COURTESY CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM OF ART A fragment of Jean Charlot's First Hawaiian Bank-Waikiki fresco, "The Missionary (Mrs. Elisha Loomis)," dating to 1951.

The art of commerce

Honolulu’s Contemporary Museum
will auction nearly 100 of its artworks
to finance more modern acquisitions

When does modern cease to be modern? The answer varies by object, each with its own life cycle, whether it's that clunker of a Walkman CD player you carried around more than a decade ago, or last summer's peasant blouse.

The Contemporary Museum art auction Where: McClain Auctions, 825 Halekauwila St. When: Begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, with inspection from noon to 6 p.m. tomorrow and 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday Admission: Free Call: 538-7227

Few of us have to wrestle with the subject. No authority need inform us what's in or out, when we just know by surveying the landscape. Who wouldn't be embarrassed today by a cell phone as big as a shoe when everyone else is carrying micro-mini models? Hello?

Of all such worldly possessions, surely art is timeless. We're accustomed to the notion of Vermeers, Rembrandts and Picassos preserved for all time on museum walls. Future generations have much to benefit from such collections depicting life in a particular time and place, so the idea of a museum casting off this history is unsettling.

But for institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and The Contemporary Museum, the process known as deaccessioning is necessary as a way of evaluating and upgrading collections. Earlier this year, MOMA deaccessioned and sold at auction seven works from its collection, including a painting by Jackson Pollock.

On Saturday, the Contemporary will auction nearly 100 works that have been deaccessioned from its collection. That means letting go of pieces in adhering to its mission of collecting works dating from 1940 to the present, and represents an opportunity for Hawaii collectors to purchase museum-quality works by notable island artists.

The highlight of the auction, to be held at McClain Auctions in Kakaako, is Madge Tennent's oil painting "Woman with Ukulele."

"It is a significant work by the artist but research indicates that the undated painting was most likely done in the mid-1930s, putting it outside the museum's mission," said James Jensen, the museum's associate director and chief curator.

Similar major paintings by Tennent are on permanent view at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Hawaii State Art Museum, Hawaii State Library and the Tennent Art Gallery in Honolulu.

COURTESY CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM OF ART The Contemporary Museum is parting with some of its valuable works, including, above, Madge Tennent's "Woman with Ukulele."

"The public's access to Tennent works is well served by these institutions," said Jensen, who added that none of the works selected for deaccessioning has been exhibited at TCM since it opened in 1988 in Makiki Heights. He said members of the museum's Collections Committee and Board of Trustees felt that it would be unlikely that they would be exhibited in the future.

"It is not beneficial for The Contemporary Museum to keep its painting locked up in storage vault when the resources it represents could be used to enhance and fill gaps in the museum's collection."

He said the auction will be a benchmark for the Tennent market, because nothing comparable by her has been at a public auction in recent memory.

Another work likely to draw public interest is a fresco panel by Jean Charlot that depicts Mrs. Elisha Loomis, an early missionary in Hawaii. The fresco is a fragment from a large composition that Charlot created in 1951 in First Hawaiian Bank's Waikiki branch. During building renovations in 1966, the fresco was cut into 23 sections that were removed and sold. A second version of the fresco was executed by Charlot in 1967 and remains on view in the bank. The Contemporary Museum will retain a fragment of the 1951 fresco depicting Capt. James Cook.

"Similar examples rarely if ever appear on the market," Jensen said.

COURTESY CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM OF ART Satoru Abe's "The Seed" (1963) fashioned from copper and wood isone of The Contemporary Museum's deaccessioned works.

The auction also includes works by such local art pioneers as Satoru Abe, Tadashi Sato, Bumpei Akaji and John Young, as well as many other artists active in Hawaii from the 1940s to the '70s. Also up for grabs will be a several works recently donated to the museum by Persis Corporation specifically for sale. Most of these works were acquired from exhibitions at the Honolulu Advertiser Gallery when Persis owned the newspaper and the news building.

Works by the late Hawaii artist Winifred Hudson (1905-1996) have also been donated from her estate to the museum by the artist's family in California to raise funds to enable the museum to acquire works by contemporary Hawaii artists. The collection features paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints from all periods of Hudson's career, including works that were not offered for sale during the artist's lifetime.

This is the second time in the Contemporary's history that an auction of this type has been organized. The first eight years ago fetched more than $145,000, which was subsequently used to acquire more contemporary works.