LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting the exhibition Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Ali‘i (May 22– August 7, 2016), comprising nearly 70 featherwork objects in addition to photographs from the museum’s permanent collection. Objects in the exhibition include brilliantly colored cloaks and capes that were crafted from the feathers of hundreds of thousands of indigenous birds and carefully attached to woven fiber supports. Developed by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, this exhibition presents the finest examples of these objects.

“Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Ali‘i highlights LACMA’s expanding Art of the Pacific program and reflects the museum’s broad interests in the cultures of the Pacific rim,” said Nancy Thomas, Senior Deputy Director for Art Administration & Collections at LACMA. “The exhibition marks a rare opportunity to feature the bold abstract compositions and the high degree of technical expertise evidenced by Hawaiian featherwork.”

Nā Hulu Ali‘i
While featherwork dates back hundreds of years, this presentation of Nā hulu ali‘i —or royal featherwork—spans the late 18th to the late 19th centuries. During this pivotal period in Hawaiian history, European explorers arrived on the islands, which then erupted in civil war before unification by King Kamehameha I in 1810. After the arrival of missionaries in 1820, and the subsequent widespread conversion to Christianity, the Hawaiian government was overthrown in 1893 and annexed by the United States in 1898.

For centuries, feathers from vibrantly colored endemic birds were valuable cultural resources on the Hawaiian Islands. Spectacular garments painstakingly constructed by hand, including ‘ahu ‘ula (long cloaks and short capes), mahiole (helmets), and lei hulu (leis), masterfully incorporate these feathers and symbolized the divinity and power of the ali‘i (chiefs)—ruling men and women who wore them for spiritual protection and to proclaim their identity and social status. Nā hulu ali‘i were often used as diplomatic gifts to cement political alliances or were worn as battlefield regalia. Fewer than 300 extant examples of these garments remain; they shape our knowledge about the art form known as nā hulu ali‘i.

The rich holdings of four American museums—the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, and the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution—are the primary institutional lenders to the exhibition.