Founded in 1927, the Honolulu Academy of Arts is Hawai‘i’s largest private presenter of visual arts programs, with an internationally recognized collection of more than 60,000 works spanning 5,000 years. In addition, film and concert programs, lectures, art classes and workshops make the Honolulu Academy of Arts the city’s cultural hub.
The Academy's permanent collection includes more than 20,000 works of Asian art, with galleries dedicated to Japan, China, Korea, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The collection is especially strong in Chinese and Japanese paintings, Korean ceramics, Buddhist and Shinto sculpture, South and Southeast Asian sculpture and decorative arts, and textiles from across Asia. The crown jewel of the Academy’s Asian art collection is the James A. Michener Collection of more than 10,000 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, the third largest collection of its kind in the United States.
The Academy’s permanent collection also includes European and American paintings, sculptures, decorative arts and textiles, as well as more than 15,000 works on paper, comprising the largest concentration of works in the European and American collection ranging in date from the Renaissance to the present. Among the highlights are major Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modernist paintings by Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and James McNeill Whistler. Significant works of art from the 20th century to the present include paintings and sculptures by Lee Bontecou, Alexander Calder, Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Yan Pei Ming, Isamu Noguchi, Nam June Paik, John Singer Sargent, David Smith, Masami Teraoka and Won Ju Lim.
Finally, the Academy traces the history of art in Hawai‘i, with a gallery dedicated to Hawaiian traditional arts, art by Hawaii artists, and art of Hawai‘i (including paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe).
The Honolulu Academy of Arts is the only art museum in Hawai'i accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM). AAM has been bringing museums together since 1906, helping develop standards and best practices, gathering and sharing knowledge, and providing advocacy on issues of concern to the entire museum community. AAM is dedicated to ensuring that museums remain a vital part of the American landscape, connecting people with the greatest achievements of the human experience in the past, present, and future.
AAM is the only organization comprehensively representing museums and the staff who work for and with them. AAM currently represents more than 15,000 individual museum professional and volunteer staff members, 3,000 institutions, and 300 corporate members. Individual members span the entire range of museum occupations, including directors, curators, registrars, educators, exhibition designers, public relations officers, development officers, security managers, trustees, and volunteers.
