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Bishop Museum Invites Hawaiʻi Middle Schools to Help Build Its Next Exhibition

Bishop Museum invites middle schools across the Hawaiian islands to help build its next exhibition, opening spring break 2026, featuring LEGO® mosaics of school mascots and logos assembled by students.

# Bishop Museum Invites Hawaiʻi Middle Schools to Help Build Its Next Exhibition

LEGO®-based show will include mosaics of school logos or mascots assembled by students.

Honolulu, Hawaiʻi —Bishop Museum, the State of Hawai'i Museum of Natural and Cultural History, invites middle schools across all the Hawaiian islands to help build its next exhibition. Opening in 2026 during spring break, the currently untitled show will include mosaics of school mascots or logos paid for and designed by the Museum, and assembled by students.

"Our last LEGO® exhibition in 2019 was a big hit and had a lot of community involvement," said Brad Evans, Bishop Museum director of exhibits and designer of the next exhibition. "For 2026, we thought it'd be fun to get our middle schools and keiki involved, and express their school pride with representation in the show."

Evans emailed middle school principals in early September, hoping for at least 25 participants; but the ultimate goal is to have all middle schools, both public and private, represented.

Bishop Museum will work with any interested school in:

  • Uploading a graphic of the school's mascot and/or logo to an online service
  • Paying for and ordering a mosaic kit based on the graphic (NOTE: limited to one kit per school)
  • Sending or delivering the kit to the school

In return, the Museum asks that the schools:

  • Select a group of students, or club, to lead the mosaic assembly project
  • Have their students assemble the mosaic by the end of January 2026
  • Contact the Museum when the mosaic is complete

The mosaics will be on display in the exhibition through mid-October 2026; thereafter, they will be returned to each school to keep.

"A typical mosaic should take about 20 hours to complete and can be done over a period of weeks," said Evans. "The process is quite fun and a great group activity – Museum staff have already completed about a dozen of them, with many more to come!"

In addition to the 2D mosaic art pieces, the new exhibition will also use LEGO®-style bricks to tell stories of Hawaiʻi, with 3D mini-recreations of ʻIolani Palace, Aloha Tower, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and other landmarks, as well as sculptures of the native species represented in Bishop Museum's natural science collections. Mosaics representing select objects from Bishop Museum Historian DeSoto Brown's personal collection will also be featured, along with a huge free play area consisting of hundreds of thousands of bricks.

Middle schools interested in participating in the mosaic builds can contact Evans at bricks@bishopmuseum.org.

For news media: More information on the exhibition will be shared in a long-lead news release this December.

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.