About us
Purpose
The Honolulu Museum of Art is a home for art and education that exists for the benefit of the entire community, in a setting that promotes beauty, harmony, learning, self-awareness, and connection.
Values
With care, respect, and empathy we:
- Embrace an approach grounded in excellence, innovation, and sustainability to ensure that the museum continues to serve and inspire our community for generations to come.
- Prioritize inclusivity and accessibility as we strive to honor, celebrate, and reflect the diversity of Hawai‘i.
Vision
HoMA inspires and uplifts our community through transformative art experiences that celebrate creativity, cultivate wonder, foster empathy, and enhance knowledge to deepen our connection with one another and the world we share.
Our history
The Honolulu Museum of Art, initially known as the Honolulu Academy of Arts, was chartered in 1922 and opened to the public on April 8, 1927, with a progressive, forward-looking vision: to give the gift of art and art education to Hawai‘i’s diverse, multicultural community. Founder Anna Rice Cooke envisioned a future where art could be a catalyst for greater understanding of ourselves, of one another, and the world around us, making the community of tomorrow even stronger than the present day.
Anna Charlotte Rice was born into a missionary family on O‘ahu in 1853. She went on to marry businessman Charles Montague Cooke, also of a missionary family. In an era when the societal roles and rights of women were limited, Anna Rice Cooke devoted herself to assembling an art collection, raising seven children, and making a home in the family residence on Beretania Street.
Widowed in 1909, Anna Rice Cooke continued on her own path. When the collection outgrew her home and the Cooke Art Gallery at Punahou School, she decided to create Hawai‘i’s first visual arts museum. In 1920, she and her daughter Alice Spalding, her daughter-in-law Dagmar Cooke, and Catharine Cox, an art and drama teacher, began to catalogue and research the collection as a first step.
With little formal training, these women obtained a charter for the museum from the Territory of Hawai‘i in 1922. Anna tore down the family home and donated the land for the museum, along with an endowment of $25,000. They hired New York architect Bertram Goodhue to design the plans. Goodhue died before the project was completed, and his colleague Hardie Phillip finished the job. Over the years, the museum’s architectural style, which incorporates Hawaiian, Chinese, and Spanish influences, has been imitated in many buildings throughout the state.
At the museum’s opening on April 8, 1927, Anna Rice Cooke read her dedication statement:
“That our children of many nationalities and races, born far from the centers of art, may receive an intimation of their own cultural legacy and wake to the ideals embodied in the arts of their neighbors….that Hawaiians, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Northern Europeans, South Europeans, and all other people living here, contacting through the channel of art those deep intuitions common to all, may perceive a foundation on which a new culture, enriched by all the old strains may be built in these islands.”
The museum’s permanent collection has grown from approximately 875 works to more than 55,000 pieces spanning 5,000 years, with significant holdings in Asian art, American and European painting and decorative arts, 19th- and 20th-century art, an extensive collection of works on paper, Asian textiles, and traditional works from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
It has also physically grown. Additions to the original building include an expansion to the library (1956), education wings (1931, 1961), a gift shop (1965), a cafe (1969), a contemporary gallery, administrative offices and 292-seat theater (1977), an art school for studio classes and expanded educational programming (1990), and a wing housing the shop and café, as well as dedicated gallery space for historic and contemporary art of Hawai‘i (2001).
In 2011, The Contemporary Museum, founded by Thurston Twigg-Smith and his family in 1988 in the historic Spalding House (Anna Rice Cooke’s second home), gifted its assets and collection to what was then the Honolulu Academy of Arts, significantly strengthening its collection. The following year the combined museum changed its name to the Honolulu Museum of Art. Spalding House was sold in 2023 as a key step in strengthening the museum’s ability to achieve its long-term mission.
The museum continues to reflect Mrs. Cooke’s vision by being an inclusive space dedicated to serving the community through art. As it approaches its centennial, it is working towards developing a Hawai‘i-centered approach to view and interpret the museum’s extraordinary collection. It will also update its permanent collection galleries to tell a nuanced story of the collection and its relevance to Hawai‘i, the community, and the world at large.
Directors
Halona Norton-Westbrook • 2020 to present
Sean O’Harrow • 2017 to 2019
Stephan Jost • 2011 to 2016
Stephen Little • 2003 to 2010
George R. Ellis • 1982 to 2003
James W. Foster • 1963 to 1982
Robert P. Griffing, Jr. • 1947 to 1963
Edgar C. Schenck • 1935 to 1947
Kathrine McLane Jenks • 1929 to 1935
Catharine E. B. Cox • 1927 to 1928
Frank M. Moore • 1924 to 1927