History and Art Merge at Maui’s Historic Hui Noeau Visual Arts Center
PRESERVATION IN THE NEWS: Magical Hui Noeau Visual Arts Center offers guided walking tours of the 25 acre historic Kaluanui Estate rife with history, botanical gardens and art studios. Maui estate celebrates visual arts and history By Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi Honolulu Star Advertiser August 2, 2015 COURTESY MIEKO PHOTOGRAPHY Artist Stephen Fellerman instructs students in a glass-blowing class. Classes are held in the studios, and artists often can be found working there. Visitors, both on the guided and self-guided tours, are welcome to take a quick peek at what’s going on in the studios. Potter's wheels spin; paintbrushes sweep across canvases; beads, shells and wire turn into pretty rings and bracelets. On any given day, creativity blooms at Hui Noeau Visual Arts Center. Art and history go hand in hand on these 25 Upcountry acres overlooking the West Maui Mountains and the verdant north shore. East Maui Plantation opened on the site in 1850. When it closed in 1885, entrepreneur Henry Baldwin bought the property. Three decades later his son and daughter-in-law, Harry and Ethel Baldwin, retained famed architect C.W. Dickey to design a home for them there. The elegant two-story mansion was completed in 1917; its name, Kaluanui, means "big pit," referring to nearby Maliko Gulch. HUI NOEAU VISUAL ARTS CENTER Built in 1917, Kaluanui, Harry and Ethel Baldwin’s estate, is now the home of Hui Noeau Visual Arts Center. Ethel Baldwin founded the hui in 1934. Ethel and her daughter, Frances Baldwin Cameron, were patrons of the arts, and in 1934 they formed Hui Noeau ("coming together for the development of artistic skill"), a group of 20 women who initially met at Kaluanui to pursue their shared passion for [...]