Bishop Museum Honolulu- Honolulu, HI

The Bishop Museum in Honolulu is open all year round, except Christmas day. It opens at 9am and closes at 5pm. Charles Reed Bishop, the last descendent of the Kamehameha, built the museum in 1889 in memory of his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop. The street where the museum stands is named after her.

Bishop Museum is one of the premier attractions in Honolulu. It covers a wide range of subject matter, from Hawaii's cultural and historical native past, including its royal families, to modern scientific exhibits, which offer a hands-on experience in many cases.

The museum offers visitors to Hawaii the chance to see and learn for themselves an aspect of Hawaii that many do not even know exists. In the early days most of the artifacts were heirlooms that belonged to the Hawaiian royal family. Since then it has grown to be the major museum of the Pacific.

The largest collection of local Hawaiian and Pacific Polynesian artifacts, almost 2.5 million pieces, can be found at Bishop Museum today. It also houses many important natural history artifacts. There are almost one million plant and marine invertebrate specimens housed in the museum.

The photographic collection also numbers around the one million mark, while the bird, mammal and fish specimens number close to quarter of a million. The largest single collection is the 14 million insect specimens, followed by the six million marine and land shells. Bishop Museum also has an impressive library. It consists of some 115,000 magnificent bound volumes.

In 1988 the organization was given the status of State Museum on Natural and Cultural History. It has become a wonderful giant resource of many buildings and rooms. Four of the original buildings are made from local lava rock. Native koa wood lines the interior, which has carved designs.

A popular part of the museum is the Science Adventure Center. This is where many unique hands-on interactive exhibits are housed. Here you can learn the natural and geological history if the islands, the oceanography and vulcanology of the region.

The Kahili Room is dedicated to the display of kahili, or feather standards, that the ali‘i, or monarchs, were associated with. The Polynesian Hall and the Hawaiian Hall were built in conjunction with each other. The halls have displays that reflect the culture of the native peoples from Hawaii, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia,

The Jhamandas Watumull Planetarium was opened in 1961. It offers daily shows on the cosmos with educational programs mornings and afternoons. The Hall of Discovery is an ever-changing exhibition hall. In 2007 it is featuring the “Journey With a King” exhibition. This exhibition tells the story of the relationship experienced between Japan and Hawaii in the 19th century.

The Castle Memorial Building had its dedication in 1990. This building is used for traveling exhibitions. These exhibitions sometime originate in far distant parts of the world. This building also houses a gallery containing some of the original, now extremely precious, collections of the museum.

Bishop Museum is a cultural experience for its visitors. It is also a place where visitors can learn about the geology and oceanography of the region. It is of special importance to Hawaii and the Pacific.