Museum After Hours: Spotlight Presentation

Celebrating Hawaiian Honeycreepers with Master Woodcarver Haruo Uchiyama
Friday, Jan. 13, 2023
Hawaiian Hall
6 – 8:00 p.m.

Japan’s master woodcarver Haruo Uchiyama collaborated with Bishop Museum to create exquisite life-like carvings of Hawaiian Honeycreepers to raise awareness of Hawai‘i’s native forest birds. Having evolved in isolation from a single ancestor over a span of five million years, these birds are known as the “jewels of Hawaiʻi.” As of today, more than half of the known honeycreepers have gone extinct, and the remaining twenty birds are classified as endangered. Mr. Uchiyama carved unique hand-painted sculptures to create deeper connections between people and native forest birds with the hope that this will inspire communities to take action to save their native habitats. This project began in 2016, and we invite you to join us in celebrating the completion of the first stage of this ongoing initiative. This January, Mr. Uchiyama joins us in person to deliver the final carvings of the forty-one historically known honeycreepers.

Join us for this special Museum After Hours Pau Hana Presentation to see and touch Bishop Museum’s Hawaiian Honeycreeper wood carvings in conversation with Master Woodcarver Haruo Uchiyama and Molly Hagemann, Bishop Museum’s Vertebrate Zoology Collections Manager.

The evening will kick off with a special presentation “Evolution Gone Wild: Adaptive radiation, extinction and how we can save Hawaii’s remaining honeycreepers” by Dr. Robert Fleisher, Smithsonian Senior Scientist and Head of the Center for Conservation Genomics at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.  

Timeline
6 pm Presentation by Dr. Robert Fleisher and Live Demo by Haruo Uchiyama
7 pm Presentation and Q&A with Haruo Uchiyama and Molly Hagemann  

Haruo Uchiyama Bio:
A master woodcarver from Japan and an artist-in-residence at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, Haruo Uchiyama has carved birds from around the world. But he was enthralled by Hawai‘i’s native species in 2016, when he visited O‘ahu. Since then, he has been creating a set of exquisitely lifelike Hawaiian Honeycreeper carvings that can be used to educate the public about these amazing birds.

Please note that this presentation is part of the Museum After Hours program on Friday, January 13, 2023, a campus-wide event from 5 – 9 p.m. To attend the talk, register for Museum After Hours by clicking here.