introduction

     Aloha! ʻO Alana koʻu inoa. He papa kiʻekiʻe o ka papa hale hōʻikeʻike a me ka papa huli kanaka wau. Aloha au i nā hale hōʻikeʻike mai koʻu wā liʻiliʻi. [translation from Hawaiian to English: Hello! My name is Alana. I am in the senior class of the Museum Studies course and the Anthropology course. I've loved museums since I was little.] 

    As a child, I would visit the Honolulu Zoo almost every week until I started elementary school. When I got a bit older I started to visit the Bishop Museum with my parents. The museum would host traveling exhibits periodically, and my favorite was the installation on dinosaurs. Since then, my interests in museums have evolved quite a bit. Although my first love was museums with living collections, in high school my fondness for art museums began. The Honolulu Museum of Art quickly became one of my favorite places to be. I'd try to go every month and sit in the gardens. I make a point to visit every time I'm able to travel home, even though the exhibits hardly change. Today, I definitely have a preference for art museums, but traditional history museums still hold a place in my heart, as Night at the Museums is still one of my favorite movies. 

    As for future ambitions, I'm interested in working as a curator or in the marketing department of an art museum. It's really important for communities to have local museums and in uncertain times like these a marketing department is vital for the survival of institutions like the Honolulu Museum of Art. So far, I've had experience working in an archive, registrar's office, and collections department. My work has been focused on cataloging collections and organizing them in an online finding aid as well as research assistance on deaccessioning projects regarding NAGPRA protocols. 

December 2019; Tokyo, Japan; During my vacation to Tokyo this past winter break, I visited teamLab Borderless and wandered through this Crystal World exhibit. The light in this installation reacts to the visitors in it, making it an interactive and constantly evolving piece of art. 

[Image Description: The above image is a color photograph. There is a young woman standing in front of a wall of hanging LED strip lights that are a white/blue color.]