[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/DavidOdo-3.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) in Hawai\u2018i has named David Odo as its next director and chief executive. He will start in the role on September 1. \u00a0He succeeds Halona Norton-Westbrook, who left in July 2025 to lead the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas.<\/p>\n
\n\tOdo is currently director and chief curator of the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens. During his tenure, the museum saw record attendance, which now sees around 61,000 annual visitors. He also increased overall museum revenue by 141 percent.<\/p>\n
\n\tA specialist in 19th-century photography of Japan, Odo has held leadership positions at the Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Art Gallery, as well as appointments at the Rijksmuseum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe appointment is also a homecoming for Odo, who was raised in Hawai\u2018i. His father, the late Franklin Odo, was an important scholar of Asian studies and served as the first permanent director of the University of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s ethnic studies program in 1978.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHoMA holds a world-class collection, deep civic roots, and a community that has claimed it as its own for nearly a hundred years,\u201d Odo said in a statement. \u201cWhat excites me is honoring that legacy while boldly positioning the museum for its next century.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHoMA was also an institution he visited during his childhood, and he was drawn to the museum\u2019s collection of Buddhist sculptures. \u201cThey sparked my curiosity about world religions,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things I love about art museums\u2014they hold so much possibility to encourage one\u2019s interest in a limitless number of subjects, and I\u2019m excited to continue that legacy for others in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNext year, HoMA will celebrate its centennial. \u201cDavid brings the experience, vision, and leadership that HoMA needs as we prepare to enter our second century,\u201d HoMA board chair Amber Strong Makaiau said in a statement. \u201cHis record of strengthening museums through thoughtful strategic growth, sound institutional stewardship, and meaningful community engagement gives us every confidence that he is the right leader for HoMA at this important moment in our history. His understanding of Hawai\u2018i and international experience uniquely position him to lead the museum forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/honolulu-museum-of-art-director-david-odo-1234791707\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/DavidOdo-3.jpg?w=1024″] The Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) in Hawai\u2018i has named David Odo as its next director and chief executive. He will start in the role on September 1. \u00a0He succeeds Halona Norton-Westbrook, who left in July 2025 to lead the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas. Odo is currently director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2036604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2036604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2036604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2036604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2036604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}