The museum's European and American collection of paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, textiles, and more than 15,000 works on paper, range in date from the Renaissance to the present.

Highlights are major Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modernist paintings by Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and James McNeill Whistler.

Significant works of art from the 20th century to the present include paintings and sculptures by Lee Bontecou, Alexander Calder, Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Yan Pei Ming, Isamu Noguchi, Nam June Paik, John Singer Sargent and David Smith.

The Department of European and American Art has paintings by Josef Albers, Francis Bacon, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Romare Bearden, Jean-Baptiste Belin, Bernardino di Betti (called Pinturicchio), Abraham van Beyeren, Albert Bierstadt, Carlo Bonavia, Pierre Bonnard, François Boucher, Aelbrecht Bouts, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Giorgio de Chirico, Frederic Edwin Church, Jacopo di Cione, Edwaert Colyer, John Singleton Copley, Piero di Cosimo, Gustave Courbet, Carlo Crivelli, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Henri-Edmond Cross, Stuart Davis, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Robert Delaunay, Richard Diebenkorn, Arthur Dove, Thomas Eakins, Henri Fantin-Latour, Helen Frankenthaler, Bartolo di Fredi, Jan van Goyen, Francesco Granacci, Childe Hassam, Hans Hofmann, Pieter de Hooch, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Philip Guston, William Harnett, George Inness, Alex Katz, Paul Klee, Nicolas de Largillière, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Morris Louis, Maximilien Luce, Alessandro Magnasco, Robert Mangold, the Master of 1518, Pierre Mignard, Claude Monet, Thomas Moran, Giovanni Battista Moroni, Grandma Moses, Robert Motherwell, Alice Neel, Kenneth Noland, Georgia O'Keeffe, Amédée Ozenfant, Charles Willson Peale, James Peale, Camille Pissarro, Fairfield Porter, Robert Priseman, Robert Rauschenberg, Odilon Redon, Diego Rivera, George Romney, Francesco de' Rossi (called Il Salviati), Carlo Saraceni, Gino Severini, Frank Stella, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, Yves Tanguy, Jan Philips van Thielen, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Bartolomeo Vivarini, Maurice de Vlaminck and William Guy Wall.

The collection also includes three-dimensional works by Alexander Archipenko, Robert Arneson, Leonard Baskin, Lee Bontecou, Émile Antoine Bourdelle, Nick Cave, Dale Chihuly, John Talbott Donoghue, Jacob Epstein, David Hockney, Donald Judd, Jun Kaneko, Gaston Lachaise, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Roy Lichtenstein, Jacques Lipschitz, Aristide Maillol, John McCracken, Claude Michel (called Clodion), Henry Moore, Elie Nadelman, George Nakashima, Louise Nevelson, Hiram Powers, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, George Rickey, Auguste Rodin, James Rosati, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, Mark di Suvero, Tom Wesselmann and Jack Zajac.

The collection includes 45,000 books and periodicals, biographical files on artists, and auction catalogues dating to the beginning of the 20th century.

[11] Shangri La is a museum for learning about the global culture of Islamic art and design through innovative exhibitions, educational initiatives, public programs, and community partnerships.

She frequented the shop of furniture maker Yeun Kwock Fong Inn who often had ceramics and textile pieces sent from his brother in China.

With little formal training, these women obtained a charter for the museum from the Territory of Hawaii in 1922, while continuing to catalogue the collection.

New York architect Bertram Goodhue designed a classic Hawaiian-style building with simple off-white exteriors and tiled roofs.

In September 1999, construction began on the John Hara-designed Henry R. Luce Pavilion Complex, which opened May 13, 2001.

His widow, Clare Boothe Luce, had a residence in Hawaiʻi and served on the museum's board of trustees from 1972–1977.

A new gallery for the art of the Philippines named for retiring Museum Director and his wife, George and Nancy Ellis, opened in 2003.

In October 2002, the museum opened a new gallery that serves as the orientation center for all tours to Doris Duke's Honolulu estate Shangri La, which started on November 6, 2002.

"[17] Interim director and trustee, Mark Burak, stated: "From a fiduciary standpoint, we've taken a very long and hard look at this from all angles.

While the Spalding House property's beauty and historic significance make it hard to part with, it has also been challenging splitting our attention between two large, resource-intensive art campuses, one limited by several factors that have made it difficult to deliver the kind of quality art exhibitions, programs and services we have desired."

We are fortunate to have a board and employees who carefully evaluate all options for the future and are continually making changes to ensure that we maintain the solid financial footing necessary to fulfill our mission.

In his editorial, Loss Of Spalding House A Reminder Old Money Alone Won't Sustain The Arts, Sterling Higa speculated on the financial history of the institution, wide spread urban development across Honolulu, and the arrival of new foreign investment.

Given the context, it seems likely that Spalding House will be sold to a foreign buyer, and the grounds will no longer be accessible to the general public.

Working closely with educators and schools, the museum provides tools and experiences to make visual art a foundational element of learning.

[20] The museum's education programs include guided tours, workshops, gallery classes, and children's art activities.

Theme tours concentrate on a specific country, region, time period, art movement, or groups of artists.

It is a non-circulating collection of over 40,000 volumes in a closed stack system and includes general reference materials, museum archives, artist files, and auction catalogues.

Early views of Hawaiʻi, dating from the last decades of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, by expedition artists such as England's John Webber and Robert Dampier, France's Auguste Borget and Stanislaus Darondeau, and Russia's Louis Choris, present images of the Western world's first contact with Hawaiʻi.

Nineteenth-century images by European artists such as George Burgess, Paul Emmert, Nicholas Chevalier, and James Gay Sawkins, who passed through Hawaiʻi, show the growth of Western-style communities and an appreciation for the land and sea.

The Holt Gallery also features painting, watercolors, drawings, prints and photographs by artists such as Enoch Wood Perry, Jules Tavernier, D. Howard Hitchcock, John La Farge, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Roi Partridge, and Jean Charlot.

Other regional artists in the collection include Charles W. Bartlett, Juliette May Fraser, Shirley Russell, Madge Tennent, and John Young.

The John Dominis and Patches Damon Holt Gallery also features space for changing exhibitions which focus on the arts of Hawaiʻi.

Descendant of a missionary family and a graduate of Punahou School, she received a law degree from Columbia University and was educated in England.

[22] The HoMA Café offers casual, contemporary cuisine and refreshments along with a signature island-style hospitality, perfectly complementing the museum experience.