Whistler, an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii's Department of Botany, was an expert on tropical flora of the Pacific Islands, especially Samoa and Tonga.
[2] After completing his PhD, Whistler was appointed to a position at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai and served as a researcher affiliated with the Bishop Museum.
[7] Whistler authored more than a dozen books on the botany and ethnobotany of the Pacific Islands, including Rainforest Trees of Samoa, Polynesian Herbal Medicine, and Plants of the Canoe People: An Ethnobotanical Voyage through Polynesia, which focused on the plants utilized by Polynesian voyagers.
[1] At the time of his death, Whistler had nearly completed another book called Flora of Samoa, which he had worked on for most of his professional life.
[2] Following his death the Samoa Conservation Society and Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment established the Art Whistler Memorial Garden at the Vailima Botanical Gardens to collect and display rare and endangered species, many of which were categorised by Whistler.