Shangri La (Doris Duke)

Exterior view

The Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design is housed in the former home of Doris Duke near Diamond Head just outside Honolulu, Hawaii. It is now owned and operated as a public museum of the arts and cultures of the Islamic world by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (DDFIA). Guided tours depart from the Honolulu Museum of Art, which operates the tours in co-operation with DDFIA.

Construction of Shangri La took place from 1936 to 1938,[1][2] after Doris Duke's 1935 honeymoon which took her through the Islamic world. For nearly 60 years, Duke commissioned and collected artworks for the space, eventually forming a collection of over 4,000 objects.[3] The structure was designed by Marion Sims Wyeth. An artistic reflection of the construction of Shangri La can be found in Kiana Davenport's novel Song of the Exile.[4]

The building was opened to the public as a museum, the Shangri La Museum for Islamic Art, Design & Culture, in 2002.[5]

  1. ^ "About Us". Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. Archived from the original on March 18, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  2. ^ Margaret Bourke-White: Newly built estate, Shangri-la, belonging to American Tobacco Co. heiress Doris Duke and husband James Cromwell (Honolulu, 1937)
  3. ^ Mariah Proctor-Tiffany, "Doris Duke and Mary Crane: Collecting Islamic art for Shangri La, a Hawaiian hideaway home", Journal of the History of Collections, V 35 (March 2023):179–192
  4. ^ To build the house more than two hundred men had labored a year laying the foundation, excavating five acres of lava. [...] She named her fortress Wahi Pana, legendary place. Kiana Davenport: Song of the Exile. New York 2000, ISBN 0-345-43494-3, pp. 11–12
  5. ^ "Shangri La Timeline". Shangri La Center for Islamic Arts and Cultures. Archived from the original on February 9, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2015.