Healoha Johnston, Director of Cultural Resources, and Curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Arts and Culture at Bishop Museum, located in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi visits Washington Studio School for her lecture, Shaped by the Elements: Art and Resistance in Hawaiʻi. Her talk links the interconnection between art and resistance movements by looking at pivotal political moments in the 20th and 21st centuries with a focus on contemporary art produced in the archipelago.
Recorded LIVE, September 13, 2023
About Healoha Johnston
Healoha Johnston lives in Kaiwiki, Hawai‘i and is Director of Cultural Resources and Curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Arts and Culture at Bishop Museum. Johnston’s research and exhibitions explore connections between historic visual culture and contemporary art with a particular focus on the socio-political underpinnings that inform those relationships. Recently curated exhibitions include Hoʻoulu Hawaiʻi, The King Kalākaua Era, the accompanying exhibition catalog for which received multiple awards including the Samuel M. Kamakau Book of the Year Award from the Hawai‘i Book Publishing Association; and Lisa Reihana: Emissaries, an exhibition that for the first time brought together the groundbreaking video iPOV [infected] and telescope installation with the complete set of French 19th century wallpapers that Reihana critically recast. Forthcoming exhibitions include Project Banaba (2023) and Corned Beef and Kalo (2024).
Johnston was Curator of Asian Pacific American Women’s Cultural History at the Smithsonian Institution where she was part of the American Women’s History Initiative and the Asian Pacific American Center; has 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, arts and cultures non-profit organizations, and NOAA’s Pacific National Monument program before joining the Bishop Museum. She received her BA and MA in Art History with a focus on Pacific Art from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
This program was supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.