Kristen Scholly, PhD, Chair of Health Promotion, University of Hawaiߵi at Manoa

George Kon, Co-founder of T-Shirt Theatre

Gabriella Simpson, Art Therapist and Photographer

Transformations: Tomita Keisen — West Lake

Transformation: Ogawa Senyo — Eight Immortals Of Drinking Audio

Transformation: Hirai Goho — Immortal Liu Haichan

Transformation: Hirai Baisen — Fishing In The Shade

Transformation: Fudo Ritsuzan — Kifune Landscape

Transformation: Yamaguchi Hachikushi — Spring Rain

Transformation: Intro

Transformation: Katsuda Tetsu — Persimmons Ripening

Transformation: Tanomura Chokunyu — Great View Of Mountain And River

Transformation: Tanomura Chokunyu — Landscape In The Style Of Wang Meng

Transformation: Yamashita Chikusai — Fishing Village In Spring

One of Hawaiʻi’s most respected photographers, Franco Salmoiraghi’s work is reflective of his affection for Hawaiʻi and of his powerful connection to the islands and its people.

Franco Salmoiraghi: Aunty Emma deFries

Franco Salmoiraghi: Hiking at the Top of Hi‘ilawe Falls

King Kalākaua of Hawai'i

Kalākaua Around the World Medal

Learn more about the exhibition Contemporary Landscapes: Li Huayi. directly from the artist, as he joins this panel discussion with Michael Knight, Asian Art Museum Foundation Curator Emeritus and organizer of Li Huayi’s first major exhibition in the U.S., and Shawn Eichman, HoMA Curator of Asian Art and curator of Contemporary Landscapes.

A Conversation with Li Huayi and Michael Knight

Welcome to Art in Conversation. Dr. Akiemi Glenn is a linguist, community organizer, and founder of the organization The Pōpolo Project. Dr. Glenn reflects on the importance of Nick Cave’s Soundsuit, found in Gallery 27 as part of the exhibition 30 Americans.

Art in Conversation: Dr. Akiemi Glenn on Nick Cave’s Soundsuit

Arminda Gandara, HoMA Public Programs Manager: 
Welcome to Art in Conversation. Nancy Miwa is part of the HoMA docent program and has let a range of student and adult tours at the museum. Nancy historically contextualizes the painting the Kaaterskill Falls by William Guy Wall located in the American Art Gallery.

Nancy Miwa, HoMA Docent:
Aloha, my name is Nancy Miwa and I’m a docent here at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Today I want to show you a landscape painting that is a celebration of America’s new frontier. 

In this painting from 1827 William Guy Wall interprets the magnificent beauty of a popular tourist destination called Kaaterskill Falls in Catskills State Park New York. Today, just a few hours drive North of New York City. The color of fall dominates the vistas, the running water coming off the rocks is turbulent, the clouds are particularly billowy. The fact that the hikers appear so small, only adds to the grandeur and power of the natural world. 

Depictions of American landscapes began in earnest in the early to mid 1800’s when America was coming into its own. They were a celebration of national pride to showcase the new world’s bounty and beauty and to encourage people to explore all that it had to offer.

Irish born, William Guy Wall was an early member of the Hudson River School, a fraternity of New York City based landscape painters who not only explored these vast and virgin lands but found new ways of representing them. Because it was an easy trip from New York City, many of their works showcased the surrounding Hudson River Valley. 

This new breed of landscape painters documented what they saw. But they did more than that. Their interpretations were romantic, optimistic, and celebratory. Their glossy accounts enhanced the real with the ideal. They took artistic license to edit nature in order to heighten its appeal. 

Artists typically infused the light and shadow to move the senses and to heighten its emotional effects. They added sunshine, sunsets, clouds and storms to impart atmosphere and natural drama. Breathtaking vistas added grandeur to the scene. It was America’s paradise. 
America’s promise where rugged individualism, independence and destiny was on vivid display. Visitors would probably venture up to Kaaterskill for respite from their jobs in industrial city. Go for a hike, stay in one of the lovely lodges that were popping up around here, bird watch, swim, read and relax, do whatever leisure activities the countryside may offer. And paintings such as Walls would exploit it by an emerging travel industry.

I visited this lovely park a few years ago during the Spring time. It is still the largest two tiered waterfall in New York State. But no longer can one hike into the cavern behind the falls or even walk near the water. There is a platform for viewing near the top to look out onto the falls and distant hills. And the view is still awesome.

