Vietnamese Activists Protest at Bowers

About 70 activists in the Vietnamese American community protested Friday outside the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art on the eve of a Vietnamese art exhibit opening today in Santa Ana.

Carrying picket signs and flags of the former South Vietnam, the group quietly demonstrated against the contemporary art exhibition they are calling Communist propaganda.

The protest comes a day after museum officials decided to restore a controversial painting to the exhibit, which they had originally planned to hold out of the show because they felt it might offend members of the Vietnamese community. Orange County is home to the largest Vietnamese emigre population in the country--about 200,000 people.

Executive director Peter Keller said he changed his mind after being barraged by more than 100 calls from the public demanding to see the entire exhibit. The controversial piece, entitled “Young Woman Forging Steel,” shows the subject of the painting in the uniform of a North Vietnamese soldier.

Vietnamese community leaders anticipate that up to 300 people will turn out today, many angered over the museum’s last-minute reversal. Local Vietnamese radio has been flooded with calls blasting the museum’s decision.

“They not only betrayed the trust of the community, [but] it is a kind of provocation to the community,” said Duc Trong Do, president of the Vietnamese Community of Southern California.

But protesters said the larger point was that the artwork, a traveling exhibition displayed at museums across the country in the last 18 months, portrayed the nation’s Communist government in a sympathetic light.

“It’s not one or two paintings. It’s the whole exhibition we object to,” said attorney Luan Tran. “As long as there is a lack of freedom in Vietnam, we’ll be out here protesting.”

Museum officials, police and community members sat down at a meeting Friday to hash out details of the protest itself, which demonstrators say will remain peaceful.

Meanwhile, Keller reflected on the irony of the museum’s current predicament: The Bowers had only been interested in hosting the exhibit as a way to serve the large Vietnamese American community in Orange County.

“Because of the significant numbers of Vietnamese in this area, one of our highest priorities since 1992 was to develop an exhibition on Vietnam,” he said.

But the Bowers was also sensitive to community concerns, he said, and turned down four other Vietnamese exhibitions because officials feared they would be controversial. One included an exhibit that ran at the Laguna Art Museum two years ago comparing Northern and Southern Vietnamese art.

“A Winding River” was selected because museum officials believed the art was beautiful and neutral. The show was put together by Meridian International Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit international arts organization. The drawings and paintings, chosen by an independent panel of American and Vietnamese art experts, include works from as early as the 1930s, but most were created in the last five years.

Keller ruefully admits he was naive about the politics of the exile Vietnamese American community, which remains strongly anti-Communist.

In the wake of massive anti-Communist demonstrations earlier this year in Little Saigon, the museum’s board even considered canceling the show but ultimately voted unanimously to hold it. The museum is paying a price for its decision, he said. The exhibit is being funded entirely by the Bowers since several potential corporate sponsors backed out, citing controversy within the Vietnamese American community.

“Frankly, I thought art transcended politics,” he said. “Regardless of political inclinations, I thought people would want their children to see the art of their roots.”