Grants & Funding
Bishop Museum Awarded $100,000 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative Grant
# Bishop Museum Awarded $100,000 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative Grant
Funds will be used to increase energy efficiency and improve climate control in the Pauahi Building collections areas
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi — Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The grant — which is specifically awarded for environmental sustainability projects at cultural institutions — will be used to install new insulated windows in the Pauahi Building. The retrofitted windows will greatly decrease demand for HVAC throughout the building while allowing for more efficient climate control, creating an environment better suited for the care of the more than 15 million irreplaceable objects stored in the Pauahi Building.
"We're incredibly grateful to the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation for this generous grant and for the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative's vision to address climate change through cultural institutions," said Melanie Ide, president and CEO of Bishop Museum. "Bishop Museum's collections of primary source material from across the Pacific traces change over time and helps to inform scientists, resource managers and decision-makers who are working to understand and address the climate crisis."
The $100,000 Implementation Grant, which is awarded for specified projects currently underway that address environmental impact, will enable the Museum to replace 25 percent of the louvered windows in the Pauahi Building with new insulated windows. The building's current louvered windows have older seals that affect the Museum's ability to effectively control the environment of its collections.
The Pauahi building houses four collections, including the Entomology library collection, which comprises many early scientific illustrations for species in Hawai'i. The building is also connected to the Library & Archives collection, which houses more than two million visual arts objects and 150,000 invaluable library objects.
The Pauahi Building climate control project is just one way that the Museum is practicing and educating the public about sustainability. Bishop Museum has assembled a Sustainability Hui (association) and created a Sustainability Department headed by the recently hired Curator of Sustainability, Dr. Christopher Hobbs, to further green practices on campus. The group has developed an internal sustainability dashboard to measure and visualize the impact of various sustainability initiatives, with plans to make this publicly accessible. Metrics for this project and others will be tracked and tied to both state and international sustainability initiatives.
The Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is the largest private national grant making program to address climate change through cultural institutions and the only nationwide program of its kind for the visual arts. The Initiative is a program of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, managed in partnership with RMI, the leading global expert in clean energy, and Environment & Culture Partners nonprofit consultancy. The Frankenthaler Climate Initiative was launched in 2021 as a multi-year grant program to support visual art museums and collecting institutions in achieving carbon neutrality and catalyzing climate change action.
About Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the State of Hawaiʻi Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Bishop Museum’s mission is to inspire our community and visitors through the exploration, celebration, and perpetuation of the extraordinary history, culture, and environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a royal descendant of King Kamehameha I. Today, the Museum thrives as an educational center for the community and is widely regarded as the world’s premier institution for Hawaiian and Pacific content.
Bishop Museum’s vast collections of more than 25 million objects and specimens represent nine disciplines and include more than 22 million biological specimens, over 2 million cultural objects, 115,000 historical publications, and 1 million photographs, films, works of art, audio recordings, and manuscripts. These collections tell the stories of the cultures and biodiversity of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific as well as the proud legacy of scholarly research spanning 130 years.
Bishop Museum proudly serves more than 200,000 visitors each year, including 20,000 children on school visits. Guests are encouraged to pre-plan their trip to #HawaiisMuseum with its free digital guide, available through Bloomberg Connects.
To learn more about the Museum’s research, collections, exhibits, and programs, visit BishopMuseum.org, follow @BishopMuseum on Facebook and Instagram, visit Bishop Museum’s YouTube channel, or call (808) 847-3511. Bishop Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Bishop Museum is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and welcomes applicants from the military, veterans, and those with disabilities. Learn about careers at Bishop Museum at BishopMuseum.org/Careers and on its LinkedIn page.
Bishop Museum Press is Hawaiʻi’s oldest book publisher and one of the first scholarly publishers in the Western Hemisphere, and has published over 1,200 titles and distributed over 1 million books in 72 countries worldwide. Bishop Museum hosts a restaurant and gift shop on campus, Tūtū’s Place by Highway Inn and Shop Pacifica by Nā Mea Hawaiʻi.