This gallery is more like an ethnographic museum, library, and gallery all rolled into one. The space is divided into five theme rooms (e.g. "Functional Objects", and "Shamanism") and co-owner Mark S. Rapport is more than happy to play guide for a day. Rapport is a self-described collector, baseball cards when he was a kid, African art while living in New York, and then Vietnamese minority art when he moved to Hanoi. Rapport has a natural gift for bringing the artifacts to life and, given the range of affordable pieces (small mounted prints made from antique stamps or seals got for less than $10/£5.55) and exquisite antique artifacts, few people walk away empty-handed.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Vietnam, 2nd Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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