Collecting Champa Art: The Role of Charles Lemire and Henri Parmentier in the Establishment of the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture.

Tạp chí Khoa học Đại học Đông Á - Tập 5 Số 2 - Trang - 2026
Nguyễn Hoàng Hương Duyên

Tóm tắt

This article examines several arguments proposed by the art historian Julian Brown concerning the collection of Champa sculpture[1] by Charles Lemire and Henri Parmentier. Lemire is considered to have laid the foundation for the establishment of the Musée Čam de Tourane (the predecessor of the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture), while Parmentier realized Lemire’s original vision and played a pivotal role in the early collection, construction, and exhibition of the museum. The article analyzes the motivations and objectives underlying the work of each collector within the historical context of Vietnam under French colonial rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that colonial administrators and archaeologists collected Champa art for various purposes including private possession, cultural preservation, public display, and commercial sale, and that the collecting of Asian art functioned as a representation of colonial power, particularly for France and other European nation-states.   [1] Champa is a term transliterated from the Sanskrit word Campā, which appears in inscriptions to refer to the polities located in central Vietnam. Recent scholarship has argued that Champa should be understood as a generic term used to refer to a group of coastal and Central Highlands polities in central Vietnam until the early nineteenth century (Taylor 1992, 153–157; Hall 1992, 252–260; Southworth 2001, 21–25; Lockhart 2010, 1–53). In this article, the term Champa is used when referring to sculptural objects and religious or architectural monuments associated with Champa polities. In addition, terms such as “Cham” and “Chàm” also appear in this article when referring to the name of the Cham Museum at different historical periods—for example, the Musée Cam de Tourane during the period 1919–1935, whose official name today is the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture. Moreover, in French archival sources and earlier translated materials, the term “Chàm” continues to be used. The author employs these terms depending on the context.

Từ khóa

#Charles Lemire #Henri Parmentier #Museum of Cham Sculpture #colonial collecting #Champa

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