Culture - Surfing in Hawaii

Call me unsophisticated. Call me bourgeois. Call me a hick. I admit it: I never went to Hawaii for the history. Or the museums. Or the libraries. My idea of Hawaiian culture was running across Kalakaua Boulevard to Waikiki’s International Marketplace and igging for the best price on a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. Just a quick break from the surf, understand. Until now.

Now I’m visiting Hawaii for the seventh time, and making my first pilgrimages to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Contemporary Museum, the Bishop Museum and the Iloni Palace. This isn’t going to do much to darken my Hawaiian tan, but it does deepen my appreciation for the Hawaiian people I’ve long since come to enjoy and admire.

Following the lead of tourist bureaus across the United States, the Oahu Visitors Bureau has invaded the lucrative cultural tourism market. In San Diego, we call it Art & Sol. Over here, it’s Arts with Aloha. There are many and varied reasons to promote a better understanding of the native culture—here and elsewhere—but one motive is universal: copping a greater share of visitors’ dollars. Cultural tourists stay longer and spend more—an average of 45 percent more—than other tourists.

The cultural tourist also tends to be somewhat better heeled —inclined to stay in hotels like the Halekulani, which is base of operations this particular week in late spring. Oahu was, after all, the original playground of Hawaiian royalty. And they always traveled first-class. Which explains why this hotel has become a partner in the Arts with Aloha program—even offering its guests complimentary tickets to Honolulu Symphony performances, along with passes to four museums.

The Halekulani on Waikiki Beach is a cultural experience in itself. One of two AAA Five-Diamond hotels on Oahu, this spectacular hotel is the sort of place where the waiter not only remembers your name and that you have juice with breakfast, he remembers it’s grapefruit juice.

This is also the sort of place you might expect to find Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter, Amanda, on her honeymoon. In fact, Amanda is honeymooning here, and passing some time with her new husband and members of the wedding party in the Lewers Lounge. As a wedding gift, pianist Jim Hodges and bassist Bruce Hamada pay tribute to Grandpa Frank with a medley of his hits. Amanda seems pleased; so is everyone else in the lounge.

The visitor industry here is concentrating on three types of cultural tourism: “Hawaii culture” (the history and traditions of the islands), “diverse culture” (ethnicity, race and lifestyle) and “high culture” (the arts). We’re doing “high culture” this week.

The Contemporary Museum is off the beaten path in more ways than one. It’s tucked into the upscale neighborhood of Makiki Heights, in the former Alice Cooke Spalding residence, with a spectacular view of Honolulu below. The view from the inside is even more fascinating. This, a curator tells us, “is a safe place to exhibit art that isn’t safe.” She’s a master of understatement.

The spring show (since closed) isn’t for the kiddies, or the faint of stomach. “Viewer discretion is advised” is the way the museum literature puts it. It is a collection of the works of “Joel-Peter Witkin: Unpublished and Unseen.” It is understandable why some of these works by the turn-of-the-century French photographer have gone “unseen.” Among the stars of Witkin’s photographs are decapitated cadavers reclining on chaises; quadruple amputees with strap-on goats’ legs, photographed as satyrs; obese women in bondage; and dogs as cornucopia, with fruit spilling from their bellies.

(There’s quite a fine little restaurant, called The Contemporary Café, attached to the museum, if you still have the appetite.)

For a more traditional cultural experience, there is a visit to the Bishop Museum, the state museum of natural and cultural history. The museum’s director is one Donald Duckworth. Really. With a name like that, you have to be good at your job. He’s very good.

A half-million residents and tourists visit the 14-acre museum campus each year. Originally established as a research institution for the natural and cultural history of the Pacific, the museum still fills that role, housing more than 2 million specimens, including artifacts from the royal family. But its mission has been expanded under Duckworth to become what has been described as “Hawaii’s open classroom.” Free programs—particularly popular with schoolchildren—include crafts demonstrations, gallery and garden tours and live hula performances (clearly popular with adults).

The Iloni Palace, built in 1879, is the only royal palace in the United States. That, of course, is because Hawaii had our only royalty—long before it won statehood in 1960. It was the official residence of King Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last monarchs.

The Throne Room, decorated in maroon and gold, is among the most impressive rooms in the palace. It was the scene of royal audiences, galas, receptions and, alas, the trial of Queen Liliuokalani, who was, for a time, imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom of the palace, after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893.

One stop that isn’t on our schedule: the Hawaii Loves Barbie Doll Museum. (Hey, ya takes yer culture where ya finds it.) Nestled in the center of Kailua, it’s one of Hawaii’s more popular museums and boasts one of the world’s largest collections of Barbie dolls—some 5,000 of them. See Barbie and Ken dressed in various costumes of the Polynesian islands. See them wearing ancient hula costumes and aloha shirts, handmade by owner Florence Marton.

A final stop is not on the official Art with Aloha itinerary, but it could be. This is Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts Inc., a museum of sorts. Here, original aloha shirts from the 1950s and earlier—some delightfully tacky ones, with rayon hula girls—command up to $5,000. But why, when you can get an authentic Magnum, P.I. Hawaiian shirt for less than 40 bucks at the Marketplace?

“Hey, this is art,” our guide explains. “Why is an original Monet so expensive? You can have an original, or you can have a copy.”

Bailey’s “antiques” are of the more recent vintage, and not entirely indigenous to the islands: pub signs for Coors and Lite beer; assorted Pez containers; The A-Team comic books and lunch pails; and, pièce de résistance, a vintage 1950s Alfred E. Neuman doll. I can’t afford the doll, so I settle for a 1960 issue of MAD Magazine—one with a devastating takeoff on the Nixon-Kennedy debates.

Call me bourgeois, but to me, Alfred E. Neuman is a cultural icon. What, me worry?

IF YOU GO: Traveling from San Diego to Hawaii, there’s really only one way to fly: Hawaiian Airlines’ new nonstops to Honolulu. Flights leave San Diego daily at 9:15 a.m., return at 9:30 p.m. (reservations: 800-387-5320).

If you are inclined to favor Five-Diamond Hotels, there are only two places to stay: The Halekulani (reservations: 800-367-2343) and the Kahala Mandarin Oriental (808-739-8888). The Mandarin Oriental, a more isolated resort in Kahala—opposite Diamond Head from Waikiki—boasts its own secluded beach; spacious, meticulously appointed rooms and a terrific restaurant called Hoku’s. It also offers a rare treat for guests: the chance to swim with dolphins in the courtyard waterways. The Mandarin Oriental is the sort of place you might expect to find Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of Boogie Nights, and comedian Adam Sandler, filming his newest movie (a “semi-straight role,” a publicist tells me).

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