March 6 - We take in the arts, and snoop around governmental grounds at night

     The Hawaii State Art Museum is free!  So, since it's only a ten minute walk from our place, we went over to visit.

 Home of the Hawaii Art Museum.  Almost all the historic buildings in Honolulu are in a central, ten block area of graceful tropical trees and large parks.

Nearly all the artwork is by past or present Hawaiian artists, or by outside artists who came here and were inspired by Hawaiian subject matter. 

Satoru Abe's copper cutouts reminded us of Kelly's artwork.

(We discovered this large-scale work of Abe's a couple days later near our Airbnb. I post it here because it fits better in the narrative.)

Tuffy?  Is that you?

We have a hard time turning away from reflective objects without taking a selfie.

We were delighted to discover that for one night a year Hawaiian state senators and representatives open their offices to the public to view their collections of art.  And it just so happened that this was the night.  The state capitol was built in 1969, and has elements that represents the Hawaiian islands, including the exterior pillars representing palm trees,

a surrounding moat representing the ocean,

and conical walls surrounding the chambers.  The outside is covered with lava stone.

The Senate room.

The central courtyard is open to the elements, a feature that works a lot better in Hawaii than it would in Ohio.

The open house was a rather classy affair, with a string quartet filling the hall with wonderful music.

 It was pretty cool seeing the art collections, and getting to talk to aides, as well as some of the representatives themselves.

Plus every office had a selection of goodies to eat.  We had cookies, brownies, crackers and cheese, and sushi.

 After the shindig closed down, we wandered around some of the other areas of the historical zone.  This is the Iolani Palace.

 Here, a statue of King Kamehameha stands in front of the courthouse.

This banyan tree crowds the courthouse parking lot.  I love those crazy trees!