An unprecedented and acclaimed Hawaiian feather work show that was years in the making and originally scheduled to appear at Bishop Museum in Honolulu has instead opened in Los Angeles.

“Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Na Hulu Ali‘i” is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Aug. 7.

The exhibit contains some of the best examples of Hawaiian feather work ever assembled, taken from the collections of Bishop Museum as well as from national and international institutions and private collections, some never before displayed in Hawaii since leaving the islands.

The show was originally scheduled to appear in Honolulu from March 19 to May 23 after first stopping at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

While the Bay Area show went off as planned, Bishop Museum apparently backed out because of the expense to bring the exhibit to Hawaii and stage it here.

“It’s a real tragedy,” said Mark Blackburn, a Honolulu collector of Polynesian art who, along with his wife, Carolyn, has helped to underwrite the show.

The feathered creations, including the vibrantly colored cloaks and capes, were created exclusively for Hawaiian royalty and required much labor and craftsmanship. Hundreds of thousands of feathers from Hawaii forest birds were used in the making of some pieces, and one could take years to make.

Bishop Museum, which maintains the largest Hawaiian feather work collection in the world, is caretaker of more than 13 cloaks, 24 capes and numerous kahili staffs and lei. Not all them are put on display because of the delicate nature of the pieces.

The “Na Hulu Ali‘i” exhibit, described last year in Bishop Museum promos as “momentous” and “unprecedented,” was the apparent victim of the museum’s downsizing and new focus in response to dwindling federal funding and financial instability linked to the 2008 economic downturn. The museum was said to have lost one-third of its income in recent years, about $3 million a year.

In January the museum announced a controversial five-year financial restructuring plan designed to streamline operations and seek out new revenue sources. The plan called for selling off land assets and purging the collections of redundant items, among other things.

As for the feather work exhibit, former Bishop Museum CEO Blair Collis explained at the time that the cash-strapped institution couldn’t do the show justice and would try to schedule it in the future.

Blackburn described that assertion as spin because mounting the show again would be next to impossible considering the enormous effort that went into arranging the assembly of feather works from around the world.

“This show will never be done again because of the complexity of the loans. It took years to organize,” he said.

Although the museum pulled out of the feather work exhibition, it did orchestrate the return to Hawaii of the feathered cloak and helmet that were given to English explorer Capt. James Cook by Hawaii island Chief Kalaniopuu at Kealakekua Bay in 1779.

The ahu ula (feathered cloak) and mahiole (feathered helmet), on long-term loan from New Zealand’s Te Papa Tongarewa museum, are now on display in Hawaiian Hall.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, the “Na Hulu Ali‘i” exhibit features about 75 rare examples of feather capes and cloaks, as well as royal staffs of feathers (kahili), feather lei (lei hulu manu), helmets (mahiole), feathered god images (akua hulu manu) and related 18th- and 19th-century paintings and works on paper.

The California shows have won praise in online reviews.

While many of the pieces in the “Na Hulu Ali‘i” show belong to Bishop Museum, many others are on loan from places such as the United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, New Zealand and the mainland.

In ads last year the Honolulu museum promoted the upcoming exhibit as “a singular opportunity” for Hawaii residents to view “the grandeur of Hawaiian featherwork held elsewhere.”

“Many of the international pieces being presented in this exhibition will be returning to Hawaii for the first time since they left our shores, making this an exhibit of momentous significance,” said a story in last summer’s Ka ‘Elele, the museum’s quarterly journal.

Leah Pualaha‘ole Caldeira, Bishop Museum collections manager, wrote the show’s catalog, with some essays contributed by experts including some with longtime connections to the Honolulu museum.

Blackburn said he scrambled to help arrange for the show’s move to Los Angeles in the wake of Bishop Museum’s cancellation, and Honolulu-based Halekulani Corp. stepped up as the show’s sponsor in Los Angeles.

“The problem,” he said, “is it should have been here.”