Honolulu
Santa arrives at Waikiki Beach by outrigger canoe, in fur-trimmed board shorts. But today it's pouring, or yesterday you caught a sunburn. Now what? For the first family, who have settled in for their annual Christmas break on the islands, the same as for the jumbo-jetloads of other seasonal visitors, the spell of Hawaii is woven of its landscapes, climate and aloha spirit. Who expects Culture of the Grand Tour variety? Yet the Honolulu Museum of Art offers just that, as Sasha and Malia Obama could tell you from personal experience. "The girls came by during the APEC conference not long after I got here," Stephan Jost, director of the institution since 2011, said recently. "They explored for about two hours. It was during our exhibition of Chinese paintings on loan to us from the Forbidden City. Our curator was able to go to Beijing and select 56 top paintings at his discretion. The loans were integrated with our own best Chinese paintings, and they held their own, which tells you just how good they are." Designed in the 1920s by Bertram Goodhue of New York, the museum's original structure consists of a complex of low-rise galleries framing airy courtyards, the whole occupying a complete city block. Architectural historians trace Chinese and Mediterranean influences, but to the public, the style was instant classic Hawaiian, and the building remains one of, if not the, most admired in the islands. Even more remarkable is the visionary spirit of the place. At the dedication ceremony in 1927, Anna Rice Cooke, descendant of missionaries and founder of the museum, articulated its purpose this way: "That our children of many nationalities and races, born far from the centers of art, may receive an intimation of their own cultural legacy and wake to the ideals embodied in the arts of their neighbors. That Hawaiians, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Northern Europeans and all other people living here, contacting through the channel of art those deep intuitions common to all, may perceive a foundation on which a new culture, enriched by the old strains, may be built in the islands." At 44, Mr. Jost is the boyish face of a venerable yet progressive, accessible and astonishingly well-stocked treasure house. At Hampshire College, the grade-free citadel of the self-designed major, he showed an early passion for the stained glass of 16th-century Amsterdam. From school, he climbed a professional ladder of his own devising. The first rungs were internships at the Phillips Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Next came a job at Stoheby's, then a curatorship at Oberlin. From his first museum directorship, at Mills College, he moved on to that dizzying theme park of art and Americana known as the Shelburne Museum, in Vermont, and now to the Honolulu Museum of Art. "One of the first things I had to do when I got here was to install the software for a new accounting system," Mr. Jost says. "Nothing sexy about it. Just a grind. But every businessman knows that if the back of house isn't world class, you can't answer to your customers. The things that drive me most of all are education and outreach. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. Unless we're aggressive about sharing our world-class collection, we're not doing it justice." As an opening salvo, Mr. Jost put on "Tattoo Honolulu," a photography show targeting two sizable, historically underserved local demographics: the military and Filipinos, both seriously invested in body art. They turned out in force, but they were not the only ones. "Beautiful drawings on beautiful bodies," Mr. Jost says. "Everybody loved it." Intellectually omnivorous yet gifted with the common touch, Mr. Jost is plainly in his element as the institution's 10th director. "We're not new," he points out. "We were buying great Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian art from the 1920s to the 1960s, when prices were manageable. Today, it doesn't matter how rich you are. The art isn't there to buy. Today, starting from scratch, no one could build a collection like ours." A suite of 10 Eurocentric galleries, newly reinstalled by the curator Theresa Papanikolas, gives the art history of academic tradition a fresh, contemporary spin. The first, devoted to "Antiquity and the Body," juxtaposes superb Egyptian, Cycladic, classical Greek and Roman sculpture with a statue from 19th-century America and a late canvas by Amedeo Modigliani. The second room concentrates on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; here you will find Piero di Cosimo's androgynous "Saint John the Evangelist" (1504-06), calmly contemplating a coiled serpent levitating above a chalice. Beyond lies a portrait gallery, where James McNeill Whistler's social-climbing Lady Meux (1881) jostles "Ada With Black Scarf" (1966) by Alex Katz, as well as Robert Dampier's iconic 19th-century paintings of Kamehameha III and his sister Nahienaena. Impressionism and Cubism have one highly selective gallery each, studded with illuminating surprises. How about Hawaiiana? "If you're looking for native Hawaiian historical materials, the Bishop Museum is the place for you," says Mr. Jost. "That's where they specialize in Hawaiian art and history and culture." If cross-pollination between Hawaii and the rest of the world is your interest, a slow stroll through the Henry R. Luce Pavilion, an annex to the Honolulu Museum of Art added in 2001, is in order. "Along with Hawaiian art, we also reflect the best of the cultures that arrived after contact," says Mr. Jost, "and not just Western." Customized guided tours are available for the asking. "Docents at the door ask visitors what they would like to see, and how long they'd like to stay," says Mr. Jost. "Of course people are wary of getting stuck, so often they'll say they have 20 minutes. And more often than not, they ask to extend their tour." Suppose you had one hour for the best of the best; where would Mr. Jost take you? "I'd start with the 11th-century Chinese Guanyin, in the Buddhist room," he says. "A truly moving piece. She's life-size, carved in wood, purchased in 1927. If you watch on video cameras, you'll see people pray to it every day, and not just local Buddhists. Then, I'd go to the 12th-century Chinese painting 'One Hundred Geese,' which is like an Eadweard Muybridge, showing the same goose in every imaginable position in flight. Western paintings? There's lots. I'd show our Piero di Cosimo and our Monet 'Water Lilies,' which is a very good one, our Van Gogh, and a great triple self-portrait by Francis Bacon. And then there's our Modigliani. Yes, a Modigliani is something you could see anywhere. But why is it here? There's a story to that. We used it once in an ad, by the way. The caption read, 'Not all the best bodies are found on the beach.'