A family of artists is gathering under one roof in Hanoi this October. Maj Trang Olson – Continuing Her Father's Path opens at the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum on October 2 and runs until October 7, and it's less a solo show than a family reunion in paint, bronze and lacquer.
The exhibition centres on Maj Trang Olson, a 70-year-old Vietnamese-Swedish painter who was born in Hanoi and moved to Sweden in 1990 after marrying. Her father was the late painter Hồng Vân, best known for his portraits of President Hồ Chí Minh in the 1970s. Art runs deep in this household: as a young woman, Trang was the muse for Bùi Xuân Phái's celebrated 1988 portrait Girl in Black with White Geometric Patterns, and her own canvases echo that lineage with loose, dreamlike brushwork — clouds, birds, women — full of nostalgia for Vietnam.
Sweden is where her painting actually began. She credits the country's landscapes and the philosophy of 'Lagom' — the idea of 'just enough' — with giving her the balance that unlocked a deep longing for her homeland. Since 2010 she has staged 25 exhibitions: 11 in Sweden, 10 in Italy and four in Vietnam, and hundreds of her oils now sit in collections across Italy and the Nordic countries. In 2024 the Vietnam Fine Arts Association awarded her the For the Cause of Vietnamese Fine Arts Medal. A Venice-based curator, Amaride Ferrante of Itsliquid Group, praises her vivid colours and storytelling brushstrokes, singling out her abstract work.
But the show's real hook is its trio. Alongside Trang's paintings hang works by her two brothers. Nguyễn Hồng Hưng, a sculptor and art educator, makes philosophically weighted bronze pieces — one of which is already in the museum's own collection — and wrote two books on visual design principles. Paul Vân Thuyết, who works under the name Thiền Zen, is a multi-disciplinary artist moving between music, painting, poetry, lacquer and bronze, with 27 solo and group exhibitions to his name. Lương Xuân Đoàn, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Fine Arts, frames the show as three siblings who took very different paths converging in gratitude beneath their father's shadow — a tribute expressed through Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Realism side by side.
For travellers in Hanoi, this is a rare chance to see contemporary Vietnamese art with an international career story attached — and the timing is generous. After the museum run, the works move to the Vietnam Fine Arts Association Exhibition House for Maj Trang Olson – Vietnam-Sweden Art Exchange, opening October 16, where Swedish painter Anna Therese Svarrtvadet joins the three siblings for a four-voice dialogue. Both venues sit in central Hanoi, easy to pair with an afternoon in the Old Quarter — a district Trang herself has painted.
If you'll be in Vietnam in the first half of October, either date works; the museum show offers the fuller family story, the later venue the cross-cultural twist.
