Kerry Nguyen-Long and her passion for researching Vietnamese culture

Kerry Nguyen-Long's deep love for her partner motivated her to learn about Vietnamese culture. Not only did she change her name to her husband's surname, she also actively brought Vietnamese art to the world .

As a scholar with a wealth of experience, in 2023, Kerry Nguyen-Long launched her latest book titled Vietnam Visual Arts in History Religion & Culture . According to SBS, Lady Borton - an American writer, historian, and translator familiar with Vietnamese people - commented: "It's extraordinary! Thanks to Kerry Nguyen-Long, this book is a museum of 3,000 years of Vietnamese art history encapsulated in a book."

Born in Tasmania (Australia), Mrs. Kerry had the chance to become involved in the field of art when she entered the University of Tasmania, where she studied ancient civilizations and English literature. And it was also during those years that she met Mr. Nguyen Kim Long, a student from Vietnam and her future husband.

Kerry Nguyen-Long and her husband. Photo: SBS

Visual arts is one of the recent terms that has begun to be widely used in the world with the content including many fields of art, from the fields of traditional fine arts such as painting, sculpture, handicrafts to many aspects of modern decorative and applied arts such as photography, animation, filmmaking, design, architecture... This field has also gradually affirmed its importance and is considered one of the core foundations of the cultural and creative industries.

That chance encounter marked the beginning of Kerry Nguyen-Long’s deep relationship with Vietnam. In September 1975, a milestone in Kerry Nguyen-Long’s life was when she and her husband, along with their four young children, moved to the Philippines, where they lived for the next two decades. As a member of the Oriental Ceramics Association of the Philippines, she delved into the research of Vietnamese ceramics exported to the Philippines in the 14th and 15th centuries. Working as a tour guide at the Ayala Museum in Makati (Philippines) further enriched Kerry Nguyen-Long’s knowledge of Southeast Asian art and culture.

In 1986, Kerry Nguyen-Long returned to Vietnam with her family, deepening her connections with local art experts. She contributed a short essay to the book Bat Trang Ceramics of the 14th-19th centuries and, a few years later, co-authored Vietnamese Blue and White Ceramics . Her husband played an important role in translating these bilingual books, enriching Kerry Nguyen-Long’s research.

In the early 1990s, Kerry Nguyen-Long moved back to Vietnam to pursue language studies, a testament to her dedication to understanding the culture she had grown to love. Her unique perspective on visual art extended beyond museums and ceramics. Kerry Nguyen-Long’s mother’s interest in gardening sparked her passion. In 2018, Kerry Nguyen-Long’s passion for gardens was expressed in an article titled Vietnamese Ceramics in Garden Culture, published in the international journal Arts of Asia.

In the last months of 2023, at one of Australia's largest art galleries, Wollongong Art Gallery, a remarkable exhibition related to Vietnamese ceramics took place. The author of the ceramic statue named Kogabieno is Mai Nguyen-Long, daughter of scholar Kerry Nguyen-Long.

According to many experts, the special point in this exhibition of Mai Nguyen-Long is that for the first time she combined her sculptures with artifacts she collected such as the ruler her uncle made from the shell of a fighter plane, faded festival flags (five-color flags)...

Mai Nguyen-Long received a Bachelor of Arts/Asian Studies from the Australian National University (1991) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies from the University of Sydney (1993). In 1994, she studied Vietnamese Art History and Drawing at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts ( Hanoi ). In 1997, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. In 2017, she received an Australian Government RTP scholarship for a PhD in Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong.

DUC HOANG

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/kerry-nguyen-long-va-niem-dam-me-nghien-cuu-van-hoa-viet-post731085.html