Vietnamese Women's Museum

An áo dài embroidered with flowers on thin silk. Silver jewelry worn by a Hmong woman. Indigo clothing dyed by hand by the Tày. The Tày are one of the peoples of northern Vietnam. A poem hat from the village of Chuông.

All of these, and tens of thousands of other objects, are kept in the Vietnamese Women's Museum. The building stands at number 36 Lý Thường Kiệt Street, about 500 meters from Hoan Kiem Lake.

The museum was founded in 1987 and belongs to the Vietnam Women's Union. According to its official website, the current building was reopened at the end of 2010, after four years of renovation and upgrading. Today the museum keeps almost 30,000 documents and objects about the history, culture and daily life of Vietnamese women.

Inside, the museum tells the story of Vietnamese women from three different angles.

The first angle is the family. The theme "Women in the Family" shows the roles of the mother, the wife and the daughter across many centuries. Among the objects are the familiar things of a grandmother and a mother, the daily things that are easy to overlook.

The second angle is history. The theme "Women in History" leads visitors from the time of the old dynasties, through the war years, to modern times. Women were not only at the rear. They were militia members and soldiers, women who carried a child and a gun at the same time. The collection holds photographs, keepsakes and everyday belongings of women from each period.

The third angle is beauty. The theme "Women's Fashion" is the part that is hardest to walk away from. The collection of traditional clothing and jewelry of women from many ethnic groups of Vietnam is the museum's most distinctive feature. Each costume holds the skills of embroidery, weaving and dyeing, passed from mother to daughter over many generations. The colors and patterns of each group reflect a whole philosophy of beauty and of community identity.

Besides the three permanent themes, the museum has a special exhibition on the worship of the Mother Goddesses, a distinctive spiritual tradition of the Vietnamese people.

The story told here is one of endurance, skill and beauty. Grandparents and young grandchildren alike can find something familiar in it.

The story told here is one of endurance, of skill, and of the beauty of Vietnamese women. Grandparents and small grandchildren alike can find something familiar in it. The Vietnamese Women's Museum is not only a place to look at objects. It is a place where a family can sit together and tell one another about the women of their own line, and see that they are part of a much longer story.