State museum opens to wide-eyed audience
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Sarah Roberts, 9, of Mo'ili'ili, was the first person to enter the new Hawai'i State Art Museum after festive grand opening ceremonies yesterday.
"I'm excited," she said. "Amazed."
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Mom Erika Teska added the suggestion, inspired.
Sarah Roberts, 9, was the first to enter the new Hawaii State Art Museum, which opened officially yesterday with an arts festival that offered free entry to museums from Honolulu Harbor to the Academy of Arts.
Sarah's wonder was matched by hundreds of others who, sneakers and slippers squeaking on the hardwood floors, giggled and gushed their way through a stunning 360-piece exhibition chosen from the state's collection of 5,000 works by Hawai'i artists.
Gov. Ben Cayetano, credited with securing the building for $22.5 million from an investor who paid $80 million, urged art patrons and practitioners to lobby future lawmakers to expand the new showcase from its second-story quarters to all four floors of the old Armed Services YMCA at Hotel and Richards streets.
One floor alone was almost more than Kaua'i mixed media artist Kimberlin Blackburn could bear.
"My heart is about to burst," she said of the display that included her work. "This is a great day for the past, the present and the future of the arts in Hawai'i."
The dream of a state art museum goes back to at least 1967, when Hawai'i became the first state in the nation to pass a public art law setting aside 1 percent of the cost of all state buildings for the acquisition and commissioning of works of visual art to beautify and humanize the built environment.
The dream of buying the old Y building, which developer Chris Hemmeter made his headquarters before falling on hard times, dates to at least 1980, Cayetano said.
That year, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, then-Rep. Cayetano tried to get the state to buy the building for $8 million.
When all four floors are filled with paintings and sculpture, Cayetano said, the HiSAM will become "Hawai'i's little version of New York's Metropolitan Museum."
Yesterday, the governor turned the "people's museum" over to the citizens of Hawai'i, 800 of whom had obtained opening day tickets issued to prevent overcrowding the free facility on its first day of operation.
Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, except state and federal holidays (such as Election Day tomorrow).
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On the front lawn, artists represented in the collection, such as Satoru Abe and John Wisnosky, helped visitors create their own masterpieces as musical groups played from a makeshift stage in the garden.
On opening day of the Hawaii State Art Museum, visitors Keiko Kubota, left, and Noriko Kasaharo of Honolulu chuckle at a piece by Masami Teraoka. Hundreds toured the new facility in the former Hemmeter Building downtown.
Richards Street was closed for an array of food tents and tables where the foot-weary feasted on burgers, kalua pig and garlic fries.
The new museum was the center of a cultural celebration that overflowed the capitol district, offering free tours of museums from the Maritime Center on the waterfront to the Honolulu Academy of Arts on Beretania Street.
Like that grande dame of visual arts, the HiSAM promises visitor and resident alike a refuge to refresh the spirit, said Thomas Klobe, director of the University of Ha-wai'i Art Gallery and designer of the new exhibition and gallery.
"People coming downtown on other business can stop in for 20 minutes to see a bit of the exhibition if they like," Klobe said. "Because it's free, you don't have that feeling that you have to see everything at once to get your money's worth."
Klobe stood near the exit of the galleries like a theater producer listening for whispers from the departing audience.
He was not disappointed.
"I really enjoyed the way the labels offer you just enough information to interest you in the work, but not so much that your eyes glaze over," said a woman who promised to return next time she has to come downtown to see her dentist.
"The labels were researched and written to make the art as accessible as possible to all the people," Klobe said. "We didn't want to end up with scholarly notes understood only by other curators and specialists."
Klobe also fought an early plan to have the exhibition "survey" Hawaiian art. Instead, it follows themes inspired by the art itself: Hawaiian heritage, Asian roots, local traditions, and social issues as well as the land and sea.
It was all working yesterday morning for the Kuhio Elementary School fourth-grader who was the first to cross the facility's threshold.
Sarah fixed first on a model of a voyaging canoe by Wright Bowman Jr., then took in Herb Kane's painted image of the same sort of canoe racing down a wave lit by a distant volcanic fire.
She paused by Isami Doi's bright "Cosmic Alchemy," where a younger child was trying to touch a painted Earth-like planet hanging in a red universe.
But it was Renee Iijima's "A Drop of Dew, A Drop of the Ocean," that really caught Sarah's eye, with its nearly hidden photo of a baby inside a metal vessel packed with black sand.
"It's like my religion," Sarah said. "The baby, that's the spirit."
Docent Linda-Mei Jaress had another story about the piece.
"One of our security guards said it was his favorite, too, because the baby looked like his boy, who drowned," Jaress said. "And he said, 'I have a picture of my boy, and when I get home, I am going to make something like this for his picture.'"
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
