah J. Norden Fund travel grant and a 2017 National Olmsted Scholar Finalist.