A visit to the University of �鶹��ý at ����ԴDz� from the (NEH) strengthened the connection between the two institutions, and potentially helped to spark additional support and resources to UH ����ԴDz� in the field of humanities.

The UH ����ԴDz� hosted the NEH delegation from Washington, D.C. NEH is an independent federal agency dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities. The delegation was led by NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo), NEH Senior Deputy Chair Anthony Mitchell and NEH Chief of Staff Kelsey Coates.

The visit on April 25 began with a meeting with Dean Peter Arnade to discuss UH ����ԴDz�’s strength in humanities, highlight the work of UH ����ԴDz�’s faculty and students, and learn about NEH’s mission and strategic goals. Arnade previously received NEH funding, which helped change the course of his career.

“The visit from NEH Chair Lowe underscored the breadth of talent among our faculty in the
Humanities and our unique scholarly attributes,” Arnade said. “It placed a spotlight on the excellence of our faculty’s research and opened the door to more NEH funding opportunities.”

The NEH delegation also met with UH ����ԴDz� faculty who received NEH funding, and learned about the lasting impact of their projects.

They toured the , housed in UH ����ԴDz�’s Hamilton Library. The delegation conducted a faculty forum for UH faculty, staff and students, and representatives from the Hawaii Council for the Humanities. They were treated to a poetry reading by Associate Professor Brandy Nālani McDougall, who is the �鶹��ý state poet laureate. Lowe then showcased NEH’s work to increase access to the humanities for every American across the nation. Finally, the group received tours of the and the .

John Young Foundation Scholarships in recognition of artistic talent and academic achievement have been awarded to three students, who were highly recommended by their teachers. Established in honor of �鶹��ý-born artist John Chin Young, the scholarships support graduates of �鶹��ý high schools, assisting them with costs such as tuition, books and supplies.

Shania Nicolas, who specializes in painting, was awarded a $1,000 scholarship for spring 2024, while Valèry Atkinson (various media) and Kaiehu Helela (primarily photography) each received $2,000 scholarships for the 2024–25 academic year. Their outstanding works were included in the ’s first student show this spring.

“Initially uncertain about my career path, I rediscovered my passion for art at Leeward CC, where exploring various mediums solidified my desire to pursue it,” said Nicolas. “With the support of this scholarship, my peers, and mentors I am now more confident and dedicated to creating inspiring works and achieving my artistic dreams.”

Atkinson, a non-traditional student, returned to Leeward CC after some time away. Despite initially leaving art behind, her enduring passion led her back to the art department, working alongside inspiring professors and students.

“I am honored and humbled to be given the opportunity to work with each of them, and I am completely beside myself that they feel that I deserve this acknowledgment,” she said.

According to Helela’s Art 101 instructor, Nanci Amaka, Helela met all the challenges with grace, intellect and skill, enriching class discussions and supporting classmates with his creativity and insightful questions. His final project, a mixed-media self-portrait with live flowers, uniquely and beautifully explored his struggles with his native Hawaiian identity.

“This scholarship is an honor to receive,” said Helela. “It feels like an acknowledgment and appreciation of my work from Leeward and my professors. I can hear them telling me to keep going, keep creating my art. I am truly grateful for the space and encouragement to continue expressing myself.”

—by Erin Maruoka

The University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa will showcase the Jean Charlot as Critic: Art in �鶹��ý, 1950–1970 exhibit from August 27 to December 3.

Jean Charlot is best known as a painter and educator, and the exhibition focuses on the local art he wrote about for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Charlot’s account provides some of the only written record of Honolulu’s emergent art scene during the decades following World War II. Many of the artists he wrote about would comprise the first edition of the iconic Artists of �鶹��ý (1974), including Isami Doi, Kenneth Bushnell, Juliette May Fraser, Sueko Kimura, Ben Norris, Louis Pohl, Shirley Russell, Tadashi Sato, Edward Stasack and Tseng Yu-Ho.

Charlot moved to Honolulu in 1949 and for 17 years served as a professor of art at UH Mānoa. He remains one of the department’s most significant and illustrious faculty members.

This exhibition will honor Charlot and is curated by Maika Pollack, director and chief curator of the John Young Museum and University Galleries.

