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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, January 24, 2002

New Bishop Museum head charts course

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Former White House science adviser Bill Brown, president of Bishop Museum, hopes for more cooperation between curators, scientists and public outreach programs.

Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

Bill Brown hasn't had this much fun since he drafted the presidential order that created the 84-million-acre Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem.

Brown, science adviser to President Bill Clinton's interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt from 1997 to 2001, was the architect of the reserve, the largest environmentally protected area in the nation.

Today, Brown's canvas is much smaller: the 17 acres of the Bishop Museum in Kalihi.

As the new president of the museum, this 54-year-old biologist-teacher-conservationist-lawyer is clearly enjoying the chance to protect other groups of endangered species.

They are the museum's educators, seen by critics as mere "show-biz" entertainers, scientists — dismissed by some as ivory tower specialists — and the curators — depicted as protectors of obscure and oversized collections.

Brown has heard the stories of competition among them in an era of declining dollars, "but I believe there is a synergy there," he said in a recent interview.

"A good museum has an active science program and has active protection of its collections, and the presence and the work of those scientists and curators feeds into the public education programs," he said.

"One of the attractions for me is the diversity of activities," he said, sitting in his office at a large round breakfast table — now protected by a glass top — which belonged to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, wife of museum founder Charles Reed Bishop.

"We have people that are actually going in and getting and studying insects, as well as people bringing dinosaur shows in here to show the kids.

"What I hope the people who are working for the museum are picking up on is I really want to help those scientists, I want to help the people who manage and keep the collections, and I want to help those who are really pursuing public programs.

"I want to help all three legs of the tripod, and find ways they can reinforce each other as they should."

His first major task, revealed last week, is to bring back to the Kalihi site the proposed science learning center that was to have been built in Kaka'ako.

Brown says he hopes that project will be a cornerstone of renewed purpose at the museum, and of cooperation among the education, research and collection activities there.

After soliciting input from more than 200 interested individuals, Brown envisions the new center's natural history exhibits as offering information about the oceans, and about the actual life of the land, tied closely to the museum's existing strengths.

"We have, for example, the largest collection of insects in the Pacific, and I think a little insect zoo would be good here, maybe partially robotic and partially real. We already have entomologists running around all over the place, and I want our collections to be reflected in the educational content — and I sense the entomologists like that. It's kind of exciting to them."

Also on the agenda will be a completely renovated planetarium and observatory, included in the $24 million first phase of museum construction along with the new 48,000-square-foot science learning center, Brown said.

That, and a $10 million IMAX theater under discussion for a second phase, will help enable the museum to protect and preserve its cultural collections in historic Hawaii Hall and other older buildings on the campus, he said.

He is talking with Kamehameha Schools about cooperative efforts to study the royal history of Hawai'i represented in the collections.

Direct and candid in conversation, Brown is unashamedly hands-on and very first-person. While he says his relationship with the board will evolve over time, he feels the volunteer members who hired him want him to take full executive responsibility.

In his first three months, the museum has abandoned plans to extend into Kaka'ako, for fear of facing costs for cleaning up contaminated soil there and incurring delays which could put a $5 million U.S. Energy Department grant for the learning center at risk.

He takes credit, or blame, for choosing a freeway corner site on campus for the new learning center, and has a vision of a real campus atmosphere in the center of the property.

The museum has scrapped a plan to demolish and replace its observatory, planetarium, restaurant, shop and office quarters.

A California native who says he has spent most of his life fighting for the environment in Washington, D.C., Brown got to know outdoor Hawai'i almost 30 years ago as a University of Hawai'i Ph.D. candidate in zoology, living and studying on Manana Island (also called Rabbit Island) off Makapu'u. He earned his doctorate in 1973.

He visited the museum in those days, and now he recalls, "I was fascinated — I love the feel of age, and history — and there seemed to be nothing else like it in Hawai'i."

That fascination came back when retiring museum president Donald Duckworth met Brown at a wedding reception last June and mentioned that the job was open.

Brown added his name to the field of 178 candidates and was named president in August.