Vu Dan Tan Museum Short Courses | May 2026: Books Still Matter!
10 AM – 04 PM, 30 & 31 May 2026
Vũ Dân Tân Museum
443 Ngọc Thụy, Hà Nội
Registration link (limited to 20 participants)
From the organizer:
Join art historian and curator of Southeast Asian contemporary art Dr. iola Lenzi, and specialist art book designer Nguyen Huyen Trang in learning how to write about art and design art books.
Over two days of this 12-hour course, you will learn the fundamentals of art writing in English useful for curators, artists, and art journalists. Explore the difference between curatorial writing, art-history writing, proposal writing, press-release, and wall-text writing, and develop interview techniques that will serve you in your communications production. Avoid jargon as you practice sharp, concise, and fluent writing techniques that are easily distinguished from bland AI-generated language.
While art historian/curator Lenzi will focus on writing skills, specialist art book designer Nguyen Huyen Trang will present aspects of book design and form, and together these two professionals will spotlight how textual content and design intersect for the production of beautiful and long-lasting books that become library staples over generations. Rare and iconic exhibition and biennale publications from the 1990s-2000s will be available for reference on site, used as case-study materials.
Language: English & Vietnamese
Tuition: 4,000,000 VND/ per person (includes lunch and snacks)
Receive a curator-selected book (randomly assigned) when you: Register before May 10, 2026, or Sign up in a group of 3 or more.
Iola Lenzi is a Singapore-based historian, curator, and educator of Southeast Asian contemporary art. She holds an LLB and a PhD in Modern Asian art history, and teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and curatorial methods at NTU, Singapore, as well as in the MA Asian Art Histories Programme of University of the Arts, Singapore. She has solo or lead-curated some 45 exhibitions in Asia and Europe, predominantly in museum and other institutional contexts. She has published extensively on Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary art, and served as editor of six multilingual anthological research publications. She is the author of Museums of Southeast Asia (2004), and her most recent monograph is Power, Politics and the Street: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970 (Lund Humphries, UK, 2024).
Trang Nguyễn is a Hanoi-based artbook designer & practitioner. Since 2010, she has developed over 50 artbook titles, working at the intersection of contemporary art, editorial processes, and bookmaking as a creative practice. She has been the long-term creative consultant for Goethe-Institut Vietnam, leading the design and production of publications for exhibitions and cultural programmes, alongside collaborations with international institutions and embassies. Her selected publications include Contemporary Art in Vietnam 1990–2010 (2013), Art in the Forest 2015–2019 (2019, Vietnam National Best Book Prize nominee 2020), Untitled Sketchbook (2020), and The Festival Banners by Vu Dan Tan(2026). Trang works closely with leading Vietnamese artists and art spaces, developing artbooks as both a publishing format and an extended artistic medium.
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