"We're out of survival mode now, and into growth," said Brown. "And the most immediate and concrete manifestation of growth is the Science Center."

DIVISIVE ISSUES REMAIN

But progress hasn't come without a price. Even now there are lingering shadows that have haunted the halls for nearly two decades.

Those shadows include the schism over whether the museum should emphasize scientific research or public attractions, a sense of dread among staffers that they could be terminated at any moment, and a chasm in the Hawaiian community regarding the facility's role as its cultural protector.

That's the museum Brown inherited in 2001.

Following 16 tumultuous years touched off by his predecessor's efforts to bring popular traveling exhibits to what had always been an institution focused exclusively on research, the museum's reputation was in question, its financial future was in doubt, and its staff morale was at rock bottom.

Brown and others believe the museum has moved past much of that and that the institution has stabilized. The emphasis is now on growth.

The institution's literature touts it as one of the world's 10 largest and most prestigious natural history museums, with some 24 million plant and animal specimens, photos, art works and cultural artifacts.

But even as Brown moves into the first year of his second four-year contract, some Hawaiians question his leadership, especially with regard to the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

One person who believes the museum has improved under Brown's tenure is DeSoto Brown — no relation — collections manager of the Bishop Museum's archives.

He says the atmosphere at the museum is better than it has been in years. Before the arrival of the current director it was as if the facility was under siege, he said.

When DeSoto Brown, who is one-eighth Hawaiian, began at the museum in 1987, the place was already in turmoil. Largely, he said, that tension was a result of a major change in the museum's long tradition as an elite domain for serious researchers and scientists.

Donald Duckworth, museum director at the time, had arrived from the Smithsonian in 1984 to an institution in deep financial trouble and on the verge of closing down. His clear mandate from the board of directors was "to reshape what had been a closed, reclusive kind of institution ... to create an open, stimulating public museum," he maintained in a letter to the board at the time.

Under Duckworth's watch, the Castle Building was built specifically to host traveling exhibits such as dinosaur and wolf extravaganzas that frequently had little to do with Hawai'i's culture or history.

"And, yeah, it was controversial," said DeSoto Brown. "Because, on one hand people were saying, 'Is Bishop Museum's mission to bring in fake dinosaurs, or is it to study and preserve the natural cultural history of the Pacific?'

"The other side was going, 'Wait a minute — it is a good community thing to be providing something that people like instead of saying, 'No, that's beneath us.' "

LESS 'EMBATTLED'

In the midst of that painful transition, he said, the museum's darkest hour unfolded with a split in the Hawaiian community over the facility's role as caretaker of the Hawaiian culture's most treasured objects.

Two events — the disappearance from the museum in February 1994 of the culture's two most sacred relics, the ka'ai, and the fate of 83 sacred burial objects the museum loaned to a Native Hawaiian group — were the most dramatic examples of that conflict.

"We felt embattled," said DeSoto Brown. "We had tensions from within between workers. At the same time we were getting more and more criticism from the outside community."

Most of that anxiety has eased with time, a different management style and the museum's improved financial fortunes, he said. Staff members feel freer to simply do their jobs, and relations with the public have improved, he said.

One person who has noticed a change for the better is Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, former director of the University of Hawai'i's Hawaiian Studies program.

"I was at the museum archives recently and I was happy to see a lot more Native Hawaiians and locals there," said Kame'eleihiwa, who described her earlier experiences at the facility as noticeably less pleasant than her recent visit.

She is also enthusiastic about the museum's goal of eventually making all its collections, including the entire archive collection of rare and valuable photos and documents, available electronically.

PRESERVATION POLITICS

Edward Halealoha Ayau, executive director of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna 'O Hawai'i Nei, a group dedicated to preserving Native Hawaiian burial sites, said the appropriate role of the museum is to care for what rightfully belongs there while helping in the repatriation of bones and artifacts that he says by law should be reburied.

Instead, he said, the museum "has adopted an anti-repatriation agenda."

In 2000, the museum lent the group the 83 artifacts. The group then buried and sealed the priceless objects inside a Big Island cave.

William Brown disagrees with Ayau's view of the museum's role, and said the museum has taken two actions that only put it in a stronger position when it comes to repatriation.

"One is to take a hard look at the federal statute that defines the requirements for repatriation and evaluate what the terms of the statute really mean in a way that the museum had never done before," he said.

"Frankly, if you just open the door of a museum and let people take stuff out, then it's not going to be very secure.

"The other thing that helped is that we've had a significant shift in additional members of the board that are Native Hawaiian."

Meanwhile, Brown notes that while the museum is doing well with capital investments to fund such visible highlights as the Science Center and Hawaiian Hall renovation, it has been a break-even struggle to raise $17 million in annual operating expenses.

"And we don't get money from the Bishop Estate," he added, referring to a commonly held misbelief that the museum is tied financially with the wealthy Kamehameha Schools (the museum has operated under a trust separate from the school since 1892).

In the end, Brown said, his primary function gets down to the perpetual task of raising money. At the same time, he said he never loses sight of the museum's mission: "To study, preserve and tell the stories of the cultures and natural history of Hawai'i and the Pacific."

That was the mission when Charles Reed Bishop founded the museum in 1889 to honor his late wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last descendant of King Kamehameha the Great, said Brown.

"And that mission hasn't changed."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.