Director's dedication fills Academy of Arts

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

George Ellis, who is retiring as director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts after 20 years, oversaw the conversion of the museum from a mom-and-pop establishment into "a museum for all." The wall behind him honors donors. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser Stephen Little is new director George Ellis, whose official retirement date from the Honolulu Academy of Arts is Feb. 1, 2003, is being succeeded by Stephen Little, former curator of Asian art at the museum. Little, who worked at the academy from 1989 to 1994 and was most recently curator of Asian art at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been working alongside Ellis for some months now. Ellis will be feted at this weekend's Kama'aina Christmas event, which is sold out.

But for George Ellis, retiring this month as director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, it was a gentle journey, handed from one generous mentor to another, one piece of art to another, until he arrived in the job he's held for the last 20 years.

In an interview Monday, his 65th birthday, Ellis brimmed over with the passion for art that has stayed with him through years of less exciting management tasks, happily showing a reporter and photographer through an exhibit, called "Committed Generosity," of art donated over the past five years.

"This is what art is all about," he said, gesturing around the impossibly eclectic collection, in which a 1,000-year-old piece from South America is placed next to a 1940s Japanese oil painting. "It is such an extravagant feast. It provides the opportunity not only for education, but also you can breathe in the beauty of the whole world."

Ellis grew up in a household with no diplomas on the walls. His father left school at 14 to work in the coal mines. His mother came from a "red-dirt farm" in eastern Alabama. They encouraged him to throw himself into his schoolwork because "if I didn't do well, I wouldn't do well," he recalled.

Fortunately, waiting for him in high school was an art teacher named Caroline Dick, who, on sketching trips, taught her students to observe shape, form, line and color and to find beauty even in a landscape that Ellis says was "a very real candidate for environmental cleanup." At a small school, with a graduating class of 150, she had created an art-major program, changing lives in the process, Ellis said.

After he earned his degree in Asian art history from the University of Chicago, Ellis began teaching art in the Birmingham school system, but a friend encouraged him to return to Chicago for a master's degree. Then another acquaintance extended a hand: The director of the Museum of Art in Birmingham, whom Ellis had met when he was president of the Junior Museum Association in high school, encouraged him to become assistant director.

There, he encountered a collection of African, Oceanic and American Indian art. "They were interesting because they were completely different, created for different purposes (than European art). But mostly, I responded to the beauty of the objects. It was just wonderful stuff," Ellis recalled.

This interest eventually lured him to study non-Western art in the doctoral program at the University of California-Los Angeles. There, he said, "I set out to open every drawer" to see the more than 125,000 art objects from Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the UCLA collection. And there, he found a number of pieces of primitive art from the Philippines that fascinated him all the more because he could find little written about them. "Not enough to satisfy my curiosity anyway," he recalled.

Ellis didn't know it then, but he had made the final link in the chain that would bring him to Hawai'i: A study project on the indigenous art of the Ifugao people of the Philippines, would route him through Hawai'i several times. In the late 1970s, while he was working at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History, he was responsible for the northern Philippines segment of a major exhibition, "The People and Art of the Philippines," which traveled to the academy for a showing.

By 1982, when James W. Foster retired as director of the academy, Ellis knew Hawai'i and the academy well. He had met and married Nancy, who worked with him at UCLA, and their son, Joshua, was about ready for kindergarten.

Ellis said one thing that drew him to the academy, and which he has tried to foster, is founder Anna Rice Cooke's commitment to making it "a museum for all."

"Diversity is such a key word in art circles today, but it's always been our mission here," Ellis said.

Said Nancy Ellis: "George likes a carnival atmosphere. He likes a lot of things going on, and he has a sincere appreciation for art forms from all over the world. The various ethnic festivals that have found a home at the academy are an example of ways that doors have been opened to people."

When he took over in Honolulu, Ellis found an organization that still had a "mom-and-pop feel," where most galleries weren't climate-controlled, where the guards were more greeters than security experts and the budget didn't run to such amenities as a proper loading dock.

"We were still in the blue-tarp era," he recalled. Every time a container load came in with a traveling exhibit, the installations crew had to manhandle the pieces in under the shelter of a blue tarp, and, if a large piece was being installed on the second floor, consult a structural engineer to be sure the floor wouldn't come crashing down.

Under Ellis, the all-important back of the house has been air-conditioned, the Asian wing renovated, the Academy Art Center created at the former Linakona School, the award-winning Luce Pavilion Complex erected and the Western Wing revamped. There are a few projects left unfinished, but these — and the future of the museum — Ellis leaves to his successor, Stephen Little.

He says light-heartedly that one of his proudest moments was the first time a 40-foot truck off-loaded into the new, oversized elevator.

Samuel A. Cooke, chairman of the academy's board of trustees, summarizes the Ellis years at the academy as "exceptional."

"I would guess he has raised in excess of $50 million for the institution," Cooke said.

At the urging of Ellis' project assistant, Timothy Choy, Cooke suggested to the board that a new gallery be named for Ellis; the trustees unanimously approved.

The honors are coming fast now: the 2002 Alfred Preis Award from the Hawai'i Alliance for Arts Education, a Maile Award from the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau for promoting cultural tourism and — he tears up a bit when he's asked about this — the new George and Nancy Ellis Gallery for the Art of the Philippines, to open at the academy next May.

The best part, says Nancy, is that her husband will curate the collection, meaning working directly with the artworks — something he's missed as a manager. "This is going to be really fun for him."

Once that project is done, Ellis said, he'll return, in a way, to Caroline Dick's classroom, taking up painting after years away from the brush. He'll fish and travel. He also intends to help the State Foundation on Culture & the Arts step into its new role as operator of a museum. And he'll continue to advocate art education, which he sees as vital to a well-rounded life.