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.

“Songful Vietnam” artistic director Phong Nguyen.

Mid-November concerts at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ reflect the diversity and international scope of the arts at the college.

In the span of four days, the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall presents an evening of Vietnamese performing arts, two performances of Carl Orff’s choral masterpiece “Carmina Burana” and an afternoon of Indonesian music and shadow puppetry.

Songful Vietnam: Three Rivers — One Source, featuring performers in a variety of traditional genres, takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir, under the direction of John Corrie, performs “Carmina Burana” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15-16.

“Perang Kembang” (“The Flower Battle”), a family-friendly performance of Indonesian shadow puppetry by guest artists accompanied by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Gamelan Orchestra, takes place at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17.

All those performances are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required, available at . The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is located at 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6163 or email olinarts@bates.edu.

‘Songful Vietnam’

Under the artistic direction of Phong Nguyen, five performers from Vietnam and the United States offer Songful Vietnam: Three Rivers — One Source, an evening of music, poetry, dance and dramatic pieces from the traditions of the Hong (“Red”), Huong (“Perfume”) and Mekong river regions.

The event is co-sponsored by the departments of art and visual culture, music and theater, by the Asian studies program and by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art.

The diverse works on the program represent traditional, ethnic and contemporary influences, and draw on the lowland and Central Highland cultures of Vietnam.

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John Corrie conducts the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir.

‘Carmina Burana’

“Carmina Burana” may get its broadest exposure nowadays through the popularity of its opening theme as end-of-the-world movie soundtrack music. But in fact, the monumental choral work that German composer Orff created in the 1930s is a musical setting of poems dating back to the 13th century and celebrating nature, fate, tavern society and especially love.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir is composed of 60 singers, including 10 student soloists. This production of “Carmina Burana” is arranged for two pianos and six percussionists including three ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students. The pianists for these performances are Chiharu Naruse and Bridget Convey of the college’s applied music faculty.

Corrie began teaching musicianship at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1982, conducting the College Choir in 1986 and teaching voice in 1991, and he became college organist in 2005. He is a harpsichord and organ performer with degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, Northwestern University and Yale University. He has been artistic director of the Maine Music Society since 2006.

Sumarsam in performance.

‘The Flower Battle’

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Gamelan Orchestra, a student ensemble performing Indonesian percussion-based music, will be joined by three guest artists from Wesleyan University for “The Flower Battle.” Puppet master Sumarsam and musician I. M. Harjito are well-known and highly respected gamelan musicians. Also performing is Maho Ishiguro, a doctoral student who will play a gamelan instrument called the “gender.”

This “wayang kulit,” or shadow puppet performance, is an hour-long story adapted from the Sanskrit epic “Mahabharata.” During a tumultuous time, the hero Arjuna attempts to clear his mind by taking a journey in a forest of great beauty. He and his companions are confronted by the fanged Cakil, a demon sent by the enemy, and his minions.

Ultimately they engage in the “Flower Battle,” which gives the puppeteer a chance to demonstrate his skill at the intricate manipulation of several puppets.

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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.

Le Thi Lien, a leading Vietnamese archaeologist, visits ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College to discuss her involvement in a major archaeological site in Hanoi at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Sponsored by the art and visual culture department, the lecture is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Located in Hanoi’s center, the Ba Dinh Site is the most important recent archaeological find in Vietnam. Dating back to the eighth century, the site encompasses the remains of a palace and citadel.

Lien was among the archaeologists from the who, in December 2002, excavated an area of 48,000 square meters originally designated for the construction of a new National Assembly House and National Conference Hall. The excavation uncovered thousands of valuable artifacts.

In her talk at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Lien will discuss findings from the site, including the layout of the ancient palace and citadel, building materials, ceramics, everyday utensils and human remains.

Lien was involved with the excavation project until April 2004. Trained in Vietnam, India and the United States, she is a well-known archaeologist in Vietnam. Currently she is a research fellow at Harvard University and is at work on a book.

The program, “Why Vietnam? The U.S. Path toward Intervention, 1945-65,” is sponsored by The Maine Collaborative, a consortium of Maine colleges and universities which offers programs in the arts and humanities for teachers in the state.

The faculty for the all-day session includes Christopher Beam, director of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½; Robert Whelan, a lecturer in English at the University of Maine; Robert Weisbrot, a professor of history at Colby College; and Jon Oplinger, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Maine at Farmington. The workshop will include discussion of Graham Greene’s novel “The Quiet American,” which examines the early days of American involvement in Southeast Asia.

Teachers interested in taking part should call The Maine Collaborative in Portland at 207-828-1529.

The program will include a background lecture and discussion on Vietnamese geography and culture; a discussion of the French involvement in Indochina and the emergence of nationalist leaders such as Ho Chi Minh; and a lecture on the steps by which the United States became more and more deeply involved, politically and militarily, in Vietnam during the 1960s.