[originaltext] Nguyen Trong Niet, 85 years old now, is a great Vietnamese pa

Nguyen Trong Niet, 85 years old now, is a great Vietnamese painter.(33)He was astonished when he came across a photograph of his painting in a Russian art book, which says the painting is in the Oriental Museum in Moscow. Niet sent a letter to Moscow and was confirmed that they now own the original, while Niet has always believed that the painting is in the Vietnam’s national art museum. How many paintings and sculptures in Vietnam’s national art museum are actually copies? Nobody knows.(34)During the Vietnam War, the museum itself was a virtual copy factory. "The Americans said they were going to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age," says chairman of the Hanoi Fine Arts Association. So the staff, and in some cases, the artists themselves started to make copies. The reproductions stayed in Hanoi while the originals were sent away and hidden in caves. The artworks were supposed to return home after the war. Not all did. Records, if they ever existed, were lost. Making matters worse, in the 1980s, the government-funded museum set up a department to make high-quality reproductions to sell. It is hurting Vietnam’s once hot art market. The artists are increasingly urging that the museum sort originals from copies. They also want the museum to produce the records of paintings and remove pieces that are reproductions.(35)Luong Xuan Doan, deputy director of the Culture and Art Department at the Communist Party’s Commission for Education and Communications, says it is time to set up a panel of experts and once and for all, identify which works are copies and which are originals.
33. How did Niet find his painting was not in Vietnam?
34. When did the first large scale reproduction of art works happen?
35. What’s the official’s attitude toward the art market in Vietnam now?