We began our day at the Honolulu Museum of Art,  which was founded by Anna Rice Cooke 90 years ago. Mrs. Cooke started collecting art in the 1880s to decorate her home. She became an astute and visionary art connoisseur. When the art collection became too large, she decided to create Hawaii's first visual arts museum, which would reflect the islands' multicultural make-up.

From an initial gift of 4,500 works of art from Mrs. Cooke in 1927, the Honolulu Academy of Arts’ permanent collection has grown to more than 50,000 objects. The collection is at the heart of the museum’s mission to collect, preserve, interpret, and teach the visual arts for future generations. It represents all the major cultures of Hawai‘i and spans 5,000 years, from ancient times to today. I'm sharing just a few of my favorites.
Female Figure is dated from 2500 - 2400 B.C. and is carved in marble. Wild to think of something so ancient and in such pristine condition.
The center painting, Arrangement in Black No. 5: Lady Meux (1881), was created by James McNeill Whistler. It's good to see he didn't just paint his mother.
There was something about Henri Matisse's Annelies, White Tulips, and Anemones.
There really was something for everyone at HoMA. I really liked Roy Lichtenstein's Woman Contemplating Yellow Cup. Steve, not so much.
Hi! (1928) by Alexander Calder just made me smile.
Kaili Chun and Hongtao Zhou's Net_work, 2017 was made even more interesting as a modern dance troupe performed within the installation.
Dale Chihuly's Reef just seemed right here in Hawai'i.
The Museum's Asian art collection reflects Hawai‘i's geographical location between East and West and its multicultural population. Considered to be one of the most important Asian collections in American museums, it includes more than 23,000 objects by artists and artisans from China, Japan, Korea, India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The museum's holdings are particularly noted for the extensive and excellent representation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean art.


Recognizing the importance of Islam as one of the world’s most prominent and widespread religious beliefs, the Academy has a gallery solely dedicated to Islamic art from a rich diversity of international cultures. The works of art on display in the Islamic Gallery come from the Academy’s permanent holdings and the collection of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (more about this in Pt. 2).

I found the detail on this Maternity figure from Borneo, c. 200 B.C., to be incredible. Each piece had such uniqueness. We've been to many excellent art museums and we found much to appreciate about this one.