A detail from a painted scroll used in shaman rituals of the Yao people of Vietnam.

In an exhibition believed to be the most extensive of its kind in the United States, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art presents an extraordinary selection of painted scrolls, masks and other objects used in shamanist ceremonies of five ethnic minorities in northern Vietnam.

How to Make the Universe Right: The Art of the Shaman in Vietnam and Southern China opens at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, with a talk by Trian Nguyen, associate professor of art and visual culture at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. The exhibition is based on recent research by Nguyen. A reception follows the lecture.

Showing simultaneously with How to Make the Universe Right is Remix: Selections from the International Collage Center, a wide-ranging survey of collages, curated by the International Collage Center and William Low, curator of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art.

NOTE TO READERS: The March 12 lecture by ICC founder Pavel Zoubok has been canceled due to a predicted snowstorm.

The exhibitions appear through March 21. The museum and its programs are open to the public at no cost from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays while ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is in session. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

An untitled mixed-media collage from 1982 by Miriam Shapiro.

• at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art site
• and at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News site.

Learn more about Remix:

• at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art site
• and at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News site.

A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor has received a $40,000 grant to complete his research into a Vietnamese monk whose self-immolation in 1963 was one of the defining acts of the Vietnam War years.

On June 11, 1963, at a busy intersection in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire to protest the government’s discrimination against the nation’s Buddhist majority.

Captured in an Associated Press photograph that was distributed worldwide, this horrific act launched a series of events resulting in the fall of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation also came to symbolize America’s unpopular involvement in Vietnam, and Malcolm Browne’s photo became an icon of the era.

Trian Nguyen, associate professor of art and visual culture and Luce Junior Professor of Asian Studies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, has received an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for field research intended to address what he perceives as the scholarly neglect in recent decades of this figure, who remains highly revered among Vietnamese Buddhists. Nguyen was one of 57 to receive the ACLS grant out of a pool of 1,136 applicants.

“Many questions related to this Vietnamese senior monk and his final act are still unanswered,” says Nguyen, assistant professor of art and visual culture and the Luce Junior Professor of Asian Studies.

In his project, Nguyen will study Thich Quang Duc’s personal items and letters, books, legal records and other documents kept at Buddhist temples in Vietnam, and some two dozen interviews with people involved in events around the monk’s self-sacrifice.

Culminating in the first full-length book about Thich Quang Duc in English, the research will bring to light significant new facts about the monk and his significance within the cultural context of the time. Nguyen hopes that the project will also reawaken awareness, within and outside Vietnam, of both the historic importance of the monk’s self-sacrifice and the existence of the research materials.

The completed work, Nguyen writes in his ACLS proposal, “will make a substantial and original contribution to the understanding of both this famous monk and Vietnamese Buddhist culture and history in the mid-20th century.”

The ACLS advances studies in all fields of the humanities and the social sciences, and aims to maintain and strengthen relations among national societies devoted to such studies.

Nguyen came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2000 under the auspices of a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, and is the first faculty member to teach Asian art history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. He holds a doctorate in Asian art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained his master’s degree in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School.

Nguyen’s primary research situates Buddhist art and architecture within the religious, political and social conditions of Southeast Asian culture. He has a particular interest in Vietnam. His teaching covers a wide range of topics in Asian art history, including the art of Zen Buddhism and Buddhist architecture, storytelling in Asian art and monuments of Southeast Asia.

Trian Nguyen.

Trian Nguyen, assistant professor of art and Luce Junior Professor of Asian Studies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, has received a $28,000 Fulbright Award to support a year of research and writing that will include a six-month stay in Vietnam.

During his Fulbright year, which begins this month, Nguyen will advance his study of Vietnamese portrait sculptures from the 15th through the 18th centuries. Used as devotional and commemorative objects, the sculptures depict people from all walks of life — legendary and historical figures, folk heroes, local clergy, nobility, warriors and even patrons of the arts securing themselves a place in posterity.

“These are very rich materials,” says Nguyen, who came to the United States from his native Vietnam in 1981 and is one of the few art historians of any nationality studying the portrait statues. “They reflect religious and festival practices and a critical period of history — there are many layers of information in each image.

“The sculptured objects are almost alive themselves — many of them are life-size images, and each image of this sculpture has its own life story,” he says.

In Vietnam, Nguyen will perform documentary research, consult with other scholars and do field work including on-site documentation of the statues and observing community festivals in which they play a central role. Back in the States, he will finish a book on the sculptures.

Vietnamese scholars have studied the sculptures from the standpoints of archaeology, folklore or pure history, but not art history, says Nguyen — despite their considerable artistic worth. He will be one of the first scholars to subject the works to a modern Western interpretation.

The statues were often made to honor local notables, and are typically accompanied by stelae  — capsule biographies in carved inscriptions. Buddhist monks, figures from legend and members of the nobility are depicted. So too are people who, with no male descendants to honor their memories, bestowed the temple with large sums of money in exchange for statues that would serve as the centerpiece of a commemorative ceremony. Women were frequently among such patrons.

The statues are typically made of carved stone, terra cotta or lacquered wood. The need for their comprehensive study is urgent. Weather, colonial domination, war and social upheaval have all taken their toll in damage to or destruction of these artworks, and poor restoration work is diminishing the significance of many remaining works.

Nguyen hopes to work with art conservators to improve restoration practices. More broadly, he hopes that his research will inspire a new interdisciplinary interest in Vietnamese art in his native country as well as abroad. The value of local sculptures is understood at the local level in Vietnam, he says, but “they never have a national awareness of the whole system going back to the 12th or 13th century.”

Now 44, Nguyen holds a doctorate in Asian art history from the University of California at Berkeley, and obtained his master’s in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School. He came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2000, and as the first faculty member in Asian art history has taught across a wide range of topics, created an extensive slide collection and guided the expansion of relevant library holdings.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange, named for the man who proposed it, Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright. In the aftermath of World War II, Fulbright viewed the proposed program as a much-needed vehicle for promoting “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries of the world.”