When the Honolulu Academy of Arts opened on April 8, 1927, more than 4,000 eager people jammed the museum during a three-hour period.
They had come to see the 4,500 works of art donated by the museum's founder and benefactor, Anna Rice Cooke, who personally greeted them at the entrance with a smile and a handshake.
Cooke had started the collection when her home was standing on that land, which she gave to the museum. She also donated a $25,000 endowment and the artworks when she outgrew all the space she and her children had to store the art.
The idea conceived by Cooke, her daughter, Alice Spaulding, and her daughter-in-law, Dagmar Cooke, was to create a place open to the public that would inspire children — where they would discover their "own cultural legacy and wake to the ideals embodied in the arts of their neighbors."
Through the years, both individual pieces and entire collections were donated. The museum has grown to more than 40,000 works of art, 32 galleries and several gardens, ponds and courtyards. More than 250,000 people visit each year to see a collection recognized internationally for its quality and diversity.
Its holdings are equally divided between Western and Asian art.
Among its special collections are the James A. Michener collection of 5,400 Japanese ukiyo-e prints; the Hawaiian collection, which presents a pictorial record of Hawai'i from the time of European contact to the present day; and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation collection of Italian paintings.
