No Rubber Plants
There are many perks to being director at the Honolulu Museum of Art, not least of which is the office. Or, rather, what goes into the office. Each new director is allowed to decorate this space with pieces from the museum’s 55,000-piece collection.
Today, the office is like a microcosm of the HoMA—diverse in an East-meets-West kind of way, a mix of old and new, relevant but forward-looking. This is where Halona Norton-Westbrook, who took over as director in January, is curating her first space within the museum walls. Her choices say a lot about the role art plays in her life—and the role that she thinks it could play at the museum.
Inside the office, she has music playing. Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” a country hit about a mother’s love and faith transforming a hodgepodge of fabric into a coat, which then provides warmth and beauty. Norton-Westbrook, 38, is a mother herself, and one of her chosen pieces is an abstract painting called “Accords” by Amédée Ozenfant, the French cubist who co-founded Purism, a 20th century art movement stressing mathematical and geometric purity. But in the most direct line of sight hangs “Victoria and the Cat” by Alice Neel.
Norton-Westbrook says she feels a kindred spirit in Neel, a single mother known for her starkly honest portraits. At the same time, it brings her full-circle: The first major work she acquired for the Toledo Museum of Art, where she served as head of curatorial affairs for six years before moving to Hawai‘i, was an Alice Neel.
Also on the walls are two oil-on-canvas landscapes: “Berkeley #63” by Richard Diebenkorn, a favorite artist of Norton-Westbrook, who grew up in the Bay Area, and the more traditional “Isles of Shoals, Broad Cove” by the American Impressionist Childe Hassam.
Art has always informed Norton-Westbrook’s vantage point. She went to Mills College, in Oakland, and worked as interim lead administrator for the school’s vibrant museum. Along with her daughter Gigi, then just three years old, Norton-Westbrook then moved to England. She received a master’s degree in art history from London’s Courtauld Institute of
Art, and a Ph.D. in museology (the study of museum leadership) and art history from University of Manchester. Later, she graduated Claremont’s Getty Leadership Institute, an executive program for future museum managers.
The family—Gigi, Norton-Westbrook, and her husband Jim, a banking professional she met in England—relocated to Ohio when she was selected for a top fellowship at the Toledo Art Museum. Upon completion, she was offered a permanent role.
Diane Wright, a TMA colleague, says Norton-Westbrook’s ability to remain focused on a long-term vision for the museum was impressive. She also praises her approach to exploring the artistic process.
“My most memorable experiences with her were visits to see artists,” Wright says, singling out her former coworker’s “keen interest in the art- making that takes place behind-the-scenes, in the living spaces and studios of these incredibly creative people.”
(Today, an acrylic Helen Frankenthaler dominates the space above Norton-Westbrook’s office couch at the HoMA. She points out its use of soak-stain, one the artist’s pioneering techniques.)
At the TMA, Norton-Westbrook introduced innovate, multi-sensory art experiences. These not only made headlines, but challenged visitors’ understanding of their own communities and, moreover, the world around them. One memorable exhibit involved bringing the British artist Rebecca Louise Law to the museum for a site-specific installation. The temporary work used thousands of dried and fresh plants, and required 1,650 volunteer hours of assistance from community members.
Norton-Westbrook also collaborated with Toshiko MacAdam, the acclaimed Japanese textile artist, and Gabriel Dawe, a Mexican-American talent whose ambitious installations explore the spectrum of light. The latter enlivened the TMA’s Great Gallery, which showcases old masters, with multicolor threads and refracted light beams, creating an ethereal rainbow. Another buzzy Dawes piece, “Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water,” involved mirrors, Plexiglas, lights and water.
According to Norton-Westbrook, it explored “the relationship between ourselves, the space that we occupy, and the ungraspable concept of infinity.”
Now consider the painting that hangs over the entryway to her Honolulu workspace: “Early Spring” by Hawaiian artist Isami Doi. The work brings sense of place, something Norton-Westbrook knows is central to the Hawai‘i experience. (Before she was born, her parents lived on O‘ahu, and frequently brought her on trips here. In a neat symmetry, Norton-Westbrook is now pregnant with her second child.) Or perhaps the Doi speaks to the multicultural values Anna Rice Cooke established in 1927, when the museum opened. Norton-Westbrook wants to honor those values, while continuing to make the HoMA experience more “relevant and sustainable” moving forward.
In her eyes, that’s a worthwhile mission. She believes museums should provide “space for reflection,” pointing out how art “develops empathy and critical thinking skills,” which, in turn, helps patrons lead “fulfilling lives.” But creating such a space means confronting a difficult truism: Not everyone feels comfortable in a museum.
“The challenge for this museum, and all museums, is how do you make it feel like it’s [a place] for them, and a place where they belong, when history hasn’t put forth that message?”
Meetings with Norton-Westbrook, many of which are sure to involve answering that question, take place around a rectangular, contemporary Tom Hirai table, a beautifully crafted wood piece inlaid with ceramic tiles. And above her desk, Norton-Westbrook has selected a Kajiwara Hisako titled “Table with Chinese Bellflowers.” The ink-and-color silk, circa 1935, is a nod to the prominence of the Asia-Pacific in Hawai‘i.
“It’s a lovely piece,” she says, “by a female artist.”
Norton-Westbrook allows that these works will stay in her office for a while and then she’ll change it up. But everything in here—and her body of work—suggests an open mind and fresh eyes, creative energy and the promise of possibility.
The perks might be hers, but we’re all in for a treat.