Bishop Museum | |
 The Hawaiian Hall at the Bishop Museum contains the world's largest collection of Polynesian artifacts. | |
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| Location | 1525 Bernice Street,Honolulu, Hawaii |
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| Coordinates | 21°20′00.0″N157°52′14.2″W / 21.333333°N 157.870611°W /21.333333; -157.870611 |
| Built | 1889 |
| Architect | William F. Smith |
| Architectural style | Richardsonian Romanesque |
| Website | www |
| NRHP reference No. | 82002500[1] |
| Added to NRHP | July 26, 1982 |
TheBernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, designated theHawaiʻi State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is amuseum ofhistory andscience in the historicKalihi district ofHonolulu on the Hawaiian island ofOʻahu. Founded in 1889, it is the largest museum in Hawaiʻi and has the world's largest collection ofPolynesian cultural artifacts and natural history specimens. Besides the comprehensive exhibits ofHawaiian cultural material, the museum's total holding of natural history specimens exceeds 24 million,[2] of which the entomological collection alone represents more than 13.5 million specimens (making it the third-largest insect collection in the United States). TheIndex Herbariorum code assigned to Herbarium Pacificum of this museum isBISH[3] and this abbreviation is used when citing housedherbarium specimens.
The museum complex is home to theRichard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center.
Charles Reed Bishop (1822–1915), a businessman and philanthropist, co-founder of theFirst Hawaiian Bank andKamehameha Schools, built the museum in memory of his late wife, PrincessBernice Pauahi Bishop (1831–1884). Born into the royal family, she was the last legal heir of theKamehameha Dynasty, which had ruled theKingdom of Hawaiʻi between 1810 and 1872. Bishop had originally intended the museum to house family heirlooms passed down to him through the royal lineage of his wife.
Bishop hiredWilliam Tufts Brigham as the first curator of the museum; Brigham later served as director from 1898 until his retirement in 1918.
The museum was built on the original boys' campus of Kamehameha Schools, an institution created at the bequest of the Princess, to benefitnative Hawaiian children; she gave details in her last will and testament. In 1898, Bishop had Hawaiian Hall and Polynesian Hall built on the campus, in the popularRichardsonian Romanesque architectural style. ThePacific Commercial Advertiser newspaper dubbed these two structures as "the noblest buildings of Honolulu".
Today both halls are listed on theNational Register of Historic Places. Hawaiian Hall is home to a completesperm-whale skeleton, accompanied by apapier-mâché body suspended above the central gallery. Along the walls are prizedkoa wood display cases; today this wood in total is worth more than the original Bishop Museum buildings.
The museum is accessible on public transit:TheBus Routes A, 1, 2, 7, 10.
In 1924, American millionaire, Medford Ross Kellum, outfitted a four mastedbarquentine for a scientific expedition which, even the naming of the shipKaimiloa, was left entirely to the scientific circles of Honolulu.[4]
The goal of the expedition was a five-year exploration of many of the then inaccessible spots of the Pacific. Under the auspices of the Bishop Museum, a group of Hawaiʻi scientists joined the ship: Gerrit P. Wilder, botanist; Mrs. Wilder, historian;Kenneth Emory, ethnologist; Dr.Armstrong Sperry, writer and illustrator; and Dr. Stanley Ball.
The vessel was a complete floating laboratory, possibly the most complete of any craft that has undertaken a similar trip. Bottles, crates, and boxes were stowed below, along with gallons of preservatives for insects and plant specimens for the Bishop Museum.
The goals of the expedition were exhaustive:
In 1940, Kamehameha Schools moved to its new campus in Kapālama, allowing the museum to expand at the original campus site. Bishop Hall, first built for use by the school, was adapted for museum use.[6] Most other school structures were razed, and new museum facilities were constructed. By the late 1980s, the Bishop Museum had become the largest natural and cultural history institution in Polynesia.
In 1988, construction of the Castle Memorial Building was begun. Dedicated on January 13, 1990, Castle Memorial Building houses all the major traveling exhibits that come to the Bishop Museum from institutions around the world.
