The US government has decided to provide US$21,000 to help the Vietnamese History Museum restore and preserve 70 religious and devotional objects.

A document to this effect was signed in Hanoi on October 26 by US Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Marine and Director of the Vietnamese History Museum Pham Quoc Quan.

This is one of Vietnam's six cultural preservation projects that have received assistance from the US Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation since 2001.

The eight-month project aims to restore the collection to its original state, thus prolonging the lives of the objects and reducing the danger of cracking and insect damage.

The deteriorating collection of 70 Buddhist and ancestral devotional objects includes altars, ancestral tablets, ritual trays, shrines, imperial equipage, carved chests, etc, dating back to from the Le-Nguyen Dynasty in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The collection is part of the Vietnamese people’s long-standing tradition of ancestral worship.

The Vietnamese History Museum, established 74 years ago, currently keeps about 130,000 objects. It has conducted many preservation projects with assistance from France, Belgium and Sweden.