Lao Studies Conference at Northern Illinois University

Remarks at the opening ceremony by Catherine Raymond, Professor of Southeast Asian Art History

Ms. Vanpheng from Laos on the third from left hand side

I arrived here at NIU in August 2002 —nearly three years ago— to take on the directorship of the Center for Burma Studies and to teach Southeast Asian art history.

While I clearly needed to refocus on Burma, my research agenda included an ongoing large engagement with the Division of Archaeological Research, Department of Museums and Archaeology, Lao PDR Ministry of Information and Culture.

At the time of my initial interview at NIU, we were together completing a project in Hua Phanh Province to establish the country's first national archaeological park at the Keohintang menhirs, with the support of the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, US State Department.

Simultaneously, we were implementing —in cooperation with the French Foreign Ministry and INalCO Paris— “PIIL”, le Projet de l'inventoire iconographique Lao: of which Phase I comprised a new survey of Vat Sisaket in Vientiane. The only royal monastery of the former capital of the Lan Xang Kingdom still in more or less its original condition, the Sisaket museum contains a stunning collection of Lao bronze Buddha images filling the cloister, but also a vihaan covered with superb early nineteenth century wall paintings which had remained generally unrecorded, un-catalogued and un-interpreted.

Coming from a completely French research and teaching milieu, I knew nothing of the institutional culture of any American university, this one included, but I was certainly hoping to continue working on PIIL. How then to pull this off?

Well so far so good: three of my closest Lao collaborators on PIIL are here with us today; the current phase of our work at Sisaket is now also supported by the Ambassadors Fund, and the greatest appreciation is due to Northern Illinois University for facilitating all of this.

I want to especially thank Dr Rabindranath Bose, Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School —so personally knowledgable of South and Southeast Asian civilizations— for his unconditional support since I joined the NIU faculty.

And thanks too to Harold Kafer, Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, who has always been most careful of us few Asianists under his wing, and who is so generously hosting the Conference here in the School of Music for these three days. He will be welcoming us this evening to dinner at the University Museum and has offered the facilities of the School of Art for the Lao Film Festival later tonight.

My two Deans well know that while art and archaeology are seldom cash-cows for a college, when treated kindly they can deliver rare golden treasures... such as this Conference. Which itself was largely conceived and godfathered by Vinya Sysamouth —a key organizer of the FICLS's precursor, the Muang Lao symposium in 2003 in Berkeley— and by NIU Professor of Thai and Lao languages, Dr John Hartman. We always expected a small number of high caliber participants (of course), hoping for a hundred at most, but we never imagined it would surpass 400 registrants!

A word also for Deb Pierce of the NIU International Program, whose assistance to bringing the Lao delegation here, and to formalizing the upcoming Memoranda of Understanding between NIU and our Lao partner institutions, has been and will invaluable.

Ambassador Douglas Hartwick, now back in Washington as the State Department's coordinator of tsunami relief, had from the outset assured us of his material and moral support for this Conference, and with no small assistance from Jim Warren, Public Diplomacy Officer at the US Embassy Vientiane, made more than good on that promise. But official funding from State would not have sufficed to bring this off without two most generous and unexpected additional grants from the Asia Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. (A function, evidently, of Dr. Hartman's Old Boy Network.) Our thanks too to the Illinois Humanities Council for underwriting Conference media production.

Dr Susan Russell, the outstanding and outgoing Director of NIU's Center for Southeast Asian Research, and Julie Lamb, the Center's Outreach Coordinator, have —along with John Hartman— been working for several years now with the energetic leadership of the 15,000-strong Lao-American community here in northern Illinois: many of whom you will be meeting Saturday night at the spectacular cultural event being produced for us, and for themselves, in nearby Elgin. It's an extraordinary thing seeing them draw a balance between assimilating into the dominant society while actively conserving their own precious culture: especially for the younger generation who have little or no direct experience of the Lao homeland.

So under the auspicious sign of Boun Bang Fai, Sabaidee and bienvenue a vous tous. We welcome all of you to Northern Illinois University.