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Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in honor of his late wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct descendant of the royal Kamehameha family.
The Museum was originally established to house the large collection of Hawaiian artifacts and royal family heirlooms of the Princess, and has since expanded to include over 2 million artifacts, documents and photographs about Hawai’i and other Pacific island cultures.
Mr. Bishop built the magnificent Polynesian and Hawaiian Hall you now see on the grounds of the original Kamehameha Schools for Boys. This school was established by Princess Pauahi to educate children of Hawai’i. The Museum was meant to augment that education and instill a greater pride in their Hawaiian heritage.
In the 1960’s the school was relocated to a new campus on the hillside above, leaving room for the Museum to expand on the original site. The only school building that remains is Bishop Hall. All of the other buildings were built as part of the Museum.
Today, Bishop Museum is the premier natural and cultural history institution in the Pacific and is recognized throughout the world for its cultural collections and research projects. It also has one of the largest natural history specimen collections in the world.
As the largest museum in the state, Bishop Museum hosts over 300,000 visitors each year who experience over 2,000 years of Polynesian history and cultural heritage, through guided tours, hula resentations, garden tours and science demonstrations.
Here are some pictures of just a few of the many things there are to see.
