(waves crashing) And so, after her death in October of 84.

Mr.  Bishop had guaranteed under the will that he   would take care of this little request of hers.

It was 1885 when a news story appeared in The   Daily Honolulu press, a local newspaper.

It read,  we have it on good authority that Charles R.   Bishop has in contemplation the establishment of  a museum of Hawaiian antiquities.

If circumstances   so aid Mr. Bishop that he is enabled to  carry out his public spirited project,   the nation will be greatly the gainer.

If done,  it is well that it be well done and done quickly.

As things turned out, it was.

The things  that you're going to be studying as you   roll through this part of the museum.

Charles Reed Bishop left his native New   York in 1846 to seek his fortune in the Oregon  territory.

Bad weather forced his ship to Hawaiʻi,   and he decided to stay.

A few years later, Bishop  married Bernice Pauahi, a princess of the royal   family, great granddaughter of King Kamehameha,  the great.

Mr. Bishop went on to found Hawaiʻi's   first bank and become a leading figure in  business and in government.

Mrs. Bishop,   through inheritance, would become one  of the richest people in the kingdom.

A series of events in the 1880s would set the  stage for the museum to bear the Bishop name.

The   events were the deaths of three women, all members  of the royal family.

The first was Princess Ruth.

She left her extensive land holdings to  her second cousin and closest relative,   Princess Pauahi.

The princess now Mrs. Bishop  would die the next year, at the age of 53.

She   owned one-ninth of all the land in the kingdom.

In her will, Pauahi set aside the proceeds   from the land for the founding of a school for  Native Hawaiian children.

She left her personal   possessions to her husband.

The next year, another  of Hawaiʻi's royalty died, the Dowager Queen Emma,   widow of King Kamehameha, the Fourth.

Emma also  left her personal possessions to Charles Bishop.

Her intention was that her curiosities,  as she called them, would be combined with   Pauahi's for museum to honor the royal family.

Charles Bishop diligently went about the job of   carrying out his wife's wishes.

First, he directed  his attention to founding the school.

Three years   after Princess Pauahi's death, the Kamehameha  School for Boys opened.

It was built on a   barren piece of land in an area known as Kalihi,  a couple of miles from downtown Honolulu.

Bishop   also chose a site for the museum that he and his  wife often had talked about.

Museum construction   was completed in 1890.

There were three small  exhibit areas, including the Kāhili room and   the Pacific room, now called the vestibule.

Roger Rose is an ethnologist at the museum   in authority in the cultures of the Pacific.

His office is in Bishop Hall, one of the last   two buildings from the boy’s school, which long  since has moved.

Rose is the museum's unofficial   historian.

He says that one key decision by  Charles Bishop may have ensured the museum's   eventual success, it was hiring as curator an  outspoken scholar named William Tufts Brigham.

I think it's pretty clear that Mr. Bishop realized  that Brigham was highly qualified.

He had had some   25 years of prior museum experience in Boston.

Bishop recognized his scientific ability and   his general ability to deal with all manner of  issue.

He was a visionary, Brigham was, and this   was a quality that was needed in establishing  a new institution.

Bishop knew his man.

For eight years Brigham was the museum's  only full-time employee.

He did everything.

He was curator, he was janitor, but the work  became too much, and Charles Bishop provided   Brigham with the money to hire a staff.

As  a staff, and everyone else learned Brigham   was brilliant and hard-working, but not  the easiest person to get along with.

It's quite true that genius often causes  irritability in other people.

He was at times   difficult to get along with.

He was by the time  he had started working as curator at the museum,   he was 50 years old already and was starting  his second career.

He was a trained lawyer,   so he was in no position to let anyone try to get  away with things.

He stood up for his own rights,   and he worked for the betterment  of the institution throughout.

Charles Bishop left Hawaiʻi in 1894 in  part because of the political unrest   surrounding the overthrow of the monarchy  the year before.

He moved to San Francisco,   where his interest in Hawaiʻi continued.

He set  up a financial trust to support the museum and   other local causes.

Charles Bishop died in  1915 at age 93.

Before Bishop left Hawaiʻi,   plans already were in place to enlarge the  original building bearing his wife's name.

First came the Polynesian room, now devoted  to the various cultures of the Pacific.

