Bishop 
Museum

The wonderful Bishop Museum began in 1889 as a memorial created by Charles Bishop to his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last of the royal Kamehameha family. Her royal possessions formed the nucleus of the collection. Recently, the Hawaiian Hall and the Polynesian (now Pacific) Hall have been impressively renovated. The displays have doubled and the emphasis is now on the spread of Pacific peoples across “the blue continent,” their cultures and their stories. A new planetarium includes a fascinating program on the stellar navigation of the Polynesians who first came to Hawaii.
I never tire of the Hawaiian Hall, organized on three floors: the first devoted to pre-contact Hawaii; the second, to the Hawaiian people and the importance of land and nature in their daily lives; and the third, to an exploration of the Hawaiian chiefs, the overthrow of their realm and the Hawaiian renaissance of the late 20th century.