Qualla: Bishop Museum

Bishop Museum: Introduction

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA, CC BY 2.0. The koa wood display cases lining Hawaiian Hall are now worth more than the buildings that house them. That detail says something essential about the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum: what began as one man's memorial to his wife has become irreplaceable, a repository of Polynesian heritage so vast and so deep that no dollar figure captures it. Founded in 1889 in Honolulu's Kalihi district, the museum holds over 24 million natural history specimens and the world's largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts. A sperm whale skeleton hangs above the central gallery. Feathered royal cloaks glow behind glass. And somewhere in its archives rest the personal papers of Hawaiian queens.

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Image: Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA | CC BY 2.0

Bishop Museum: A Love Letter in Stone

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SCFoxJD, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles Reed Bishop built the museum for a woman who could not see it. His wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, was the last legal heir of the Kamehameha Dynasty, the royal line that had ruled the Kingdom of Hawaii from 1810 to 1872. She died in 1884, leaving behind a will that ...

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Image: SCFoxJD | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bishop Museum: Voyages of Discovery

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA, CC BY 2.0. In 1924, the museum sent scientists to sea aboard the Kaimiloa, a four-masted barquentine outfitted by millionaire Medford Ross Kellum. The vessel was a floating laboratory, stocked with bottles, crates, and gallons of preservatives for the insects and plant specimens the team wo...

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Image: Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA | CC BY 2.0

Bishop Museum: Fourteen Million Wings

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Father of JGKlein, Public domain. Pauahi Hall is closed to the public, but behind its doors lives one of the largest insect collections on Earth. The J. Linsley Gressit Center for Research in Entomology houses roughly 14 million prepared specimens of insects and arthropods, including over 16,500 primary types -- ...

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Image: Father of JGKlein | Public domain

Bishop Museum: Bringing the Gods Home

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit shimown, CC BY-SA 2.0. In November 2017, Christie's Paris auctioned a 20-inch wooden ki'i described as depicting Ku ka'ili moku, the Hawaiian war god, dating to roughly 1780 to 1820. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff purchased it for $7.5 million, far exceeding the estimate of $2.3 to $3.4 million, and donat...

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Image: shimown | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bishop Museum: Still Growing

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Kamehameha Schools moved to its new campus in Kapalama in 1940, the museum expanded across the original site. The Castle Memorial Building, dedicated in 1990, brought traveling exhibitions from institutions worldwide. The Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center, which ope...

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Image: Sdkb | CC BY-SA 4.0