Bishop Museum gets closer to tourists
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
What thoughts passed through the minds of the first Polynesian voyagers to lay eyes on Waikiki 1,600 years ago is anybody's guess.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
But today, with the opening of the Bishop Museum at Kalia — five miles diamondhead of the Bishop Museum in Kalihi — visitors to the world-famous beach will get an eye-opening look at old Waikiki.
Designer administrative assistant Joyce Jeffers prepares a display of a royal bed for the Bishop Museum's exhibition space in Waikiki, the old playground of the ali'i.
"This museum will feature the history of Waikiki," Hi'ilani Shibata, supervisor of programming for the new museum, said yesterday. "We are bringing back the authentic culture and history, and we're staying away from the glitz and glamour."
Which is not to say the satellite museum can totally avoid the setting's internationally recognized romance. It resides, after all, at what was once the family home of surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku.
Located at the Hilton Hawaiian Village's new Kalia Tower, this indoor/
outdoor interactive cultural center will present priceless treasures from the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum to an audience that seldom works its way to Kalihi.
"Waikiki was the playground of the ali'i," said Peter Schall, managing director of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which furnished the space for the museum. "This has always been a special place in the Hawaiian culture. And for visitors who come here — many for only a short period of time — what is there to take home? It's the memories.
| The Bishop Museum at Kalia | |
| • | When: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily (except Christmas). |
| • | Where: Hilton Hawaiian Village, 2005 Kalia Road, Waikiki. |
| • | Cost: $11.95 adults; $9.95 children 4-12; free to children 3 and under. |
| • | Information: 949-4321 |
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The exhibit area, which traces Waikiki and the rest of Hawai'i from A.D. 400 through the modern era, focuses on ali'i and their everyday life. It includes feather lei, capes and other personal items that belonged to Hawaiian nobility.
Other artifacts include historic surfboards, stone tools, and fishing nets and woven traps, as well as wooden bowls, kapa fabric, mats and decorative ornaments.
Long before an 'ukulele or a slack-key guitar ever found their way here, Hawaiians performed on shark-skin and double gourd drums and nose flutes. At special "Hawaiian Sounds" demonstrations, guests will be invited test their musical abilities on these instruments.
Other demonstrations include "Hawaiian Stars and Skies," a presentation on how ancient seafarers charted their course by the stars.
"Waikiki represents all of the living places in Hawai'i," said Tom Cummings," education specialist for the museum. "It had water, beach, fish, large agricultural area. ...
"We will show visitors that this is the way people right here once gathered their food, made their clothes, built their dwellings and entertained themselves."
And he hopes it will motivate some Waikiki visitors to take a five-mile trip to Kalihi and the main museum.
