“How do we navigate institutional change without waiting for the institutional to change before acting?” This central question came in and out of focus over the course of three years at Bishop Museum. In 2022, the multi-phased Pacific Pipeline Initiative at Bishop Museum started by first prioritizing a phase of listening. Staff across different teams then sought ways to make that listening actionable. Healoha Johnston will reflect on this process and consider how the museum continues to move from transparency to truth telling in collaboration with communities.
Healoha Johnston is an art historian living in Kaiwiki, Hawai‘i. She is director of cultural resources and curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific arts and culture at Bishop Museum. Johnston’s exhibitions and research projects explore connections between historic visual culture and contemporary art with a particular focus on the sociopolitical underpinnings that inform those relationships. She served as chief curator and curator of the arts of Hawaiʻi, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas at the Honolulu Museum of Art, worked in contemporary art galleries and NOAA’s Pacific National Monument program, and the Smithsonian Institution as part of the American Women’s History Initiative and Asian Pacific American Center before joining Bishop Museum.
Tuesday, November 11, 12:15 pm
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