Anna Rice Cooke - Honolulu Academy of Arts

Honolulu Academy of Arts

The Cookes’ art collection outgrew their own home and the homes of their children. In 1920, she and her daughter Alice (Mrs. Phillip Spalding), her daughter-in-law Dagmar (Mrs. Richard Cooke), and Catharine E. B. Cox (Mrs. Isaac Cox), an art and drama teacher, began to catalogue and research the collection with the intent to display the items in a museum for the children of Hawaii. With little formal training, these women obtained a charter for the museum from the Territory of Hawaii in 1922, while continuing to catalogue each art treasure in the collection. In 1924, Cooke hired the painter Frank Montague Moore as the first director of the Honolulu Museum of Art. From the beginning, she wanted a museum that reflected the unique attributes of Hawaii's multi-cultural make-up.

The Cookes donated their Beretania Street home for the museum, along with an endowment of $25,000 and several thousand works of art. Their family home was torn down to make way for the new museum. New York architect Bertram Goodhue designed the plans for a classic Hawaiian-style building with the mountains as a backdrop and colorful blossoming trees, flowers, and shrubs complementing the simple off-white exteriors and tiled roofs. Goodhue died before the project was completed. Stepping in to finish the job was Hardie Phillip. Over the years, this unique style has been imitated in many buildings throughout the state.

On April 8, 1927, the Honolulu Museum of Art opened. On August 8, 1934, Cooke died quietly in her home.