KALAPAKI BAY — Kaua‘i is days away from being home to the International Surfing Hall of Fame and He‘e Nalu Surfing Arts Museum. The grand opening celebration is set for Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Anchor Cove
KALAPAKI BAY — Kaua‘i is days away from being home to the International Surfing Hall of Fame and He‘e Nalu Surfing Arts Museum.
The grand opening celebration is set for Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Anchor Cove Shopping Center here.
Awaiting those planning to attend is a permanent display of some 40 classic surfboards built between the 1920s and 1970s.
Museum and surfing art gallery owner Lee Williams and his wife Patricia have spent the past two years in transition from their home in North San Diego County in preparation for the opening.
Lee Williams is well known in California as a collector of all matter of surfing memorabilia, ranging from surfboards and accessories to printed surfing material and art, and a curator for museums and shops housing such collections.
The opening is to feature an exhibit of surfing art by Kaua‘i and Mainland surfing artists, and a classic car show. Lee Williams is well versed in the automotive world, coming to Kaua‘i following a career in restoration of vintage racing cars.
During an interview Tuesday afternoon, Williams talked about his new museum-art gallery, while pulling out of cardboard storage boxes a Duke Kahanamoku ‘ukulele, a cast aluminum miniature ‘49 Ford woodie, a shoe-box full of 1960s-era cloth surfing patches and decals, and other surfing memorabilia.
“I grew up with it,” said Williams, who began surfing in the 1960s in the San Diego area, when asked how be began collection surfing stuff, though he didn’t get serious until the early 1980s.
His dad is Bill Ronaldson, the owner of Growing Greens Nursery in Kapahi and a Southern California surfer who was at the center of the action with legendary surfer Butch Van Artsdalen and others in the 1960s.
Williams said he first surfed Kaua‘i back in 1970 when he made a visit to the surfing colony that was part of the hippie-era commune known as Taylor Camp in Ha‘ena.
The concept for a Surfing Hall of Fame began in 1966, and was dreamed up by Richard Graham, the founder of International Surfing Magazine, and surfing legend Hoppy Swartz.
Duke Kahanamoku and other renowned surfers were inducted that year, though no physical building then existed. The Kalapaki museum is licensing the name from the nonprofit Surfing Hall of Fame organization.
Williams said Kaua‘i was chosen as a location due in part to the lack of similar attractions on Kaua‘i. He expects his audience to be about 90 percent non-surfing visitors to Kaua‘i, and he hopes to give them “a cultural perspective outside of Hollywood’s ‘surfploitation’ image the general public has.”
Hanapepe-based surfing archivist Tim Dela Vega is producing a history of surfing graphic art exhibit for the opening, Williams said. And an exhibit of surfing paintings by Lee Clark, Jim Irons and other local artists is being mounted.
A connection is being made with six similar surfing museums located in Southern California and other Mainland surfing areas, plus in Australia, he said. It’s hoped one new exhibit would be created each year, and that the museums would share exhibits in rotation.
Editor Chris Cook may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 227) or ccook@pulitzer.net.
