Congratulations to our students (and their tireless supporters)
and a heartfelt mahalo to our generous donors!
Welcome to the Department of Art and Art History 2020 Awards Ceremony web site!
The annual awards ceremony is one of our favorite times of the academic year, when we have the chan
ce to get together to celebrate the many successes of our remarkable students. On a Sunday in April, we bring together students, family members, scholarship donors, faculty, and staff to recognize some of those students who have excelled over the past year. The event is followed by a festive opening reception for the annual BFA exhibition. Of course, in April 2020, having a large gathering of several hundred people in the art auditorium and later in the Gallery was impossible, thanks to the spread of COVID-19. In lieu of that, our staff has put together this web site and slideshow to honor our students and the amazing work they have done even in the face of pandemic and quarantine and the total upheaval it has caused in all our lives.
“The support of donors who recognize the value of the arts
has been crucial to the survival of artistic practice…”
One of the signs of a good artist is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and some of the great art of the world has come out of war, poverty, crisis, and even epidemic. After the initial shock, many of our students took the circumstances of Spring 2020 as a creative challenge, and rose to the occasion even while recognizing that artistic success might not look quite as they had originally imagined. Some of the work shown here is the result of that creative flexibility and innovation.
In a time of slashed budgets and reduced resources, we depend even more on the generosity of donors who have established and endowed many of the scholarships and awards we are privileged to present. Some of them have been loyal supporters of the department for decades, while others are relatively new and happy additions to our community. The support of donors who recognize the value of the arts has been crucial to the survival of artistic practice for a long time. In every case we are tremendously grateful for their support of our students.
Finally, I would like to thank the faculty and staff who have continuously supported our students toward their success over their time at UH. Many hands have made it possible for us to recognize our students in this way despite the cancellation of the ceremony. Thanks to all of our departmental instructors, to office staffers Mary McNamara, Francine Uehara, Becky O’Reilly, and Lynn Mayekawa, to Associate Chair Wendy Kawabata, and to Dean Peter Arnade for his support of the arts across our college. We also recognize our students’ families for their role in helping our students cultivate their talent and stretch their limits.
We celebrate the success of our students, bid a fond farewell to those of them who are graduating, and hope for a future in which we can once again come together for an awards ceremony in person. In the meantime, our best wishes to all our students and all their supporters.
Kate Lingley
Department Chair
“No one is better positioned to capture
and interrogate this moment than you…”
Aloha Art and Art History Awardees:
Congratulations to you for your achievement and success and regrets we could not celebrate your accomplishments in person together this year. As dean of the college, I want to underscore how much our academic and artistic community values your contributions, and how your creativity and work inspires we here at UH in the work we do.
We are living in turbulent and novel times, with a pandemic and political turmoil upending our habits, policies and assumptions. Our political, civic and personal lives have been strained and stressed, out in the streets, nationally, locally, and in our homes too. No one is better positioned to capture and interrogate this moment than you through your original academic and artistic ideas and creations. Your lives may have been disrupted but your artistic talents might also have equally been inspired. I encourage you to put your considerable talent to use recording, memorializing and capturing these moments we are living through, serving as witnesses to what we confront and as vessels of change for the future. We depend on your generation more than ever to move us forward.
I had hoped to congratulate you in person, but absent this ability, let me say I encourage you to stay in touch with us; you leave a visible footprint and legacy in the Department of Art and Art History and at UH Mānoa. Congratulations again.
Peter Arnade
Dean, College of Arts, Languages and Letters
Download the 2020 Awards Ceremony Program
Inspired by the generosity of our donors? Support our Department by visiting the Giving page.