The admission for the exhibit is free and open to the public, Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

To learn more about the exhibit visit the website.

The at the is hosting several exciting exhibitions which run through December 4, 2022. The exhibitions feature pieces that represent various techniques and mediums of art.

One featured exhibition, , opens on September 28 and is on view through December 4. It is the first solo exhibition to examine the work of �鶹��ý-born artist Tetsuo Ochikubo (1923–1975) in almost 50 years, and the only one to focus exclusively on his printmaking. Featuring more than two dozen prints and previously unexhibited archival documents, the exhibition looks at printmaking as a central site of Ochikubo’s extensive artistic experimentation.

A recipient of a 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship to work in lithography and an early Tamarind Institute artist fellow in 1961, Ochikubo was among a select group of painters and sculptors who pioneered the art of lithography in American Post-War abstraction.

Visit the to learn more about Ochikubo and the exhibit.

Other current and upcoming exhibitions at the museum include (on view through October 2) and (on view October 5–30).

Shinea Moon: Memories of a Space Fairy explores the colors and shapes that exist alongside but separate from lived experiences and landscapes. Moon paints visions, dreamscapes and shamanic journeys.

Liz Train: Woven Steel Frame Sculpture will reunite the majority of Liz Train‘s woven steel frame pieces. Made between 1975–78 when Train was a master of fine arts student at UH ����ԴDz�, the colorful, large-scale works inhabit a space between painting, sculpture and textile.

The John Young Museum of Art is open Wednesday–Sunday, 12–4 p.m. Admission for the exhibitions is free and no reservations are required.

For more information about these exhibitions, visit the or email gallery@hawaii.edu.

Immediately after the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, artist Ken Okiishi’s grandfather unloaded all traces of the family’s Japanese possessions by dumping them into Māmala Bay. His rash decision came after receiving a frantic phone call from his brother, whose house had just been searched by the Honolulu police looking for connections to Japan.

This leitmotif of American identity formation is interwoven in an art exhibit, , on display at the University of �鶹��ý at ����ԴDz� . Okiishi meditates on the fraught legacy of Japanese-American history and the model minority myth in the larger contexts of American, global and continuously rewritten fragments of Asian-American history.

The exhibition features videos and photographs which include a display of Okiishi’s childhood belongings (1978–2001), meticulously archived by his parents, who had settled in the university town of Ames, Iowa in the late 1950s; a video of the ruins of a concentration camp in Delta, Utah; and a large banner made from a Boys’ Day photograph from 1940—Okiishi’s father as an infant, posed amid 50 Japanese dolls which were thrown into the ocean a year later upon the threat of internment.

“Everyone suffers from this history that has never been properly worked through and it continues to be played out on the faces and bodies of all Asian Americans up to and including in the present,” Okiishi said about the works. “Visiting the site that was held over my father’s generation as the threat of non-compliance to strict and narrow parameters of being a good American, in the most violent form of that idea, punctured the fiction of power in the political moment when its real possibility of reinvigorated methods was becoming all too real in that inescapable sense of knowing but unable to do anything other than witness and survive.”

The exhibit curated by Maika Pollack, director and chief curator at the UH art museum, is on display through May 5, 2022.

Admission and event information

Ken Okiishi: A Model Childhood is free and open to the public, Sunday–Thursday, noon–4 p.m. Parking is free for the exhibit on Sundays.

Due to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, masks and social distancing are required for entry.

This event is an example of UH ����ԴDz�’s goal of (PDF), one of four goals identified in the (PDF), updated in December 2020.

The University of �鶹��ý at ����ԴDz� is now welcoming back in-person visitors to the and The Art Gallery with safety restrictions, after being shut down for several months due to COVID-19.

Enhanced cleaning protocols have been implemented, a maximum of five people are allowed in galleries at a time, face masks are mandatory, safe physical distancing of at least six feet must be followed and only UH ����ԴDz� students, faculty, staff and affiliated community members are allowed to visit since the campus remains closed to visitors. Pollack said reopening has perhaps been easier than other public museums and galleries because UH ����ԴDz� galleries are located on campus and follow university COVID-19 policies.

