Maya Soetoro-Ng misses her mother. It hit her while she was looking around the installation of "Through Her Eyes: Ann Dunham’s Field Work in Indonesia" at the East-West Center Gallery.

There were the batik fabrics her mother used to spread across the bed and enjoy because they were so beautiful. And there was the ring she liked so much that she had three made — one for herself, one for friend and mentor Alice Dewey, and one for her son. And there were examples of exquisite village craftsmanship, each with a story, each with a memory, each a touchstone in the life of Soetoro-Ng’s mother.

Just things, but things with memories attached.

Soetoro-Ng felt her eyes fill with water. She misses her mother.

"This stuff is clearly not just stuff to me. I was overwhelmed emotionally," she said. "And very glad I was wasn’t crying in front of other people."

Anthropologist Stanley Ann Dunham died at home in Hawaii in 1995, succumbing to cancer that ate away at her while she was working on her University of Hawaii doctoral thesis. She was 52. Some of her graduate research in the 1970s was done under East-West Center fellowships.

Dunham left behind two marriages (to Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan, and Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian), two children and an impressive, scholarly body of research in Third World craft economies and microfinance. Dunham’s work wasn’t well-known, but it was well-respected by her peers.

Every life leaves in its wake a legacy. Her children also did well in school, with Soetoro-Ng becoming an educator at UH and an author, and oldest child Barack Obama becoming an author and president of the United States.

East-West Center curator Michael Schuster said the exhibit was mounted in anticipation of November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting in Honolulu that will be attended by Obama and other heads of state.

"About two years ago, we knew the APEC conference was going to happen in Honolulu, so we thought it would be a good time to have an exhibit that showed off the scholarly sort of work we do here," he explained. "Why not have something on Ann Dunham, who did such interesting work in microfinance? We talked to Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was very supportive, and as luck had it, was sorting through her mother’s things."

Soetoro-Ng is also an education specialist at the East-West Center, so this really is an in-house exhibit.

YOU CAN’T have an exhibition without exhibits. Dunham left behind copious notes from her years of field work in rural Javanese villages, hundreds of photographs, a private collection of things she held dear and an array of items she collected as supportive materials for her research. Few of the photographs, however, showed Dunham. Schuster traveled to Indonesia to fill holes in the artifact collection and shoot video footage that illustrates the sort of native craftsmanship Dunham studied.

"Dunham’s photographs were basically visual field notes for her work," Schuster said. "She had a good eye, but she was obviously not an art photographer. What moved her was the dignity of human labor. The thread is her care for other people and for the world — making things better for others."

"Mom wasn’t particularly adept at cameras," Soetoro-Ng said. "They were an anthropological tool. But she wasn’t a dinosaur, either. She would have loved this computer age. She had an extraordinary memory and attention to detail, and new methods of research were exciting. If she’d had a computer, she’d have knocked out another thousand-page dissertation, no problem."

Her son lost the ring she gave him, so the intricate silver ring on display is borrowed from Dewey, emerita anthropology professor at UH. On loan from Bishop Museum is a weaving Dunham did for an art class at UH while she was pregnant, another indication of her love of handicrafts. Some of Dunham’s batiks on display still contain traces of the wax used in the dyeing process. There are also examples of leatherwork, ceramics and basketry.

In another case: A cross-stitch Dunham made as a teenager, a field book, a neatly typed resume, a family photo album.

"Mom really enjoyed the pieces that cottage industries produce," Soetoro-Ng recalled. "Wherever she worked, she tried to support the community by buying samples of each item. It was her intention to one day have a home with everything in it to reflect her work and family — but these things never made it out of the storage lockers."

These memories were also resident in the Punahou-area apartment of Soetoro-Ng’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died the day before the 2008 presidential election. Soetoro-Ng kept the apartment for a year. It was emotionally difficult to clear it out.

"It took a while. So many memories — we stayed with her while Mom worked on her doctorate. I had to excavate out the closets and found in them things from Mom’s childhood and teen years. Alice Dewey, who oversaw Mom’s dissertation, found a trunk of research stuff at her house. Fortuitously, all of these … things … were unearthed at the same time."

The exhibit shows a "richer exploration of my mother’s life" than a biography can portray, Soetoro-Ng said. "She made a home everywhere she went. She was, famously, comfortable anywhere and everywhere she was, although she never had a real home. So she brought her sense of home with her. It might be a collection of paddy hats and cowbells, but they meant something to her. Touchstones of experience."

ANN DUNHAM’S work in improving local economies by judicious use of microfinancing — small lending to low-income entrepreneurs who lack access to banking services — was "rigorous and of an academic standard," Soetoro-Ng said. "There was good balance and objectivity, and yet, you can tell there was also compassion and love and empathy for those she worked with. I’m very proud of the work she accomplished, highlighting the potential of cottage industries, helping artisans who had been ignored.

"My brother inherited from her the balance between practical and idealistic, the ability to understand and appreciate different perspectives, and a sense of courage — the intellectual courage to explore new ideas, to not do the expected thing.

"The skills I inherited from Mom are different. I’m more of a teacher than a scholar. I very much like the rapport with students, the heat generated by learning. Mom emphasized to us kids the value of pure curiosity, about people, about communities, about the world. She loved both microscopes and telescopes equally. There were conversations in our house that went on all night long, covering every possible subject you can imagine — philosophy, art, economics, biology, whatever.

"She was full of wonder. How can butterflies be so bright? Why are hippos friends with tortoises? The wonderful contradictions of the world, and the simple pleasures … "

Soetoro-Ng paused. "I really miss her."