How does a painting like this inspire you to travel there?

Art in Conversation: Nancy Miwa on Kaaterskill Falls by William Guy Wall

Arminda Gandara, HoMA Public Programs Manager: 
Welcome to Art and Conversation. Mark Feijão Milligan is a Brooklyn and Honolulu based artist. Milligan reflects on the topics of visibility and representation in the exhibition 30 Americans, located in Galleries 27 and 28. 

Mark Feijão Milligan II, Brooklyn and Honolulu based artist:
My name is Mark Feijão Milligan II. As a black male within this culture at this time I rarely feel experiences where I walk into an institution and I feel like there is a proper representation of who I am as a person, as a whole person. And to walk into an exhibit where the representation is accurate is a beautiful thing. 

To have that representation expressed by some of the most profound contemporary artists of our time, just takes it to another level. It creates a space where the dialogues that we have going on within ourselves internally are up on the walls and being approached with the same importance and value associated with any of the artists. 

We have some of the most profound contemporary artists represented within this show, dealing with the dialogues we have going on internally. At the same time dealing with the proper representation of the black experience. This being a dialogue that is actually necessary for us as a whole. This is a dialogue that should have an internally but also within our community. 

This exhibition creates a space where that can start to happen. Where people can start to approach ideas and concepts that at first may make you feel uncomfortable but are necessary conversation. They are the only way we are going to be able to work through these issues we have had historically and project into the future.

Art in Conversation: Mark Feijão Milligan on 30 Americans

Arminda Gandara, HoMA Public Programs Manager: 
Welcome to Art in Conversation. Gary Liu is an instructor of art history at the HoMA Art School and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Gary describes a vivid spiritual landscape for the figures of Parvati, Vishnu,and Dancing Krishna objects from the Southeast Asian Art collection.

Gary Liu: 
Ok. Imagine that the bronze figure you’re looking at here, is not in a case, not on a pedestal, but on an altar. 

It is draped in a fragrant explosion of garlands, shrouded in scented smoke…Chants swirl in the air around it, transporting you from the mundane, until you make contact with the deity who’s inhabiting it.

In the time when these objects were made (and today, even), Hindu practitioners used them to facilitate a state called darshan. This can roughly be translated as “seeing,” but it isn’t just a sense of looking with the eyes, really it comes with a heightened awareness deeper than the physical; an intention to establish a personal communion, with the divine. That attention gets returned and once you’ve been given it, petitions for blessing can be made. 

In this sense, these images serve many aims: they are aids points of focus on which the devotee can meditate. They are also, quite directly, vehicles and vessels, landing spots into which the divine can manifest and descend, from its usual, amorphous, transcendental state. 

What would it feel like to achieve darshan, guided by these images in the time of the Chola Empire: In your mind, picture that it’s a day of particular importance. You are gathered in the thronged streets, surrounding the temple where the images reside. A processional worship begins, under the direction of the temple priests. And to properly welcome the deity’s appearance, a ritual called puja is carried out demonstrating honor, affection, and hospitality.

The figure is bathed, provided with offerings of food, water, adornments. You catch glimpses of the floral profusion surrounding it, breathe in the incense and perfume, and perceive underlying rhythms, in the hymns and mantras. And perhaps you notice that, these don’t just serve as invitations to the gods and goddesses they tune your senses as well, helping you and everyone there with you to sharpen concentration, on this common cause of devotion, and finally allowing you direct communication, with the deity within.

Art in Conversation: Seeing the Divinity with Gary Liu

Arminda Gandara, HoMA Public Programs Manager:
Jeri Simons has been a HoMA Docent for 10 years and enjoys sharing stories about how artists are
inspired to create. Jeri transports us to a time of collaboration and creation, looking at the work “Fan,
Pipe and Glass” by Pablo Picasso and “Le Tapis Vert” or the Green Carpet by Georges Braque hanging
side by side in the Modernism Gallery.

Art in Conversation: Pablo Picasso and George Braque with Jeri Simons

Welcome to Art in Conversation. Carol Root became a HoMA docent in 2011 and has led numerous tours for adults and children at the museum. Carol discusses the radical life of American Impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt and her work The Child’s Caress located in the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism Gallery.

Honolulu Museum

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