The Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House, formerly The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, was integrated into the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

under this name. It was the only museum in the state of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

devoted exclusively to

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

. The Contemporary Museum had two venues: in residential

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

at the historic

Spalding House Spalding House, also known as the Cooke-Spalding House and called Nuumealani (heavenly terrace) by Anna Rice Cooke, who commissioned it, together with its gardens constitute a -acre former art museum in Makiki Heights, Honolulu, Hawaii. Spalding ...

, and

downtown Honolulu Downtown Honolulu is the current historic, economic, and governmental center of Honolulu, the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is bounded by Nuuanu Stream to the west, Ward Avenue to the east, Vineyard Boulevard to the nor ...

at First Hawaiian Center. All venues continue to be open to the public.

Collection

Artists represented in the permanent collection included

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

Robert Arneson Robert Carston Arneson (September 4, 1930 – November 2, 1992) was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades. Early life and education Robert Carston Arn ...

Jennifer Bartlett Jennifer Bartlett ( Losch; March 14, 1941 – July 25, 2022) was an American artist. She was known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Many of her ...

, Robert Brady, John Buck,

Christopher Bucklow Christopher Bucklow (born 1957) is a British artist and art-historian. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous public collections including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Museum of Modern Art, San ...

, Deborah Butterfield,

Enrique Martinez Celaya Enrique Martínez Celaya (born June 9, 1964) is a contemporary Cuban-born painter, sculptor, author and former scientist whose work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions around the world. He trained and worked as a physicist, com ...

, Enrique Chagoya, Dale Chihuly,

John Coplans John Rivers Coplans (24 June 1920 – 21 August 2003) was a British artist, art writer, curator, and museum director. A veteran of World War II and a photographer, he emigrated to the United States in 1960 and had many exhibitions in Europe and ...

Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde e ...

Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods. Life and career Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dew ...

, Robert Cumming,

Stephen De Staebler Stephen De Staebler (March 24, 1933 – May 13, 2011) was an American sculptor, printmaker, and educator, he was best recognized for his work in clay and bronze. Totemic and fragmented in form, De Staebler's figurative sculptures call forth the m ...

Richard DeVore Richard E. DeVore, also written as Richard De Vore (1933 – 2006) was an American ceramicist, professor. He was known for stoneware. He was faculty at Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Ceramics Department, from 1966 to 1978. Background and educat ...

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, l ...

Herbert Ferber Herbert Ferber (1906 – 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionist, sculptor and painter, and a "driving force of the New York School." Background Herbert Ferber Silvers was born on April 30, 1906, in New York City. In 1923, he be ...

Llyn Foulkes Llyn Foulkes (born 17 November 1934, in Yakima, Washington) is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. As a student at Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), Foulkes began exhibiting with the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles in 1959. He ...

Judy Fox Judy Fox is an American sculptor who was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1957. She studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1976, earned a BA from Yale University in 1978, studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des ...

Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,

David Gilhooly David Gilhooly (also known as David James Gilhooly III) (April 15, 1943 – August 21, 2013), was an American Ceramic art, ceramicist, Sculpture, sculptor, Painting, painter, Printmaking, printmaker, and professor. He is best known for pioneer ...

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

Diane Itter Diane Itter (4 October 1946 – 12 October 1989) was an American fiber artist. Her work emerged from the 1960s renaissance of interest in fiber art. Life While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, she met her future husband, artist William ...

Ferne Jacobs Ferne Jacobs, who is also known as Ferne K. Jacobs and Ferne Kent Jacobs is an American fiber artist and basket maker. Life She was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1942 to Jewish parents who emigrated from Eastern Europe. Her family moved to Lo ...

, Bill Jacobson,

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...

Donald Judd Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...

Ron Kent Ron Kent (1931 – December 15, 2018), also known as Ronald E. Kent, was an American woodturner who was born in Chicago, Illinois. He ran his own investment company in Hawaii. In 1975, his wife Myra gave him an inexpensive lathe for Christmas. N ...

William Kentridge William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by ...

, Sanit Khewhok, Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz,

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

Ken Little Ken Dawson Little is a modernist San Antonio-based sculptor who was born in Canyon, Texas in 1947. After graduating from Texas Tech University in 1970 with a BFA in painting, he received an MFA from the University of Utah in 1972. There, his ...

, Tony Marsh,

Junko Mori (born 1974) is a Japanese artist based in Wales. Working primarily in metalwork sculpture, Mori’s works are aggregate pieces usually connected thematically and visually to her observations of living matter, particularly plants. Her cho ...

Yasumasa Morimura Yasumasa Morimura (森村泰昌, Morimura Yasumasa, born June 11, 1951) is a contemporary Japanese performance and appropriation artist whose work encompasses photography, film, and live performance. He is known for his reinterpretation of ...

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...

Vik Muniz Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional ma ...

, Jay Musler,

Ron Nagle Ron Nagle (born February 21, 1939) is an American sculptor, musician and songwriter. He is known for small-scale, refined sculptures of great detail and compelling color. Nagle lives and works in San Francisco, California. Life Born in San Fr ...

Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', ''Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fro ...

and Gertrud Natzler,

Louise Nevelson Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast ...

Catherine Opie Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and i ...

Dennis Oppenheim Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the natu ...

Otto Piene Otto Piene (pronounced PEE-nah, 18 April 1928 – 17 July 2014) was a German-American artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art, often working collaboratively. He lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany; Cambridge, Massachusetts; a ...

Kenneth Price Kenneth Price (February 16, 1935February 24, 2012) was an American artist who predominantly created ceramic sculpture. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles, before re ...

Lucie Rie Dame Lucie Rie, (16 March 1902 – 1 April 1995) () was an Austrian-born British studio potter. Life Early years and education Lucie Gomperz was born in Vienna, Lower Austria, Austria-Hungary, the youngest child of Benjamin Gomperz, a Jewis ...

, Liza Ryan, Alison Saar, Lucas Samaras,

Adrian Saxe Adrian Saxe is an American ceramic artist who was born in Glendale, California in 1943. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Biography Saxe studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (Los Angeles, California) from 1965 to 1969 and earned ...

James Seawright James Seawright (1936-2022) was an American modernist sculptor. Seawright was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and grew up in Greenwood, Mississippi. As a boy, he discovered machine tools at a friend’s house, which launched his lifelong love of ...

Joseph Seigenthaler Joseph Seigenthaler (born 1959) is an American sculptor and video artist who was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned a BFA in painting from the Memphis College of Art in 1981. Shortly after graduating, he freelanced sculpting life-sized wa ...

, Andres Serrano, David Smith,

Kiki Smith Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS and gender, whil ...

Rudolf Staffel Rudolf Harry "Rudi" Staffel (1911 – 2002) was an American ceramic artist and educator. Biography Rudolf Staffel was born in 1911 in San Antonio, Texas. Staffel attended Brackenridge High School. Staffel initially wanted to be a painter, a ...

Pat Steir Pat Steir (born 1940) is an American painter and printmaker. Her early work was loosely associated with conceptual art and minimalism, however, she is best known for her abstract dripped, splashed and poured "Waterfall" paintings, which she s ...

Frank Stella Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. Biography Frank Stella was born in M ...

, Jason Teraoka,

Masami Teraoka Masami Teraoka (born 1936) is an American contemporary artist. His work includes ''Ukiyo-e''-influenced woodcut prints and paintings in watercolor and oil. He is known for work that merges traditional Edo-style aesthetics with icons of American cul ...

Mark Tobey Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophi ...

Richard Tuttle Richard Dean Tuttle (born July 12, 1941) is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, casual, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line. His works span a range of formats, from sculpture, painting, drawing, printma ...

Peter Voulkos Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic ...

Kara Walker Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best ...

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

, William Wegman,

Tom Wesselmann Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture. Early years Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati. From 1949 ...

Beatrice Wood Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Avant Garde movement in the United States; she founded and edited ''The Blind Man'' and '' Rongwrong'' magazines in New York City with Fren ...

, Cindy Wright and

Daisy Youngblood Daisy Youngblood (born 1945) is an American modern sculptor and ceramic artist. She grew up in North Carolina and lives in New Mexico. She was a 2003 recipient of a MacArthur Fellows Program genius grant. Life Youngblood was born in 1945 in As ...

. With the merger of The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu and the

, this collection became the property of the Honolulu Museum of Art and is often on view at both Spalding House and at the main museum building on Thomas Square.

History

In addition to preserving art since 1940, the museum maintained the historic Spalding House and gardens. The Spalding House in

Makiki Makiki is an area of Honolulu, Hawaii, located northeast of downtown Honolulu, stretching east to west from Punahou Street to Pensacola Street and north to south from Round Top Drive/Makiki Heights Drive to Lunalilo Freeway. Punchbowl, an extin ...

Heights was built as a residence in 1925 by

Anna Rice Cooke Anna Rice Cooke (September 5, 1853 – August 8, 1934) was a patron of the arts and the founder of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Biography Anna Charlotte Rice was born on September 5, 1853, into a prominent missionary family on Oahu, Hawaii. Her fa ...

, widow of

Charles Montague Cooke Charles Montague Cooke (May 6, 1849 – August 27, 1909) was a businessman during the Kingdom of Hawaii, Republic of Hawaii, and Territory of Hawaii. Life Charles Montague Cooke was born May 6, 1849 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was Amos Star ...

. At the same time, the

was being built on the site of her former home on Beretania Street in Honolulu. The Makiki Heights home was designed by

Hart Wood Hart Wood (1880–1957) was an American architect who flourished during the "Golden Age" of Hawaiian architecture. He was one of the principal proponents of a distinctive "Hawaiian style" of architecture appropriate to the local environment and r ...

and later enlarged by the firm of

Bertram Goodhue Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869 – April 23, 1924) was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for ...

and Associates. The Honolulu Academy of Arts acquired the estate as a bequest from Cooke's daughter, Alice Spalding, in 1968 and operated it as an annex for the display of Japanese prints from 1970 to 1978. A private developer in the late 1970s sold it to a subsidiary of

The Honolulu Advertiser ''The Honolulu Advertiser'' was a daily newspaper published in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the largest daily newspaper in the American state of Hawaii. It published daily with special Sunday and Int ...

