Bishop Museum

Bishop Museum, research centre and museum for the study of Hawaiian and Polynesian archaeology, natural history, and culture in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. The largest museum in the state of Hawaii, it exhibits Hawaiian and Polynesian arts, crafts, artifacts, and flora and fauna. Among items on display at Hawaiian Hall are royal jewelry, crowns and thrones, weapons, feather capes and cloaks, outrigger canoes, surfboards, artifacts of whalebone and tortoise shell, and a ceiling-mounted sperm whale skeleton with a papier-mâché body. Artisans demonstrate traditional crafts (quilting, weaving, and lei making), and the museum also features a hula show. The museum was founded in 1889 by Charles R. Bishop, the American husband of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi (died 1884), the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I. In 1961 a planetarium and an observatory were added to emphasize the role of astronomy in the cultural history of Pacific Island peoples. The Bishop Museum also operates the Hawai‘i Maritime Center (in Honolulu Harbor) and the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden (at Captain Cook, on Hawaii island). In 1988 the museum was designated the State Museum of Natural and Cultural History.