Sophie’s Art Tour
What started as a project by the french -but living in Vietnam- Sophie, has now grown into a company that offers several tours in both Saigon and Hanoi, run by four tour guides, including Sophie herself.
We never met her, since our tour was lead by the Brit Stu.
Let me tell you how our tour went down and give you my opinion about this tour.
Review Sophie’s Art Tour Saigon
Our tour guide Stu
We were met by charming Stu early morning in a cafe (Gao) in a former colonial mansion.
Stu received us in restaurant Gao, where we met the other participants.
Together with the rest of the group (a couple from Vancouver, a Dutch guy from Amsterdam and a girl from the UK) we listened to Stu’s intro for the tour, while having a drink.
After that, we were driven around in a mini-van from location to location till the end of the tour, about 4 hours later.
Stu turned out to be a great story-teller, knowledgeable about art, history and Vietnam and with a good sense of humour. What’s not to like?!
Private Duc Minh Gallery
We started at a private gallery, Duc Minh gallery, where we were not allowed to take pictures. There was a lot of beautiful art and there were many interesting stories to be told.
Stu kept feeding us information, even when riding on the bus.
He told us about Ho Chi Minh (the man, I mean), …
Stu tells us about the life and career of Ho Chi Minh.
…. about important artists and about developments in Vietnamese art history. Making the tour really about art, history and art history. Very interesting!
He made frequent use of his iPad to illustrate his story with images. Worked like a charm.
Hien Minh Art Gallery by Nguyen Thi Hien
We then went to Antique Street, to Hien Minh Art Gallery, run by the famous artist Nguyen Thi Hien, an elderly lady -she still paints- that we unfortunately did not meet in person.
Antique street Saigon.
But we did see some of her gorgeous art work.
Let’s call her the Vietnamese Modigliani-esque Madonna, shall we? The woman in the portrait was a friend of the artist.
What about this one? Different, right? Nguyen Thi Hien has had many different styles throughout her life. Sometimes it were the circumstances (like the war), other times she was influenced by other artists, like Picasso (look at the painting on the right).
And we saw a lot of sketches coming from the portfolio of a famous combat artist.
Stu talks about combat art.
Stu used the life and art work from Nguyen Thi Hien and the enormous collection of sketches from the combat artist to paint a picture of what went down before, during, and after the war.
What was the impact on the people in general, on artists specifically, and how did the regime use art as a tool, e.g. to boost moral. Fascinating stuff!
Salon Saigon
Last stop was Salon Saigon, an art space (both gallery and meeting place) in a heritage building, founded by a private art collector. The building is beautiful and the initiative is interesting.
The art collector lives in the left villa, while Salon Saigon is housed in the right villa.
The villa looks beautiful on the inside as well. I love the framed doors.
I love this work. Censorship in Vietnam is still a real thing, so artists have to be quite resourceful to work around that. Same goes for art galleries. And resourceful they ARE! Good for them. I will not go into details here for reasons you probably can guess.
Conclusion: ***** for Sophie’s Art Tours
Sophie’s Art Tours are of high quality. If I would have had more time, I would definitely have done their architecture tour as well.
Don’t expect to see heaps of art, especially not a lot of modern art. It’s more of an in-depth tour. A limited number of galleries and a limited number of artists are well-chosen, so that showing their work and telling their stories gives a broad and deep insight in Vietnam’s recent (art) history.
What was the most interesting or fun art tour you ever joined?
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