In the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) hangs a poignant Vietnamese painting of a woman praying at an altar.

The colours are bright and child-like, but Heart Of Mother, the oil painting by artist Do Son, shows a wall full of the faces of dead soldiers. From the caps some of them wear, visitors can tell that they have died in different wars, namely in the resistance against the French from the 1940s to 1950s and in the Viet Nam War from 1956 to 1975.

Packed full of historical information and memories, this 1994 work is one of the paintings on show at the SAM in a survey exhibition called Post-Doi Moi: Vietnamese Art After 1990.

Doi Moi refers to the free-market reforms started by the Vietnamese government in 1986 to help the country come out of an economic crisis. The exhibition deals with the developments in Vietnamese art after these political and cultural changes.

The 62 pieces on show range from cutting-edge video art to lyrical and nostalgic oil paintings of the streets of Ha Noi.

This exhibition is part of the ongoing Viet Nam Festival organised by the National Heritage Board. It is taking place in three of its seven museums, several commercial art galleries and other private museums.

The festival delves into the art, culture and history of Viet Nam, digging deep into the culturally diverse country, which has a population of over 83 million people and 54 offically recognised ethnic groups.

Its breadth and depth showcases the country, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), in a way that has never been done here before.

The 34 exhibitions, events and food deals in the festival range from a one-day Vietnamese food fest to a scholarly symposium on modern and contemporary Vietnamese art.

It is the first of NHB's country-themed festivals, where the board programmes its museums with the same broad theme. The Vietnam Festival coincides with 35 years of diplomatic relations between Singapore and Viet Nam.

The curator of the Post-Doi Moi exhibition, Joyce Fan, 44, says this is the first time such a major museum has studied and organised an exhibition on this period.

Among other things, the exhibition deals with the ties Vietnamese artists have with their homeland, the liberation of using art as a mode of expression after Viet Nam threw open its doors to foreigners, and attitudes to modern Vietnamese society.

Some highlights of the show include Autumn In Ha Noi by Pham Luan, which shows a street scene of Hanoi, captured in a sentimental palette of glowing white shophouses and red leaves.

Dealing with street scenes in a different way is artist Vuong Van Thao, who replicated 36 of Ha Noi's old houses in stone ware and encased them in resin in an installation called Living Fossils.

Wrapped in cracked amber chunks, the houses look like real archaeological finds, frozen and preserved for eternity.

Rewind a few thousand years and visitors will come across another anchor exhibition in the festival, called Viet Nam! From Myth To Modernity at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM).

Vietnamese history is told through some 200 artefacts, most of which are on loan from national museums in Viet Nam, private collectors and culled from ACM's own collection.

Curator Heidi Tan, 43, says the exhibition is significant because it is one of the few which traces more than 2,500 years of Vietnamese history from the country's early history to today.

She adds: "An exhibition that covers Viet Nam through such a wide timeline is definitely a first for Asia--the only other one that we know of was by a museum in Brussels in 2003."

The show is a result of about 15 months of intensive scouring and negotiations with collectors and other museums.

A star piece from ACM's own collection is a beautiful 60cm-tall gold and silver figure of Lokeshvara, a patron deity of the Vietnamese state in the 9th century.

Resilient as a lotus flower

Elaborate designs are found over the figure, and its eyes are studded with rubies. There are also two mysterious gold scrolls with illegible inscriptions in its head.

Tan says: "Gold artefacts like these are very rare because many of them were stolen and melted down during various wars."

Another piece is a bronze drum from the Dong Son period (500BC to AD300, bottom left), a sophisticated bronze-making culture that flourished in northern Viet Nam. Used for music-making or buried with important people to show their prestige and power, the bronze drums from this period have become a Vietnamese national icon.

Whimsical blue-and-white figures from the 15th century show the ingenuity of Vietnamese potters then. They were the only ones outside China who knew how to make them.

"Through these artefacts, we hope visitors will come to appreciate the ancient culture and diversity of Viet Nam," Tan says.

The story of Viet Nam is told through stamps in the Singapore Philatelic Museum, which is sparing no effort to woo children this school holiday season.

In Journey Through The Land Of Lotus, a display of stamps and postcards tells the richness of the country in costumes, leaders, battles, agricultural products, music and the arts.

The show is beefed up with a selection of ethnic minority costumes and 30 dolls on loan from Ha Noi's Viet Nam Women's Museum.

Viet Nam is compared to the lotus flower as it is as resilient as the flower that springs from murky waters, says curator Chua Mei Lin, who is in her 40s.

Kids will have fun exploring Vietnamese arts and crafts by taking part in woodblock printing, bookmark making and mask painting workshops.

Visitors are giving the festival the thumbs up.

Freelance writer Jimmy Yap, 40, who visited ACM last week with his four adopted Vietnamese children aged eight to 17, says: "It was a culturally enriching experience."

He was among 14,000 visitors who thronged the museum over the weekend for Viet Fest, where Vietnamese lion dancers, chefs and musicians gathered for a weekend bazaar.

He adds: "It was a nice combination of performances and food. Since I'm especially interested for my kids to get in touch with their culture, I only wish there were more of such activities."

Civil servant Ng Wenxu, 25, was at the ACM last week to watch a late-night screening of a Vietnamese film, The Scent Of Green Papaya.

She says: "There were 7pm and 9pm screenings, which was good for people who work. It's a good thing that museums are trying to attract different kinds of people with their programmes." (By ADELINE CHIA/ The Straits Times/ ANN)