The Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design is located just outside Honolulu, Hawaii. Built in 1937, it was the former home of American tobacco heiress Doris Duke who died in 1993 and in her will, stipulated that the property be made “available to scholars, students and others interested in the furtherance and preservation of Islamic art.”
The home and its lush grounds became a museum in 2002, displaying much of what she collected from Mrs. Duke’s travels around the world. It is now owned and operated as a public museum of the arts and cultures of the Islamic world by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art
Today, the museum’s curators tell the New York Times that they are trying to reach a wider, “hipper” audience through new types of events, such as a “Scavenger Hunt: Figures in Islamic Art”, and by hosting artists who explore Islamic and Hawaiian cultures in unique ways. Konrad Ng, the museum’s current executive director, says he was “hired to activate the place in new ways.” The idea, he continues, “is to be broader in our reach to the public and to experiment, to really think of the museum as a garage of innovation for ideas.”