(natural sound) Hawaiian Hall was completed at the turn of the   century.

It's one of the most beautiful exhibit  rooms of any museum in the world.

The cathedral,   like setting, contains a priceless collection of  objects tracing the cultural history of Hawaiʻi   from before the arrival of the first Westerners,  through the years of the monarchy to the   immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries.

(natural sound of people in museum)   Two large exhibits in Hawaiian Hall  have been there since the day it opened,   examples of William Brigham's vision as  curator.

One is a house made of pili grass,   depicting how Hawaiian families  lived hundreds of years ago.

The   house is unique in all Hawaiʻi.

There  isn't another one like it.

The other   exhibit hangs from the ceiling.

It's that of  a sperm whale, a reminder of the significant   role Hawaiʻi played in old whaling days.

The  outside of the whale is made of paper mache.

From the third floor, visitors can see that the  inside is an actual whale skeleton.

This exhibit   was the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

The museum library used to be on the third floor   of Hawaiian Hall.

Now it's in one of the office  and research buildings behind the main part of the   museum.

When the library opened a century ago, it  was only open to visiting scholars and staff.

Now   its maps and manuscripts are available to scholars  and school children alike.

It's here they'll find   one-of-a-kind material documenting the cultural  history of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.

The museum not   only collects books and other material, it also  prints them.

Below the library is Bishop Museum   Press, which has been publishing since 1892.

(natural sound)   On the floor above, there's something that used  to be part of library, but is now its own separate   unit.

It's the visual collection, where more  than three quarters of a million photographs   are preserved.

They document a century and  a half of life in Hawaiʻi.

(natural sound)   There's also a moving images collection  with 600 historic films and early videos,   everything from home movies to professional  productions.

Here is the museum itself captured by   a home movie camera in the 1920s.

Unfortunately,  all film used before the 20s was nitrate stock,   most of which eventually decomposes.

This film  was taken by Hawaiʻi's most famous photographer,   Ray Jerome Baker.

It also was taken in the 1920s  on nitrate stock, but was transferred to safety   film before it was lost.

One of the museum's most  renowned staff took this film.

It was shot by   now retired anthropologist Kenneth Emery, shortly  after World War Two on Kapingamarangi, an isolated   atoll in the western Pacific.

The scientists  were there to study the people and their culture.

Museum researchers over the years have made  expeditions to every corner of the Pacific.

The museum's newest exhibit area opened in 1990 as  part of Bishop's centennial.

The Castle building   is the largest exhibit area built at the museum  since the turn of the century.

It's named for the   late Herald Castle, a prominent benefactor.

The building opened with an exhibit from the   Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The exhibit  is about America's two most famous volcanoes,   Hawaiʻi's Kilauea and Mount St Helens.

And this is a cone that grew over time as   eruptions continued to fountain out of the rocks.

One of the ideas behind having this particular   exhibit was to show the Bishop Museum also is  devoted to natural history, not just cultural   history.

Castle has nearly doubled the museum's  exhibit space.

This will allow the museum to host   the kind of large traveling exhibits regularly  seen at mainland museums.

The building is   intended to be a window on the larger world.

Exhibit space is only one facet of the museum.

Behind the scenes, there are more than 200 staff  members.

This is the archeology laboratory in   Bishop Hall.

It's one of several labs where museum  staff conduct ongoing research, much of it the   result of field expeditions.

It's in this lab  that one of the newest units at the museum does   some of its work, the applied research group.

The  group offers Scientific Services to government and   private interests.

Museum archeologists, botanists  and zoologists have worked on a broad range of   projects, providing expertise in such areas as  historical significance and environmental impact.

For most of the museum's History, research  dominated things, sometimes at the expense of   public programs and visitors often were tolerated  more than welcomed.

The director of research   program says that was the case, but not now.

Yesterday's researcher had probably a smaller   perception, if that's the right way of saying it,  of the need to share information with the with the   public, not just through scientific publications,  but with with exhibits, with lectures and so   forth.

Today's researcher, I think, is more aware  of that need to share with with the public.

(natural sound) Most of the public have never seen   what may be the museum's most famous collection,  most famous, at least in the science world.

