Ke Kumu Aupuni: The Foundation of Hawaiian Nationhood

This exhibition brings together select images from HoMA’s collection that appear in Ke Kumu Aupuni: The Foundation of Hawaiian Nationhood, published by Awaiaulu in 2022. A bilingual chronicle in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and English of the life and reign of Kamehameha I (1736–1819) and Kamehameha II (1797–1824), Ke Kumu Aupuni was written by Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau (1815–1876) and serialized in the Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa between 1866 and 1868. The exhibition celebrates this important publication and offers a closer look at the complex context around early images of Hawaiʻi by European artists.

The 30 drawings, prints, and paintings come from three separate naval voyages to Hawaiʻi during the 18th and 19th centuries: the 1778 to 1779 voyage of two British naval ships, the HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, under the command of Captain James Cook (1728–1779); the 1816 to 1817 scientific expedition of the Imperial Russian ship Rurik under the command of Lieutenant Otto von Kotzbue (1787–1846); and the 1819 visit of the Uranie, a French exploration ship under the command of Louis de Freycinet (1779–1841), which occurred just three months after the death of Kamehameha I. In addition, images from 1824 coincide with the journey to London by King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu and were created in England.

While these are some of the oldest images available to us, the illustrations capture events and portraits in the greater story of the rise of the Hawaiian Kingdom from a decidedly Western lens. Scientific or naturalist artists on these explorations captured in a documentary style, images that often reflected cultural filters of the voyages’ patrons, the ships’ captains, or the artists’ European-based formal training or religious affiliations, as much as the actual events themselves. These images of Hawaiʻi are rare and fascinating early visual accounts of people, places, and events. They are also as layered, complex, and often fraught as the history to which they contributed.