The Honolulu Museum of Art is holding its largest auction ever of works by Hawaii artists at an event Saturday that will also feature art donated by noted private collectors Duncan and Dawn MacNaughton and Thurston and Sharon Twigg-Smith.

Among the 600 pieces being offered by the museum are paintings by Juliette May Fraser, Shirley Russell, Wilson Stamper and John Young; prints by John Kelly, Isami Doi, Jean Charlot, Alexander MacLeod, Cornelia Macintyre Foley, Madge Tennent, Ken Bushnell and Mari Sakamoto; and sculptures by Satoru Abe and Jerry Okimoto.

Many of the prints are duplicates that resulted from the merger between the former Honolulu Academy of Arts and The Contemporary Museum in July 2011, according to Stephan Jost, director of the Honolulu Museum of Art. The institutions became the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2012.

Other pieces were works not relevant to the museum’s mission or standards, he said.

Meanwhile the Twigg-Smiths, museum trustees, and the MacNaughtons were cleaning out their private collections and donated some art and antiques for the auction, which will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday at McClain’s Ultimate Attic. A public preview will be held from noon to 7 p.m. Friday and 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday.

Among the donations are drawings by Madge Tennent and a major painting, "Forest Rubble," by Ben Norris, who became the first art instructor at the Kamehameha School for Boys in 1936 and, later, head of the University of Hawaii Art Department.

The museum also will auction 100 paintings, collages, watercolors, drawings and prints by the late Winifred Hudson that span her career from the 1960s to 1990.

All works will be offered to the highest bidder with no minimum reserves.

The museum practice of officially removing items from holdings, typically in order to sell them to raise funds, is known as deaccession.

"Museums deaccession their collections periodically," Jost said. "This is the first big one from artists primarily based here in Hawaii."

The decision on which pieces to deaccession is never easy, he said, but all proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned works go to the museum’s acquisitions fund to purchase other art, in accordance with the guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

"Our goal isn’t to have the biggest collection," said Jost. "Our goal is to have the best collection."

Proceeds from the sale of works from the MacNaughton and Twigg-Smith collections will go toward the museum’s general operating budget, which supports education programs, capital improvements, utilities and security.

Less than 5 percent of the museum’s collection is exhibited at any given time, Jost said, so the auction provides a great opportunity for collectors to acquire desireable works and for the artworks to be appreciated anew.

"We’d rather have the art in someone’s house here in Honolulu than not seeing the light of day in the basement," Jost said.