Honolulu art museums announce merger

HONOLULU PULSE STAFF / staff@honolulupulse.com

The Honolulu Academy of Arts and The Contemporary Museum announced Thursday that the boards of both museums have approved an agreement to merge the two institutions.

The agreement will take effect  July 1.

On Monday, Stephan Jost will become the academy’s new director. He is currently director at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum.

“There are so many things that are good about the partnership,” Jost said in a news release. “Joining forces allows us to better serve our public. … At the end of the day this is not about the Academy or TCM but about the people who visit us.”

Under the agreement, The Contemporary Museum’s collection and assets are a gift to the academy, the release said. Contemporary Museum’s executive director Allison Wong will become deputy director of the merged museum. Contemporary Museum curators James Jensen and Inger Tully will be curators of the new contemporary art department, while the museum’s head of finance, John Talkington, will continue in the position for the integrated museum, according to the release. The rest its staff will also remain in place.

The two museums will retain their names through June 30. Jost and the combined board will discuss the possibility of a modified name.

Over the next year, the academy’s museum will reinstall galleries to accommodate the expanded collection of contemporary art, the release said. The new, merged museum will hold a reopening in 2012, the academy’s 85th anniversary, with a Contemporary Biennial in February.

The academy’s collection spans 5,000 years and represents the major cultures of Hawaii. It includes Asian and Western works by such icons as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Katsushika Hokusai and Robert Rauschenberg.

Founded in 1988, The Contemporary Museum has a collection of 3,500 works from 1940 to the present that includes works by such artists as Frank Stella and Kara Walker.