TheRichard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center opened in November 2005. The building is designed as a learning center for children, and includes many interactive exhibits focused onmarine science,volcanology, and related sciences.[7][8]
In November 2017,Christie's Paris auctioned a 20-inch wooden kiʻi, described as depicting the Hawaiian war godKu ka'ili moku and dating to circa 1780–1820, and having been in a private French collection since the 1940s.[9] Salesforce CEOMarc Benioff purchased the statue for $7.5 million (equivalent to $9,621,000 in 2024), significantly exceeding the estimate of $2.3–3.4 million.[10] He donated the kiʻi to the Museum in May 2018, stating that the artifact "belonged in Hawaii for the education and benefit of its people."[10]
In February 2019, the statue's authenticity was publicly questioned by several Pacific art experts, includingSmithsonian Institution curator Adrienne Kaeppler[11] and Munich-based dealer Daniel Blau.[12] Although Christie's defended the attribution,[11] the museum conducted scientific testing, including radiocarbon dating that placed the carving between 1669 and 1944, a range too broad to resolve the authenticity questions.[12] Museum president Melanie Ide acknowledged the questions about provenance while stating that curators were conducting additional research.[11] Despite the controversy, the kiʻi served as the centerpiece of the museum's "Kini Ke Kua: Transformative Images" exhibition from September 2019 to March 2020.[13]
The museum library has one of the most extensive collections of books, periodicals, newspapers and special collections concerned with Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The archives hold the results of extensive studies done by museum staff in the Pacific Basin, as well as manuscripts, photographs, artwork, oral histories, commercial sound recordings and maps.
When Bishop Museum opened to the public in June 1891, its library consisted of but a few shelves of books in what is today the Picture Gallery.[14]
Many of Hawaiʻi's royalty, including Bernice Pauahi Bishop andQueen Liliʻuokalani, deposited their personal papers at Bishop Museum. Manuscripts in the collection also include scientific papers, genealogical records, and memorabilia.
The book collection consists of approximately 50,000 volumes with an emphasis on the cultural and natural history of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, with subject strengths in anthropology, music, botany, entomology, and zoology. The library provides extra access to the collection of published diaries, narratives, memoirs, and other writings relating to 18th- and 19th-century Hawaiʻi.
On the campus of Bishop Museum is the Jhamandas Watumull Planetarium, an educational and research facility devoted to theastronomical sciences and the oldestplanetarium in Polynesia.
Also on the campus is Pauahi Hall, home to theJ. Linsley Gressit Center for Research in Entomology, which houses some 14 million prepared specimens ofinsects and relatedarthropods, including over 16,500 primary types. It is the third-largest entomology collection in the United States and the eighth-largest in the world. An active research facility, Pauahi Hall is not open to the public.
Nearby is Pākī Hall, home to theHawaiʻi Sports Hall of Fame, a museum library and archives, which are open to the public.
In 1992, the Hawaii State legislature created theHawaii Biological Survey (HBS) as a program of the Bishop Museum. The HBS surveys, collects, inventories, studies, and maintains the reference collection of every plant and animal found in Hawaiʻi. It currently holds more than 4 million specimens in its collections.
From 1988 until 2009, the Bishop Museum also administered theHawaiʻi Maritime Center in downtown Honolulu.[15] Built on a former private pier ofHonolulu Harbor for the royal family, the center was the premier maritime museum in thePacific Rim with artifacts in relation to the Pacificwhaling industry and the Hawaiʻisteamship industry.
On theBig Island of Hawaiʻi, the Bishop Museum administers theAmy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, specializing in indigenous Hawaiian plant life.
Since 1920, the Secretariat of thePacific Science Association (PSA), founded that year as an independent regional, non-governmental, scholarly organization, has been based at Bishop Museum. It seeks to advance science and technology in support of sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific.
From 1968 until September 2008, the Bishop Museum owned theFalls of Clyde, the oldestsail-drivenoil tanker, which was moored at theHawaiʻi Maritime Center. In early 2007, the ship was closed to public tours for safety reasons and in order to facilitate repairs to the deteriorating tank, which frequently caused the ship to list (tilt) dramatically. Marine experts conducted a thorough inspection of the ship. Between 1998 and 2008 the museum incurred more than $2 million in preservation costs.[16]
The museum threatened to sink the ship by the end of 2008 unless private funds were raised for a perpetual care endowment.[17] On September 28, 2008, ownership was transferred to the non-profit group, Friends of Falls of Clyde, which intends to restore the ship.[18]
In October of that same year, the Bishop Museum was criticized for having raised $600,000 to preserve the ship, and spent only about half that on the ship, and that for sandblasting that was determined to damage the integrity of the vessel. The media also pointed out other questionable spending decisions.[19]
They are prepared to sit around the fire and listen to the ancient legends of the tribal chiefs of the great civilization that existed thousands— maybe million—of years ago; of the cities and the people.
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