The Bernice P. Bishop Museum is launching a transformative new program with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that builds internal curatorial capacity at the Museum in preparation for designing and implementing a training program in Indigenous curatorial practice for the next generation of museum curators. Building a Pacific Pipeline: Bishop Museum & The Te Rangi Hīroa Pacific Curators and Caretakers Program aims to diversify the pipeline of future cultural heritage professionals, increase the number of historically underrepresented Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the museum field, and demonstrate how museums can change their practices and positively impact their communities.

The first phase of Building a Pacific Pipeline will increase staffing in Bishop Museum’s Cultural Resources Division by hiring a team that includes two curators, a collections manager, and a collections technician to steward a collection that represents more than half of the world’s primary source material of Hawai‘iand the Pacific. Bishop Museum is an ideal learning laboratory for examining how Oceania collections are understood, interpreted, and cared for.

If you are interested in one of the positions, please go to www.bishopmuseum.org/careers/ to submit application materials.

As Dr. Julie Adams, curator of Oceania collections at the British Museum and a member of the program’s International Advisory Group says, “Prioritizing Indigenous knowledge, values, and practices, Building a Pacific Pipeline: Bishop Museum & The Te Rangi Hīroa Pacific Curators and Caretakers Program will have a far-reaching impact upon museums within the Pacific and beyond. As a result of this Mellon-funded initiative, Bishop Museum will once again be at the heart of shaping how Pacific collections are researched, nurtured, and made meaningful for the future.”