Housed in a large colonial building which functioned prior to 1945 as a boarding school for the children of French Indochinese officials, the Việt Nam Fine Art Museum began life in 1962 as an exhibition hall for Vietnamese artworks and became fully operational as a museum in 1966. Since the refurbishment and expansion of the museum in 1995 its collection has increased to a total of over 20,000 art works, some 10,000 of which are displayed at any one time, according to different periods and genres. On the first floor there are prehistoric engravings, tools, sculptures and artworks produced between the 11th and 19th centuries. The second floor displays works from the first half of the 20th century, lacquer paintings and sculptures, whilst the third floor showcases silk tapestries and 20th-century oil paintings and sculptures.