The Bishop Museum, operating under a shrinking number of federal dollars, announced Friday it would streamline its holdings and operations and work at becoming a better tourist attraction.
The museum also plans to raise more than $10 million by selling off unneeded properties and save some cash by requiring its researchers to fully fund their own research through grants and donations.
The changes are part of a five-year plan designed to transform the Hawaii institution into a leaner operation and score additional revenue by retooling it into a destination museum.
“We’re trying to shake it up, there’s no doubt about that,” said Blair Collis, president and CEO of Bishop Museum. “This is not 1889, nor is it 1989 anymore. We need to be a vibrant center.”
Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in honor of his late wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last descendant of the royal Kamehameha family.
Home to a large collection of Hawaiian artifacts and royal family heirlooms, the museum was expanded to include millions of artifacts, documents and photographs about Hawaii and other Pacific island cultures. Eventually it would become the state’s largest museum, recognized globally for its cultural and scientific collections and scientific research.
| Bishop’s gambit
Some of the key moves in the Bishop Museum’s five-year financial restructuring plan:
>> Sell off unnecessary properties, including the Amy B.H. Greenwell Garden in Kona.
>> Turn its full-time scientific staff into casual hires responsible for finding their own research money.
>> Comb through the collections to weed out redundant items or anything that doesn’t fit the museum’s purpose.
>> Renovate historic Bishop Hall and make $3 million in infrastructure improvements. |
But the Great Recession in 2008 and the end of federal earmark spending, largely from former U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, came as a severe blow to the museum, which lost a third of its income, or about $3 million a year, Collis said.
Collis, who started as director of Bishop Museum Press in 2003 and worked his way up to president in 2011, said the jolt led to a series of strategic-planning exercises and a reassessment of the museum’s operations and facilities.
Under the new plan, the museum will sell off its 12-acre Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook as well as 537 acres in Waipio Valley where tenants currently farm taro.
Collis said the properties do not fit the museum’s long-term mission and are a drain on the bottom line.
The garden’s five employees learned about the plan at a meeting with Collis on Hawaii island Friday afternoon.
In Honolulu earlier in the day, the museum’s nine scientific researchers were told they will no longer be full-time employees. Instead, they will be casual hires responsible for finding their own research dollars.
Collis said the research model is a growing trend in science, and three of the nine researchers already fully fund themselves through grants and donations, with the rest being partially funded. He said the museum cannot afford to pick up the tab from the partially funded researchers anymore.
Collis said that the researchers were “understandably disappointed” when they were informed of the new direction.
“It’s a challenging time for everyone,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s the direction we need to take. It’s not always easy, change, but it’s important.”
Research specialist Clyde Imada said that while he isn’t one of the researchers left to find their own funding sources, he relies on one who does. He said he was feeling a little apprehensive about the future.
Collis said he’s confident Bishop Museum’s renowned research will continue as it has in the past.
“We’ll continue to generate knowledge, but in a new way, not an old way,” he said.
According to the five-year plan, the museum also will review its collections and weed out items that are redundant or do not fit the museum’s mission, and focus on Hawaii and Polynesia.
For example, he said, the museum’s collections hold many donated items from Russia, South America, Australia and other places outside of Polynesia.
“It’s time to move forward and clean house,” he said, adding that any items taken out of the collection generally will be offered to its original owner.
Also part of the five-year plan is the renovation of historic Bishop Hall, $3 million in infrastructure improvements and the installation of native landscaping in and around the museum grounds.
What’s more, there are plans in the works to hold night programs, to make improvements to the institution’s digital resources and to stage new exhibits that will “leverage Bishop Museum’s scholarship and collections to tell Hawaii’s stories.”
Already completed recently are the $24.5 million renovation of Hawaiian Hall and Pacific Hall, an upgrade of the J. Watumull Planetarium into a high-tech digital facility, and an agreement with Highway Inn to improve the museum’s dining experience at the Bishop Museum Cafe.
The Amy Greenwell Garden came to Bishop Museum from a bequest 40 years ago, with no funds to underwrite the operation, Collis said.
The museum accepted the gift and invested millions in the garden thinking that money could be made. But it took an annual loss of more than $250,000 after it lost federal earmark support, he said.
“We’ve worked hard to close the gap, but we still lose $150,000 a year,” Collis said.
He said the museum is looking for a buyer who will maintain the garden.
As for Waipio Valley, the 537 acres were donated to the museum in 1889 by founder Charles Reed Bishop with an endowment of $30,000 a year.
“The reality of the situation is that 100 years later it costs us three times that, and we lose $100,000 a year,” Collis said. “We’re a museum, not a land manager.”
The Waipio land has been appraised at $10 million.