“As gallery director here at UH, art is such an important part of our curriculum and what we offer as a university,” said Maika Pollack, director and chief curator, John Young Museum of Art and university galleries, and assistant professor of curatorial studies and art history. “Many people don’t realize that between the BFA and the BA, art is one of the largest majors at UH ����ԴDz�. We are thrilled to be able to safely continue our mission to provide examples of cutting-edge art practice and exhibition research in a diverse array of media, and to provide students with access to the artworks in our permanent collection, as is befitting of an R1 (Research 1) university.”

Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the annual student BFA group show, a popular event, which is scheduled for every spring. Pollack also noted that one surprising challenge has been to figure out how to host exhibitions featuring large groups of living artists—called “group shows”—versus individual artists.

“Even when exhibition viewing can be distanced, installation demands close proximity of installers to artworks and sometimes to one another,” Pollack said. “It can be challenging to figure out how to schedule distanced individual drop off of multiple artworks and to install everything remotely.”

Current galleries

“Networks, Collaboration and Resistance in/between Portugal and Brazil, 1962-1982” is on view in the John Young Museum of Art until December 10. This exhibition is the first in �鶹��ý with works from the collections of two major archives of experimental poetry, the Arquivo Fernando Aguiar in Lisbon and the Coleção Moraes-Barbosa in São Paulo. Experimental poetry in Brazil and Portugal resisted police and military power, oppressive governments and in Portugal, protested colonialism. This exhibition represents nearly 400 poets and authors who took the form of some of the most radical experiments ever seen in magazine publishing. This exhibition was curated by Pollack and Rui Torres.

“Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid” is featured in The Art Gallery in the Art Building until December 10. Rodriguez’s solo exhibition follows a selection of American artist Sherrie Levine’s “Newborn” sculptures in various residences, private and institutional, from New York to Los Angeles. Levine made the works in crystal and black cast glass in the early 1990s. Through this exhibition, Rodriguez engages the conditions and settings in which art circulates, proposing that the futures of artworks are inherently speculative. This exhibition was curated by Ruba Katrib from MoMA PS1 in New York. “Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid” was previously on view at SculptureCenter, NY; MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA; The Walker Art Center; and The Art Institute of Chicago.

“Chapter One: Lucas Blalock” is the first of a year-long series of solo exhibitions, Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography, in the Art Building Commons Gallery by artists who work primarily as photographers but whose practices extend well beyond traditional definitions of the medium. This showcase will be on display until November 5. Blalock, who lives and works in New York, works with visual editing tools to create compelling images that interrogate the status of contemporary photography. The exhibition was curated by Pollack. Exhibitions in the Commons Gallery will be on view through the windows of the gallery only, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

For more information and details on virtual events, visit the .

—By Marc Arakaki

The art exhibit , featuring works by photographer Francis Haar and curated by Gaye Chan, is on display at the University of �鶹��ý at ����ԴDz� through December 6, 2019. The exhibit features original black-and-white photographs, courtesy of the UH ����ԴDz� Hamilton Collections, that document the changes to Honolulu’s ʻAʻala neighborhood, during the 1960s. Haar taught photography at UH between 1965 and 1985.

“The film and photographs in the exhibition were Francis Haar’s efforts to document a working class neighborhood that will soon disappear in the name of urban renewal. Many similar efforts are underway on Oʻahu currently that warrant attention,” said curator and UH ����ԴDz� photography professor Gaye Chan.

Haar’s images capture the vibrant street life of ʻAʻala as well as the destruction of the area by urban development. The photos that are displayed coincide with Haar’s film, ʻAʻala—Life and Death of a Community, which is also on view in the art exhibit.

Unifying the past and present

The exhibit additionally features a map developed by Chan with the help of Natalie Besl, Don Hibbard and Lorraine Minatoishi. This project, titled “,” shows 18 sites of Haar’s photography and compares them to their present locations. The works, while documenting Honolulu’s transformation, speak to contemporary concerns about gentrification, land use and urban diversity.

Disappearing Honolulu moved former ʻAʻala resident, Alex Puou, to visit the exhibit and take a stroll down memory lane.

“I saw the [info] for the exhibit on Facebook, I believe. I wanted to go to the exhibit because there were photos of my family there,” said Puou. “I was stoked to see my grandma, my auntie and my uncle. It was interesting to see my family and I tried to look for photos of myself too. I enjoyed the exhibit.”

