Tom Klobe leaves behind a legacy of innovative gallery design, ground-breaking exhibits and art acolytes in the 50th State and beyond.

In 1977, a young fine-arts professor arrived from California to work at the University of Hawai‘i’s Manoa campus. His name was Tom Klobe. The return was a homecoming. Klobe had received both his bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts from UH. In between those degrees, he did a stint in Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the Golden State, Klobe had taught at California State University at Fullerton. Returning to Hawai‘i with expertise in Islamic art and general design, Klobe assumed the post of director of the new 4,000-square-foot art gallery on campus.

Over the subsequent three decades, Klobe left an impressive mark. His former students work at the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the J. Paul Getty, and dozens of other prominent art institutions. Another former student is currently the curator of the White House collection in Washington, D.C., the first Asian-American to occupy that post. Such a strong placement track record is no fluke. Klobe, who retires at the end of the 2006 academic year, has built an international reputation for creating exquisite and innovative exhibitions using modest gallery spaces and shoestring budgets. He garnered five Print Case Book awards, the equivalent of the Oscar for art exhibitions, entering exhibits that cost less than $10,000 to put together and defeating multimillion-dollar installations. “One time we beat both the Met and the National Gallery. That was tremendous,” says Klobe.

He has also transformed the Hawai‘i art scene with his innovative ideas on modular exhibition spaces. Klobe’s award-winning 1984 Greek and Russian Icon exhibit converted the gallery into a striking likeness of a candle-lit, Byzantine church. In fact, Klobe’s modular exhibition system, using movable walls and lighting strips that can literally be reconfigured in hours, has been emulated at many institutions on the mainland and in other parts of the world.

The award-winning Greek and Russian Icon exhibit.

Klobe has also turned UH’s “International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition” into a cult favorite. The triennial show features sculptural works that fit inside a shoebox. Klobe has attracted top-flight international artists such as Sam Hernandez, Mark Di Suvero, and E Chen, to participate in the show. He puts each shoebox show together with student help for less than $50,000, including catalogue production and crating and shipping the various pieces. Dozens of galleries around the world host the exhibition. “Universities love this show because it allows their students to see sculpture by international artists very easily,” says Klobe.

One of the popular International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibitions.

During his tenure, Klobe advised almost every significant arts institution in the Hawaiian Islands, including the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Hawaii State Art Museum, the Maui Arts and Cultural Center, and the Mission Houses Museum. By the accounts of many leading lights in the Hawaii art community, Klobe’s thinking and influence played key parts in raising Hawai‘i’s art galleries to world-class levels. Says Lisa Yoshihara, a former student of Klobe’s and the current director of the Hawaii State Art Museum, “He was a wonderful teacher and he has helped everyone. You can almost look at the Hawaii art scene as divided into periods—before Tom Klobe and after Tom Klobe.”

For more images of Tom Klobe’s work at the UH Gallery,
go to www.hawaii.edu/art/ or the gallery Website at www.hawaii.edu/artgallery/

Gallery Photos: University of Hawai'i Art: Tom Klobe Photo: Tom Haar