The international community has been helping Laos to restore its cultural treasures. Our eight-day project has involved taking photographs and making a plan of the museum to create better displays, storage, archives and systems for management. The photographs will help for conservation and preservation purposes, and for creation of an inventory, which the museum does not have. All data will be kept in special files.
Staff here are eager to renovate the museum and to preserve their monuments.
We are happy to have this help for renovation. The palace was built between 1904-1909 during the French protectorate. When the Pathet Lao took control of Laos in 1975 the last king, Savang Vatthana, and his wife, Khang Phouny, were forced to abdicate, along with their son, Crown Prince Vong Savang. The palace was preserved as it was left, with murals and mosaic covered walls. A portrait of Queen Khan Phouny by Ilya Glazunov, painted in 1967, shows a woman of dignified but sad bearing.