Bishop Museum
The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, designated the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. Founded in 1889, it is the largest museum in Hawaiʻi and has the world's largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts and natural history specimens. Besides the comprehensive exhibits of Hawaiian cultural material, the museum's total holding of natural history specimens exceeds 24 million,[2] of which the entomological collection alone represents more than 13.5 million specimens (making it the third-largest insect collection in the United States). The Index Herbariorum code assigned to Herbarium Pacificum of this museum is BISH[3] and this abbreviation is used when citing housed herbarium specimens.
For the museum in Bradenton, Florida, see Bishop Museum of Science and Nature.Location
The museum complex is home to the Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center.
Library and archives[edit]
The museum library has one of the most extensive collections of books, periodicals, newspapers and special collections concerned with Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The archives hold the results of extensive studies done by museum staff in the Pacific Basin, as well as manuscripts, photographs, artwork, oral histories, commercial sound recordings and maps.
When Bishop Museum opened to the public in June 1891, its library consisted of but a few shelves of books in what is today the Picture Gallery.[9]
Many of Hawaiʻi's royalty, including Bernice Pauahi Bishop and Queen Liliʻuokalani, deposited their personal papers at Bishop Museum. Manuscripts in the collection also include scientific papers, genealogical records, and memorabilia.
The book collection consists of approximately 50,000 volumes with an emphasis on the cultural and natural history of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, with subject strengths in anthropology, music, botany, entomology, and zoology. The library provides extra access to the collection of published diaries, narratives, memoirs, and other writings relating to 18th- and 19th-century Hawaiʻi.
Institutions[edit]
On the campus of Bishop Museum is the Jhamandas Watumull Planetarium, an educational and research facility devoted to the astronomical sciences and the oldest planetarium in Polynesia.
Also on the campus is Pauahi Hall, home to the J. Linsley Gressit Center for Research in Entomology, which houses some 14 million prepared specimens of insects and related arthropods, including over 16,500 primary types. It is the third-largest entomology collection in the United States and the eighth-largest in the world. An active research facility, Pauahi Hall is not open to the public.
Nearby is Pākī Hall, home to the Hawaiʻi Sports Hall of Fame, a museum library and archives, which are open to the public.
In 1992, the Hawaii State legislature created the Hawaii Biological Survey (HBS) as a program of the Bishop Museum. The HBS surveys, collects, inventories, studies, and maintains the reference collection of every plant and animal found in Hawaiʻi. It currently holds more than 4 million specimens in its collections.
From 1988 until 2009, the Bishop Museum also administered the Hawaiʻi Maritime Center in downtown Honolulu.[10] Built on a former private pier of Honolulu Harbor for the royal family, the center was the premier maritime museum in the Pacific Rim with artifacts in relation to the Pacific whaling industry and the Hawaiʻi steamship industry.
On the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, the Bishop Museum administers the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, specializing in indigenous Hawaiian plant life.
Since 1920, the Secretariat of the Pacific Science Association (PSA), founded that year as an independent regional, non-governmental, scholarly organization, has been based at Bishop Museum. It seeks to advance science and technology in support of sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific.
Bishop Hall, 2010
Front end of Hawaiian Hall, 2010
Entrance to Hawaiian & Polynesian Hall, 1958
Staircase to Polynesian Hall, 2010
Hawaiian royalty wore these feathered cloaks (ʻahu ʻula) and helmets. The chief in the background is Kaʻiana.
Russian cannon outside the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in 1960
Entrance to the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, 2011
Papua New Guinea Sawos people men's spirit house gable
Hawaiian Hall, with a heiau recreation in miniature (2012)
Atrium – photograph of Charles Bishop with Bernice Pauahi Bishop (2012)
Charles Bishop with his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi, in the atrium of the museum (2012)
Kahili Room – Kahili Paʻa Lima in a glass case (2012)
Hawaiian Hall – akua kiʻi (2012)
Hawaiian Hall – hale replica with placard (2012)
