Home of the Tigers: McKinley High and Modern Art 

Where did you go to high school? In Honolulu as in many cities, this is the first question we ask when meeting someone from the same place. Positioning ourselves in terms of background, identity, and experience, the answer can both mark differences and help us find common ground. The exhibition Home of the Tigers: McKinley High and Modern Art  explores the impact of a single high school on visual art in Hawaiʻi. It brings together work by seven artists who graduated from McKinley High School in the 1920s to the 1960s and went on to define modernism in Hawaiʻi, including Satoru Abe (b. 1926), Raymond Han (1931–2017), Ralph Iwamoto (1927–2013), Imaikalani Kalahele (b.1950), Keichi Kimura (1914–1988), Robert Kobayashi (1925–2015) and John Chin Young (1909–1997). Foregrounding the importance of art education, the exhibition also presents work by three artists who were their high school teachers, Minnie Fujita (1918–2018), Charles Higa (1933–2012), and Shirley Russell (1886–1985). While each artist was shaped by their different backgrounds and experiences in the art world, Home of the Tigers charts the history of 20th-century artistic movements in Hawaiʻi and beyond through the lens of their common origin.

McKinley High School, just down the street from the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA), is one of Honolulu’s oldest and largest public high schools. Its student population has historically represented a cross-section of Honolulu, and the school has served large numbers of economically disadvantaged students from Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. Several artists of Japanese descent, including Abe (‘45), Kimura (‘33), Kobayashi (‘44), and Iwamoto (‘46), studied art in New York after World War II and became gallery attendants and groundskeepers at the Museum of Modern Art. While Kobayashi and Iwamoto remained in New York, Abe and Kimura returned to Hawaiʻi and became significant figures in the development of modernism in the islands alongside Young (‘29), the son of Chinese immigrants. In addition to his work in painting and sculpture, Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) artist Kalahele (‘66) also became a renowned poet and activist.

From various cultural backgrounds, the artists in Home of the Tigers went on to participate in a range of different art movements, including surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop. Connecting a very local history with the currents of national and international art histories, Home of the Tigers invites the communities of Honolulu to explore their own history in a wider context.

Major support is provided by

Additional support provided by

Judy Pyle and Wayne Pitluck Fund for Contemporary Art

Kosasa Foundation

Kyra Miller & Michael Zeisser

McKinley High School Foundation

Lauren Yoo, Class of ’98

Aon Risk Services, Inc. of Hawaii

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Ralph Iwamoto (American, born Hawai‘i, 1927–2013). Spectrum Field #4, 1976. Acrylic on cotton. Collection of Fred Tanaka. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York.