Founder and benefactor of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Anna Rice Cooke (1853-1934) was a daughter of American Protestant missionaries William Harrison Rice and Mary Sophie Hyde Rice, who made their home at Koamalu, Kauai on what is now the
Founder and benefactor of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Anna Rice Cooke (1853-1934) was a daughter of American Protestant missionaries William Harrison Rice and Mary Sophie Hyde Rice, who made their home at Koamalu, Kauai on what is now the site of the old Lihue Plantation manager’s house.
Although born in Honolulu, Anna was raised on Kauai and educated at Punahou (then called Oahu College) and at Mills College, Oakland, California.
In 1874, she married businessman Charles Montague Cooke, a son of Amos Starr Cooke, who along with Samuel Northrup Castle founded the firm of Castle & Cooke in Honolulu in 1851.
Charles Montague Cooke started off in business as a clerk in his father’s firm, but made his fortune as a co-founder of Lewer’s & Cooke, a lumber and hardware business, and by lucrative investments in Hawaii sugar plantations.
He was also a founder of Bank of Hawaii in 1893, becoming its president in 1898. In the following year, he became president of C. Brewer & Co.
Over the years, Anna and Charles Cooke amassed an extensive fine arts collection in their Victorian-style home on Beretania Street across from Thomas Square Park.
Then, in 1911, two years after the death of her husband, Anna opened the Cooke Art Gallery at Punahou, with most of its paintings and sculptures on loan from her private collection.
In 1925, she donated the square block of land upon which her home stood, a beautiful art museum building to replace her home, a collection of several thousand works of art, and an endowment of over $1 million — all of which came to fruition in 1927 with the opening of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
The Honolulu Academy of Arts, now called the Honolulu Museum of Art — one of the finest art museums in the country with over 50,000 pieces — is Anna Rice Cooke’s legacy.
