The Lao Heritage Foundation was inspired by the work and efforts of Tiao Somsanith Nithakhong to preserve and promote Lao culture throughout the world. LHF was incorporated in September of 2004, less than a year ago. The purpose of LHF is to preserve and promote Lao culture through the arts. The uniqueness of this foundation is the efforts to connect the younger generation with the old and Lao people across the globe.

As a member of the younger generation, I feel that we know very little about our own culture and heritage. There are limited resources available on Lao culture and art in a language that the younger generation can access-English. Therefore, the younger generation feels an urgent need to start preserving by recording the knowledge of the older generation on paper so that we can enjoy the knowledge and pass it down to the generation to come. LHF is lucky and proud to have access to a great source of knowledge about Lao culture and heritage through Prince Somsanith Nithakhong. He is not only a mastered embroider, but also a painter, an artist, and a collector of Lao art and artifacts. With his work with various organization and preservation efforts, Prince Somsanith’s expertise and understanding of Lao culture and its arts is invaluable.

One of the first projects that LHF is working on is printing a book of the complete collection of 62 temples of Luang Prabang with their history in English, Lao, and French. We hope to complete this project by April 2006.

The work of preservation and promotion of Lao culture and heritage is a big job and it can only be accomplished with everyone’s support and assistance. As part of the younger generation, we look to our elders to guide us and assist us in finding our ways toward understanding our culture and heritage and to share that knowledge and beauty with the rest of the world.
I would like to introduce to you Tiao Somsanith Nithakhong, our first partner to help us work towards our mission to preserve and promote Lao culture and heritage. Prince Nithakhong Somsanith was born in Luang Prabang, the former royal capital city of Laos, one of the 730 World Heritage sites. Prince Somsanith graduated from the National School of Medicine in Vientiane, Laos, before leaving his homeland in 1985 to continue his higher education in France. He received his Master's degree from the Institute of Visual Arts in L'Universite d'Orlean, and his Ph.D. in Psychology from L'Universite de Sorbonne. He has made France his adopted home, and pursued a career in mental health counseling in Orleans until summer of 2003. He now devotes his time predominantly to his art.
Though he has been occupied with other aspects of life, Prince Somsanith has held on to his childhood memories; he has deep passion for Lao folk arts. He is a self-taught folk artist and feels it is a special gift that has been passed on to him from many generations. He spends countless hours painting the sceneries of Laos, gently carves woods, and creates traditional crafts. He especially devotes most of his time to the very fine art of gold thread embroidery of the royal Lao palace, with precise and calculated stitches and movements, giving life to collars, skirts, pillows and many other religious objects.
Prince Somsanith is an internationally known embroidery artist. In the last ten years he has exhibited his works in Germany, England, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Today, he continues to exhibit his work of preservation and promotion of Lao arts in Laos, the United States of America and France. He opened a school of embroidery in Luang Prabang in an effort to pass on the skills of gold thread embroidery. He is currently collaborating with other artists on the Quiet In the Land project. The project is funded by the metropolitan museum of art. Working with Dinh Le, a Vietnamese-American artist who shares Tiao Somsanith’s passion for cultural preservation, he hopes to bridge the past and future, and the old and young; this is Tiao Somsanith’s lifelong goal. The project is scheduled to complete in late 2006, and will be exhibited in Luang Prabang in 2006 and 2007.