Herb Kawainui Kāne

Visual Artist

1928 – 2011

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Who was Herb Kawainui Kāne?

Herbert "Herb" Kawainui Kāne, considered one of the principal figures in the renaissance of Hawaiian culture in the 1970s, was a celebrated artist-historian and author with a special interest in the seafaring traditions of the ancestral peoples of Hawaiʻi. Kāne played a key role in demonstrating that Hawaiian culture arose not from some accidental seeding of Polynesia, but that Hawaiʻi was reachable by voyaging canoes from Tahiti able to make the journey and return. This offered a far more complex notion of the cultures of the Pacific Islands than had previously been accepted. Furthermore, he created vivid imagery of Hawaiian culture prior to contact with Europeans, and especially the period of early European influence, that sparked appreciation of a nearly forgotten traditional life.

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Born
Jun 21, 1928
Paynesville
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • University of Chicago
Died
Mar 8, 2011
Kona District, Hawaii

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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