I am a student pursuing my masters degree in Museology at the University of Washington in Seattle. As part of my course requirement, I am doing an internship at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (HAA) for a period of five weeks where I am engaged in different departments every day. So far, I have visited six departments and I must say from all the museums that I have visited up to this time, I think HAA top my list.

On my first day, I made a tour in all the departments at the museum. That was the time when I realized how huge the museum was. From the outside, the academy appeared small but when I began exploring, I found myself amazed firstly by the extraordinary collections of the Academy and secondly, by the space and size of the Academy.

I spent my first two days at the Conservation department where I mostly observed the work that was being carried out at the studio. I always enjoyed conservation work and just observing them perform their work on the pieces was interesting for me. The next few days was spent at the Deputy Director’s office, the Textile Department, Education Department, and the Visitor Service Department. From all the above departments I visited, I enjoyed working in the Conservation and the Textile department where I had hands-on experience with the materials.

I still have 16 departments that I have to visit and I am looking forward to visiting each department and learning how each department functions.

In preparation for the annual World Art Bazaar held in November, Academy Shop Manager Kathee Hoover has started getting ready for her month-long buying trip. The bazaar is exactly what it sounds like—a sale of carefully selected antique and contemporary handcrafted items from around the globe. (Pictured are some of the cool items she scored from last year’s trip.) Hoover goes on a “warehouse crawl” of more than a hundred importers who specialize in goods from specific regions, such as Thailand and Peru. Her main criteria when buying items is the quality of the design and value for Honolulu customers. With that in mind, she is trying something new this year—she is accepting requests. Dying for a string of Indian rubies or a Bundu helmet mask from Sierra Leone?  Email Kathee at khoover@honoluluacademy.org by July 8.  She leaves on July 9. Be sure to include your phone number and email address along with your request. Hoover says she will try her best to locate the items.

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This afternoon a branch broke off from one of the monkeypod trees on the front lawn and crashed into the windshield of a passing automobile. Thankfully neither the driver nor her granddaughter in the back seat were injured. She is an amazing driver to have kept her car under control. The police and KITV quickly arrived. Left behind, stuck in the tree, was a smaller branch. A firetruck arrived to disentangle it. The firemen decided to do this by shooting a firehose up at the branch. The water barely reached the offending stick. So they then took out the bigger, more powerful hose and shot it up at the tree. Still no go. I asked one of the firemen: “So, this method works well for you?” “We never tried it before. Don’t tell anybody!” We laughed. Ha ha ha. Anyway, then a second firetruck—the bigger kind with a ladder—arrived. By this time the traffic on Beretania is backed up two blocks. Yikes. They motored the ladder up, a brawny fireman climbed up and disengaged the branch. Possible future mishap avoided. Firemen are go!

Tree trimmers are coming on Monday to cut back all branches overhanging Beretania Street.

Museums across the country, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, are delving into their permanent collections for exhibitions, rather than bringing in expensive productions. All museums are facing hard times, and mining the vaults saves money. It also is a great way for the public to see treasures that are not normally on display. The New York Times wrote a whole article about it.                                                                                               The Academy is no exception. Theresa Papanikolas, our curator of European and American Art who joined the Academy last fall, has been doing “vault archeology” for the exhibition “From Whistler to Warhol: Modernism on Paper” that will open next spring. Her research, she reports, has given her a chance to mine our stellar collection of 19th- and 20th-century prints and drawings.

She has discovered that the Academy has an entire drawer full of Picassos. As well as a beautiful print by Sonia Delaunay, wife of Robert, whose ‘Rainbow’ (1913) is on the cover of the Academy’s “Selected Works” catalogue.

“But my favorite discovery,” said Papanikolas, whose specialty is Surrealism and Dada (her latest book is Doctrinal Nourishment: Art and Anarchism in the Time of James Ensor), “has been a cache of Surrealist prints, including work by Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Stanley William Hayter, André Masson, and Joan Miró!”

As she goes through the drawers of the print vault, Papanikolas organizes work into sections (Cubism, German Expressionism, Pop Art, etc.). “That helps me to narrow down what to include based on what will work visually.”