Admission and event information

Disappearing Honolulu is free and open to the public. Parking is free for the exhibit on Sundays.

A panel discussion, Architecture and Urban Change in Honolulu’s ʻAʻala neighborhood, with DeSoto Brown, William Chapman and Ross Stephenson will be held on October 6, 2–3 p.m.

Chan and Maika Pollack, new director of the John Young Museum of Art, will lead a special tour for photographers and photography enthusiasts on October 20, 2–3 p.m.

—By Janica Marie Pascua

Exhibitions Ula Leo and Diamond Head and part of the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa .

This series highlights local and international artists who address social-cultural concerns associated with space, place and environment on Oʻahu. Programs consider diverse approaches by artists including mapping and map-making and visual story-telling.

By and
, UH Mānoa
March 3—May 5

Ula Leo features a collection of work by Kānaka Maoli artists ʻImaikalani Kalahele and Cory Taum that considers the relationship between urban development, environmental degradation, cultural memory and indigeneity.

This multi-generational exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, poetry and artist videos that address specific sites, spaces, and landscapes of Oʻahu and illustrate stories from a Hawaiian perspective. Over the course of several years, Kalahele and Taum have been working alongside one another, sharing studio space, and collaborating on exhibitions. In recognition of this mentoring relationship, they received the Moʻo Award from Nā Mea �鶹��ý and PAʻI Foundation in 2014.

Gallery information

• Monday—Friday, 1–4 p.m. or by appointment
• Closed: Saturday and Sunday and spring break (March 27–31)

Free admission. Donations are appreciated. Parking fees may apply.

By and Gan Uyeda
, UH Mānoa
March 13—April 7

Based in Honolulu and Los Angeles, artist and cultural producer Drew Broderick collaborates with Chicago curator and writer Gan Uyeda to reconsider the iconic Oʻahu landmark.

Broderick is the founder and director of SPF Projects—an arts effort dedicated to building capacity for contemporary art and dialogue in �鶹��ý. He is also a contributing member of Honolulu-based collective PARADISE COVE. Uyeda serves as associate director at Richard Gray Gallery and organizes exhibitions with the curatorial collective .

Gallery information

• Monday–Friday 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Sunday 12–4 p.m.
• Closed Saturdays and Prince Kūhiō Day, March 27
• By appointment for spring break, March 28–31.

Free admission. Donations are appreciated. Parking fees may apply.

at the , is hosting , which runs through December 9.

The Laminated Print: Origins + Process of Chine Collé is a collaborative project that brings together contemporary printmakers, conservators and art historians to inspire visual thinking about the process of chine collé and draw relationships to paper traditions from China and Japan.

Chine collé, also called papier collé or chine appliqué, refers to the process in which a thin sheet of paper is simultaneously printed upon and mounted onto a thicker backing sheet. The process is used in various ways today including in lithography and intaglio printing. Chine collé brings out a range of visual possibilities in the conjunction of ink and paper, including richer tones, finer details, smoother textures and an elegant style. The delicate techniques of chine collé originated from China and Japan where traditions of papermaking and mounting traditions have existed for hundreds of years. Chinese and Japanese mounting and conservation techniques require highly refined skills and are considered an art onto itself.

Gallery hours

Monday–Friday: 1–4 p.m. or by appointment.
Saturday and Sunday: Closed

Free admission. Parking fees may apply.

The newly remodeled on the campus gives students and the community access to a world-class collection of artwork bequeathed by noted �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� artist John Young. The exceptional artwork come from Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa and Mesoamerica. The museum will also be used as venue for Asian-Pacific artist-in-residences, art history graduate thesis exhibitions and prestigious traveling exhibitions from other institutions.

Administered by the , the John Young Museum of Art is directly aligned with the .

The museum will now focus on interdisciplinary student-centered exhibitions and collections care as well as events that promote, support and sustain museum education initiatives for University of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� ����ԴDz� and the local community.

The space encompasses more than 2,000 square feet including galleries, workshops, a research library, office space and a lovely outdoor courtyard.

The museum resides in Krauss Hall located on the pedestrian corridor from Dole Street in the center of campus and was built in 1931. The oldest frame building on campus, it was entered into the �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� register of Historic Places in 1984.

View the photos on the .