. In 1986, the

Thurston Twigg-Smith Thurston Twigg-Smith (August 17, 1921 – July 16, 2016) was an American businessman and philanthropist from Hawaii. Biography Twigg-Smith was a fifth-generation descendant of missionary settlers in Hawaii. He was born in 1921 in Honolulu, Hawaii ...

family converted it to The Contemporary Museum. Following interior renovation and the construction of the Milton Cades Pavilion, the museum opened to the public in October 1988. In addition to galleries, the museum consisted of a shop, cafe, administrative offices, storage and work areas, and a director residence. The gardens were originally landscaped between 1928 and 1941 by Reverend K. H. Inagaki, a Christian minister of Japanese ancestry. From 1979 to 1980, the gardens were resuscitated by Honolulu landscape architect James C. Hubbard. During the 1990s, Kahaluu-based landscape architect Leland Miyano brought the gardens to their current state. The grounds display sculpture by

Satoru Abe Satoru Abe (born 13 June 1926) is a Japanese American sculptor and painter. Biography Abe was born in Moiliili, a district of Honolulu, Hawaii. He attended President William McKinley High School, where he took art lessons from Shirley Xime ...

Charles Arnoldi Charles Arnoldi, also known as Chuck Arnoldi and as Charles Arthur Arnoldi is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born April 10, 1946, in Dayton, Ohio. While visiting a girlfriend's grandmother in New York, he took the opportun ...

Deborah Butterfield Deborah Kay Butterfield (born May 7, 1949) is an American sculptor. Along with her artist-husband John Buck, she divides her time between a farm in Bozeman, Montana, and studio space in Hawaii. She is known for her sculptures of horses made f ...

Jedd Garet Jedd Garet is an American sculptor, painter and printmaker, who was born in 1955. He was raised in California, studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, and received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Influenced by sur ...

George Rickey George Warren Rickey (June 6, 1907 – July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, 1907, in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was still a child, his father, an executive with Singer S ...

Toshiko Takaezu Toshiko Takaezu (June 17, 1922 – March 9, 2011) was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator who was known for her rounded, closed forms that viewed ceramics as a fine art and more than a functional vessel. She is of Japan ...

, DeWain Valentine and

Arnold Zimmerman Arnold Zimmerman (1954-2021), also known as Arnie Zimmerman, was an American sculptor and ceramic artist.Kuspit, Donald. "Arnold Zimmerman," ''American Ceramics'', Volume 15, Number 1, 2006, p. 72.Koplos, Janet. "Arnold Zimmerman at John Elder," ...

, and a wall painting by Paul Morrison. Spalding House is located at 2411 Makiki Heights Drive,

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

, and is open to the public. coordinates .

Honolulu Museum of Art at First Hawaiian Center

A satellite facility of the former Contemporary Museum located in downtown Honolulu in the

First Hawaiian Center First Hawaiian Center is the second tallest building in the U.S. state of Hawaii and the city of Honolulu, the largest city in the state. It is the world corporate headquarters of First Hawaiian Bank, the oldest and largest bank based in Hawaii. ...

, the corporate headquarters of

First Hawaiian Bank First Hawaiian, Inc. is a bank holding company headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii. Its principal subsidiary, First Hawaiian Bank, founded in 1858, is Hawaii’s oldest and largest financial institution headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Firs ...

, opened in 1996. The exhibits focus on Hawaiian art and are underwritten by First Hawaiian Bank. The gallery is now curated by the Honolulu Museum of Art staff as the result of the merger of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Contemporary Museum of Honolulu.

Merger with the Honolulu Museum of Art

On May 2, 2011, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu ceased to exist as an independent entity. The galleries and grounds continue to be open to the public with the staff of the former Contemporary Museum joining the staff of the

. The director of the Contemporary Museum became deputy director of the

, and the curatorial staff became a new Department of Contemporary Art at the larger museum. The Contemporary Museum's collection of more than 3,000 works of art, endowments, and other assets were transferred to the

.Burlingame, Burl, “Art museums sign off on merger agreement”, ''Honolulu Star-Advertiser'', May 3, 2011, p. B2 The transferred artworks now have accession numbers beginning with "TCM". The Makiki Heights building, which has about 5,000 square feet of gallery space, reassumed its former name, "

References

External links

The Honolulu Museum of Art
{{authority control Museums in Honolulu Outdoor sculptures in Hawaii Hawaiian architecture Art museums and galleries in Hawaii Contemporary art galleries in the United States Defunct art museums and galleries in the United States Art museums established in 1986 Art museums disestablished in 2011 1986 establishments in Hawaii 2011 disestablishments in Hawaii Defunct museums in Hawaii