Just went to see the Charles Bartlett works in the Jhamandas Watumull Gallery. I love his prints and drawings—he’s like Beatrix Potter for grown ups. The works are just so damn charming, with their precise lines and seductive colors. Asian Art Curator Shawn Eichman’s juxtapositioning of the Englishman’s renderings of the Indian scenes with a dancing Krishna and the rest of our Indian art collection is brilliant. It’s total “Passage to India” through art—an Englishman in the land of nirvana. This 17-century lingam cover seems to be staring right at Bartlett’s print of the Taj Mahal.

Up until today, a large, two-piece sculpture sat on the Diamond Head end of the front lawn of the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The museum purchased the Jack Zajac bronze—”Ram’s Skull and Horn”—in 1976. Where’d it go?
Theresa Papanikolas, Curator of European and American art, has the scoop:
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In a corner of Artists of Hawai‘i 2009 is a video installation by David J. Merritt. It’s a neverending loop from Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 New Wave classic “Le Samouraï,” in which a heartbreakingly young and handsome Alain Delon is sitting in a car methodically going through a ring of like 60 keys to see which one fits the ignition. One, two, three, four, then it starts over. It is hypnotic, and the longer I watch, I can feel my anxiety mount. Like trying to get through the stack of papers on my desk, and by the end of the day it’s the same height. Called “Pendant” (scroll down to eighth row), the work is one of my favorites in the exhibition. It’s also one of the pieces that would be right at home in “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,” the New Museum exhibition co-curated by Artists of Hawai’i juror Laura Hoptman (I was lucky enough to see the show last month). And as a matter of fact, Merritt will soon move to New York, where he’ll start grad school at NYU—he’ll be in studio arts.
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For his work in Artists of Hawai‘i 2009, Stephen Niles drew one of New York artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s cook-for-you installations in the David Zwirner Gallery. Tiravanija made his name in the mid-1990s with these events, and Niles, who lived in New York at the time, recently rendered one of them in pastels. On his blog, Niles writes of the drawing, “The image is a pastel drawing of mine titled ‘Seen and Heard’ describing itself and a scene and herd situation. … Rirkrit built a plywood box café and served Thai food for free. The group pictured seemed bright and engaged reveling in the gesture.” 

“Seen and Heard” is on view in Artists of Hawai‘i through Aug. 16. Stephen Niles, along with Russell Sunabe and Rujunko Pugh, will speak about his work at a members-only Artist Gallery Talk on July 15 at 6pm. It is the first in a new series for members that the Academy is launching. Will include wine—you get to “think and drink.” If you don’t want to miss it, why not join the museum?

Dustin Lance Black, left, took the Oscar for best original screenplay for “Milk.” Now he drops into paradise for the 20th Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival at Doris Duke Theatre. Talk about star power. The great lineup of films takes you from a Honolulu beauty salon (Kevyn Fong’s “Beauty Brawl“—”oh shit, oh shit…BEAUTY BRAWL!”) to a day in the lives of South London hunks (Adrian Shergold’s “Clapham Junction“). No matter what gender you like in your bed, these are films you want to see.

Are you a filmmaker? The fest is sponsoring a “Show Us Your Rainbow” contest—upload your video on YouTube by May 20. 

See the Star Bulletin article on the festival.
See the full schedule and buy tickets online.

Festival organizers Jeff Davis, Connie Florez, Jack Law and Richard Reese are on the cover of this month’s Expression! magazine.

Last night’s members’ opening of Artists of Hawai‘i 2009 was a fabulous climax to two years of work. In a stroke of luck former European and American Art Curator Michael Rooks, who initiated the cool changes to the now-biannual exhibition, was in from New York, mingling with his successor Theresa Papanikolas and special projects assistant curator Rui Sasaki who orchestrated the show. More than 1,000 people came to see what’s new with Hawai‘i artists. (That’s Joe Bright, with lei, in front of his popular “On the Road Through Burma,” which originally appeared in the exhibition “And Justice for All” at thirtyninehotel last October.)
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