The collection is stored in this room, where the  temperature and humidity are carefully controlled.

In this room, there are more than 13 million  insects, all of them are perfectly preserved,   cataloged and arranged in a compactor system,  allowing maximum storage in minimum space.

The   collection is the third largest in the country,  and attracts entomologists from around the world   who come to Hawaiʻi just to work in this room.

Well, a lot of these that you've got here are the   ones that I've written about in this book.

They've got these stinging caterpillars,   and they're very common on palms in Southeast  Asia.

And of course, because it makes the major   important pests.

It does, yes, you certainly  don't want to let them in here.

You've got   quite a lot of palms under the Hawaiʻi.

The museum also has comparable collections,   though not as large, in its departments of  anthropology, botany and zoology.

It's on   research in these departments that the museum  devotes a significant part of its resources.

It is very important for a museum to  have research, again, because of the   direct value that research provides to its public  programs, both through exhibits, interpretations,   lectures and so forth.

And secondly, because  of the value that that research will provide,   not only for the museum, but for the  community in which that museum is located.

Insects are not the only things in storage.

Most of the museum's total collection is there.

In fact, for every item on display, 100 are not.

That's because Bishop Museum still has relatively   little exhibit space compared to other museums.

Here is just a small part of an anthropology   collection.

It's as if you were in a huge family  attic or garage with everything of value the   family ever owned.

In some ways, that's what it  is, an accumulation of things tracing the cultural   history of the people of Hawaiʻi.

(natural sound)   You should know that the museum does not store  all of its collection in this fashion.

The   more valuable objects are carefully put away to  protect them.

One of the things valuable objects   are being protected from is light.

Just as light  will fade curtains or photograph in your home,   it will do the same in a museum, so light levels  are kept relatively low, contributing to the   reputation of museums as being dark and rather  dismal.

The use of flash bulbs by visitors is not   allowed to cut down on the most dangerous light,  the ultraviolet.

UV light causes rapid fading.

It   also causes molecular changes in objects, making  them stiff and brittle.

The museum uses indirect   light for the most part, from special bulbs  that minimize any damage to objects on display.

With special objects such as King Kamehameha  the Great's feather cloak.

Further precautions   are taken.

They're only on display  for limited periods of time and then   put away in safe storage away from any light.

Objects are rotated on exhibit and then rested in   the collection storage areas, in order to prolong  the time that they can be enjoyed by the public   and viewed in the exhibits.

Being on exhibit is  the stress on the object, and so if you can break   that up over a period of time, you can give each  generation a chance to see it, not continuously,   but sometime during their adult lifetime,  coming into the collections and the exhibits,   they'll have a chance to see the object.

Termites and other insects are as much a   threat to many objects on display as light.

The  museum calls on a private company with specially   trained professionals to attack the problem.

Go seek, Go show me.

Seek, show me good dog.

Let's   check it out.

Let's go to work.

Go seek, go show  me.

Seek, show me that's a good dog.

You show me.

The dog is trained to seek out insects using  its acute senses of hearing and smell.

The   dog is especially careful in the display cases,  never touching the objects on display.

So far,   this dog and another one like him have  given the museum's display cases a clean   bill of health.

The same cannot be said  about the building itself.

It has termites,   as a dog is about to show us and tell us.

Show me, you show where they are.

Let's dig   them out of there.

Well, show me, get them out.

Good dog, dig them out of there, that's a good   boy, do you show me, dig them dig them out.

You  show where they are, dig them out.

Good dog,   show dig them out.

Good dog.

Show me.

As dangerous as insects can be,   they are only part of a bigger concern.

My major concern is what we're sitting in   a 100-year-old building, where it's beautiful to  look at, and it provides an interesting backdrop   for some of the exhibits.

But at the same time,  it is 100 years old, the standards for structures   100 years ago were very different.

Our needs,  temperature and humidity control, insect control   are harder in a structure like this, so we're  working to modify the building and bring it up   to standards and at the same time, not interfere  with people's enjoyment of the exhibitions.

Bishop Museum, like museums elsewhere, is  changing.

Castle Building, for example,   it has climate control and all the latest museum  building technology.

It also represents how the   museum is trying to compete with other leisure  time attractions for the public's attention.

