RARE MANOOKIAN PAINTINGS REMOVED FROM THE HOTEL HANA-MAUI
Huffington Post
July 14 2010
It has been reported that a group of seven rare oil paintings by Arman
Tateos Manookian (1904-1931) was removed from the historic Hotel
Hana-Maui earlier this year. The paintings, which depict images of
early Hawaiians and the arrival of Captain Cook, were first purchased
from the artist in 1929 by Helene Fagan, the wife of Hana Ranch
Founder Paul Fagan Sr.
Several of the Hana paintings were originally on display at the
“Green Mill Grill” on Honolulu’s Bethel Street, where Mrs. Fagan saw
them one night in 1928 after viewing a performance at the Hawai’i
Theatre across the street. Mrs. Fagan’s cousin, Alice Bowen Spalding,
the manager of Gump’s Gallery on Kalakaua Avenue on Waikiki, gave
the artist his first and only one man show in 1929.
Considered daringly modern when they were first shown, the bold
canvasses were originally displayed in the Fagan’s Pu’u O Hoku Ranch
on Moloka’i along with Polynesian style furnishings. They have been on
display in Hana since 1947 when Paul Fagan opened the original 6 room
Ka’uiki Inn to attract tourists to the remote coast. For many years,
three of the largest paintings were displayed in the dining area,
high on its woven lauhala walls, where generations of honeymooners
dined beneath them. When the Fagan family sold the later Hotel and
surrounding lands in 1968, the paintings were included in the sale.
This isn’t the first time that rare items have been removed from the
Hana-Maui since the original sale. After purchasing the Hotel in 1984
the Rosewood Hotels Group removed the historic 225 piece Paul I Fagan
Sr. rifle collection from the hotel’s Paniolo Bar. The collection is
now reportedly displayed in the Dallas offices of billionaire Nelson
Bunker Hunt.
For a number of years the Manookian paintings were neglected by the
Hotel’s owners, who did not understand their importance. In the 1980’s
one canvas hung in the employee dining room over a steam table, flecked
with dried rice and gravy. When the Hana-Maui was purchased by San
Francisco based Passport Resorts in 2001, the Manookian paintings —
newly cleaned and restored — were used by architect/designer Hunton
Conrad in 2002 as the inspiration for the colors and design motifs
of the renewed interior.
The Hana Maui, facing declining revenues in a recessionary economy,
has changed hands twice in recent years. In 2008 Passport Resorts
LLC sold it to the Ohana Hotel Company, a subsidiary of Vermont based
Arden Grove Hospitality . In May of this year, it was again sold to
Denver based Amstar Group LLC. A source in Hana states that prior to
the most recent sale, the Manookian canvases were ordered removed by
Mr. Roy Goble, Managing Partner of Ohana.
A group of trustees from the Honolulu Academy of art, which had been
notified that the paintings would be sold, made an offer for several
works, but was outbid by an unidentified buyer. An appraiser present
when the works were being removed states that three were sold on
the spot.
Mr. Goble, the President of Goble Properties, based in Pleasanton,
California, did not respond to a phone request for information about
the removal and sale of the paintings. In January of last year a Wells
Fargo banker circulated images of at least two of the Hana Manookians
to mainland dealers requesting information about their retail value.
In Europe, where the removal of fine paintings and antiques is sadly
common, Mr. Goble would certainly be said to have indulged in cultural
asset stripping.
The removal of the seven Manookian paintings, among the finest of the
less than thirty known paintings by the fiery Armenian born artist,
represents a significant cultural loss of Hawai’i, where his paintings
are considered iconic. Manookian, who took his own life in 1931, was
a survivor of the Armenian Genocide who came to Hawai’i as a member
of the Marine Corps. Manookian once told a friend that his goal as
an artist was to create a “symphony of color.”
In 2005, a large Manookian painting from a Honolulu collection was sold
in a private transaction for a reported $500k, igniting new interest
in the artist’s work by dealers and collectors. Although the current
recession has softened the art market, each of the Hana Manookians
could still certainly command prices in the six figure range.
In April of 2009 the Hawai’i House of Representatives passed a
resolution, which mentioned Manookian as a “gifted painter” and a
“genocide survivor,” making April 24th Hawaii’s official “Day of
Remembrance in Recognition of and Commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide of 1915.”
The Hana canvasses were the last examples of Manookian’s work on
permanent public display anywhere in the world. The Honolulu Academy
of Art owns one Manookian, but it is not currently being shown. One of
the Academy’s trustees does intend to loan a Manookian to be displayed
in the near future. A group of murals that the artist painted for the
Waipahu theater just before his death were covered over and destroyed
when the Waipahu became an adult theater in the 1960s.
From: A. Papazian