Inside the gallery is a shack, pieced together with wooden scraps and decorated with items seemingly without particular connection to anything.

Is this art?

Is this a museum or what?

And what about plans for a major expansion — including a larger exhibition space, a new research library, restaurant, an underground parking garage and staff offices — for which the Contemporary Museum is seeking an environmental assessment and a conditional-use permit to allow for expanded use in a residential neighborhood?

These are just a few of the provocative questions that the Contemporary Museum at Makiki Heights is posing to both the wider community and its neighbors.

Some of the answers can be found in exhibitions now on display.

Michael Lin

"Tennis Dessus," 2005, Michael Lin Photos by K.D. Loren

It will be on view through this fall.

In an ongoing investigation of the relationship of surface ornament to architectural form, Lin creates architectural interventions using patterns from traditional textiles and decorative arts.

Utilizing public and private spaces and objects as diverse as armchairs, beds, floors, walls and cushions to support his surfaces — which are often decorated with brightly colored patterns — Lin blurs the borders between surface and structure, function and ornamentation, architecture and interior design.

Lin has created monumental installations for sites like the large public halls of the 2000 Taipei Biennial, the 2002 atrium of the City Hall in the Hague, Netherlands, and the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

The artist, who lives and works in Paris and Taiwan, has also been represented in international exhibitions such as the 2001 Istanbul and Venice and the 2002 Liverpool biennials.

The tennis court project — the first of its kind for Lin — stands as a fresh and inspirational example of the museum's commitment to bridging the international with the local in a series dubbed "O2," suggestive of the fresh air and energy the museum brings to our local art and wider communities.

Yoshitomo Nara

"Your Dog," Yoshitomo Nara, fiberglass, 2001. Photos by K.D. Loren

Nara's work emerges out of the despair of feeling invisible in a world where it seems like "nothing ever happens."

Sharing a birthday with Walt Disney and the king of Thailand (Dec. 5), Nara was raised in post-World War II Japan, a time and place defined by explosive economic development and the flood of Western pop culture — including Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons.

While many of his contemporaries were hammered with emerging Japanese pop culture, Nara was raised in the country by working parents, a self-described latchkey child.

Often left alone to entertain himself, comic books and his pets were his constant companions.

This childhood experience continues to inform his work, like that of many artists, to recover the child in the man.

The frescoes in Padua are among the most celebrated works in the history of art, inspiring and instructing generations of painters, including Masaccio, da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Nara's paintings — which have been described as being about art history — often feature a muted color palette and static figures in flat and shallow spaces that evoke an almost religious but also troubled feeling about childhood.

His work also borrows from Minimalism, with his solid fields of color, often textured with pieces of patchwork canvas glued on and painted over on dish-like structural shapes.

His surfaces are about the physical presence of the work; an object, not just an image.

Although often compared to manga — the popular Japanese comic-strip form that features child heroes and heavy adult situations — Nara's little girls stare with solitary cat-lie eyes and slyly evil grins that suggest pathological hatred, fear, anxiety and vengeance.

In contrast, his cartoonish and friendly dogs offer at least superficial calm and safety, a kind of absolution and promise of friendly tranquility.

Remember your childhood, when innocence and perversity were joined, when emotions were not censored, when imagination and play-acting were not considered crazy but were actually encouraged, when the world was a fantastic and terrifying kingdom beckoning to be explored, not conquered?

His works on display — which enjoy a cult status in his native Japan and are among the most recognizable of contemporary art images — appeal to an international audience and are already deeply ingrained in American pop culture.

Not only famous among the highbrows and punk aficionados who visit museums and galleries, his work is also lucratively marketed on T-shirts, CD cases, ashtrays, dolls, books and clocks, some of which are available in the museum's gift shop.

Nara has developed a voice in tune with such rebel icons as Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, Social Distortion's Mike Ness and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, a voice that speaks for a generation.

Shaka Nara

"Knife Behind Back, 2000," Yoshitomo Nara, acrylic on canvas. Photos by K.D. Loren

Designed and constructed on site by the artists, the hut resembles an artist's studio that contains personal belongings and artworks by each of the participating artists.

Built from scavenged materials, the hut evokes the often messy solitary mental and emotional space of artistic production, juxtaposed against the almost sterile space of the gallery, a provocative challenge to the hand that feeds.

In addition, exclusively for its presentation at the Contemporary Museum, the traveling exhibition of his works includes a multimedia slideshow of Nara's fascinating photography that celebrates in often surprising ways the unfettered joy of seeing.

And what about that larger-than-life puppy sculpture that is the outdoor centerpiece of this exhibition?

Think about a dog's dual nature to a child — at once a cuddly pet and sometimes a frightening monster — again evoking the pain, joy and innocence of childhood.

The Contemporary Museum continues its mission of providing the community an accessible forum for provocative, cutting-edge visual art and offering interaction with international and local art and artists in our special Island environment.

As a major expansion proposal moves forward to completion, this museum continues to be a major asset, not only for our larger community, but also as understood and supported by most of the neighbors who live near this beautiful site.