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| Chinese garden. |
I like to pop into the Honolulu Museum of Art as much as I can. It's one of those rare places where art, architecture, gardens, and history intersect.
Purely from memory, I believe Honolulu Museum of Art is located in the former home of Anna Rice Cooke, daughter of a prominent missionary family in the islands and patron of the arts. It was her collection of art that formed the basis of the museum's collection and the reason why the museum was founded.
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| View of exterior. Roof looks like a Dickey roof. Monstera is a nice modern choice, but I wonder what the grounds looked like when Cooke lived here. |
There seems to be very little written about the museum's courtyard spaces. One is landscaped in the style of a Chinese garden, another in a Mediterranean style. The courtyard near the main entrance is notably home to a fair sized kauri tree, but is otherwise mostly lawn.
It's taken me several visits to finally get respectable photographs of the Mediterranean courtyard. I haven't found a way to nicely capture all of it's features with my basic camera - vining bougainvillea, arched doorways, paned glass doors, bench beneath scraggly tree, lovely pottery, focal water feature where the water is intended to flow from a perimeter pool to a central fountain - in a single frame.
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| One corner of the Mediterranean courtyard. |
The one thing I think that's missing from this courtyard sanctuary is a lemon tree or two. I'm sure its absence has something to do with maintenance (I'm also not sure where it would fit space-wise), but its addition sure would be exquisite.
There are some extraordinary landscape paintings perennially on display. I recently was able to take a tour that highlighted some of them. There are paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, at least one of the members of the Hudson River School, probably at least one by someone from the Volcano School, and if I remember correctly, one Monet. There are also spectacular scrolls featuring ancient Japanese and Chinese landscapes. The scrolls were particularly interesting. I had not thought about scrolls as a medium for landscape art before.
There's always something new to see at the museum. Even the pieces that have been on display for years are a delight to revisit. I hope to visit again soon.
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| Georgia O'Keeffe paintings depicting Maui landscapes. |
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| Finely woven mat is a sight to behold. |
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| What a great choice of wall color! I marvel at the time it must have taken to produce such a thing. |
Note: My posts will likely be sporadic and infrequent for a while due to work.
