About the Collection

After more than thirty years of planning and collecting, the Việt Museum opened to the public in 2007. The Việt Museum is the first and largest museum dedicated to Vietnamese refugees. With approximately 10,000 relics, artifacts, and artworks, the museum's collection features items related to the Republic of Vietnam and the experiences of Vietnamese refugees. Much of the collection was donated by members of the Vietnamese community throughout California. Such donors included Vietnamese veterans, refugees, and survivors of the “re-education camps." The Việt Museum, seeking to honor and remember the experience of the diasporic Vietnamese community, maintains the collection.

Currently, the Việt Museum is in a period of transition. A central aspect of that transition is developing the official inventory of the collection as we prepare for future exhibits. The Vietnamese Refugee Archive Exhibit, which was created in collaboration with Stanford University’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, is the Việt Museum’s first curated online collection.