We are another item on people's list about how to  spend their time and money, and we want them to   feel like the experience they get at Bishop  Museum is worthy of them making a choice in   our favor.

And so, we work very hard to both tell  them what we're doing and making that experience,   when they pay that money or and spend that time  with us, something that they'll want to repeat.

This made what they call the watermark.

It  made a very distinctive part of the pattern.

There are new programs for children, both in  the schools and at the museum.

A few years ago,   the museum took some underutilized space near the  main entrance and transformed it into the hall   of discovery.

It's a place for children to learn  and have fun.

The children also are free to move   around and explore.

Oh yeah!

(natural sound)   The museum's planetarium is further evidence that  things are changing.

When it opened in 1961 the   planetarium was as up to date as anything of  its kind.

But then came the major advances in   space exploration and astronomy.

The planetarium  soon was functionally obsolete.

So, in the late   1980s it was renovated and now offers a variety  of audio, video shows using modern technology.

I think museums are moving into an era where  they realize that how they service the public   is most critical, and they're broadening  their services and their programming to   include a greater part of that public.

The old Kāhili room is another sign that   things are different.

Instead of the same  exhibit year after year, the exhibits are now   changed every few months.

Here is an exhibit  of work by Hawaiian sculptor Rocky Jensen.

(natural sound) I have this from the American   Association of museums that we need to fill out  and get in.

She did mark the pages.

The pages I   think are marked.

You might check and see.

Donald Duckworth was hired as director in   1984 to revitalize the museum and change its  image as the monastery in Kalihi.

Duckworth   came from the Smithsonian after 24 years in  management and entomology research.

He says   that when he arrived here, he found a museum  stuck in time.

Bishop Museum was a classic,   traditional institution that was engaged  primarily in gathering collections and studying   those collections in a scholarly fashion.

In the  museum world today, with contemporary society as   demanding as it is and the need to know so great,  the stuck in time is a shorthand for our not   advancing and changing as our sister institutions  in other parts of the country had changed,   more public programs, more understanding, more  learning.

The new director went about the job   of changing things, people were let go, research,  cuts were made, all part of a streamlining of the   overall operation.

Not everyone liked what was  happening, but the changes continued anyway.

One thing the director tried to do was convince  potential donors that the museum no longer was a   poorly run loose association of academics, as it  was perceived to be.

The museum for many years,   had been experiencing financial difficulties.

The  transition from a scholarly, somewhat reclusive   organization had in many ways reflected itself in  poor business practices, resources received would   not necessarily be handled in the fashion  that businesses were accustomed to.

So,   we had the reputation in the business community  of being academics and not living in the real   world and abiding by business practices in that  world.

The museum has stabilized what had been   an unstable financial situation.

That was done  in part 1988 when the Hawaiʻi State Legislature   named it the State Museum of Natural and Cultural  History.

The designation acknowledged in name what   had been a fact for 100 years.

It also assures  the museum a reliable source of limited funding.

It has meant for us that we have been able  to plan for an annual appropriation from the   general revenues of Hawaiʻi, which allows us  to pay for some of those things which are more   difficult to get public support for the electric  bill, more security personnel and devices,   more fire safety devices.

Those are things that  oft times one has difficulty raising private   money for.

It helps underride our increased  operating costs as we serve the public more.

Several years ago, a national commission  on museums issued a report on the state   of museums in America and what they should do  to prepare for the 21st century.

The report   reminded us that museums are places to stimulate  curiosity, give pleasure and increase knowledge,   but the report concluded that museums never  have adequately described or promoted the   significant contributions they make to the  quality of human experience.

Museums truly   have never really communicated that worth  in the way that we're trying to do today,   and we think we're being effective in getting  that message across that we are vital to the   health and welfare of the communities that  we serve.

And this was probably what the   Chiefs used.

The Bishop of Kalihi begins its  second century in transition.

What started as   a treasure house for the Kamehameha royal family  has become a natural and cultural history museum   of world distinction.

Whatever changes the next  100 years bring, the museum would do well to   remember something curator William Brigham said  in 1903.

A museum like this is never completed,   indeed is never finally arranged.

If it ceases to  grow, it dies and its remains should be scattered   to the four winds to enrich other living museums.

(instrumental music)