Halona Norton-Westbrook is the Director and CEO of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Founded in 1927, the Honolulu Museum of Art is the largest fine art museum in the state of Hawai’i, with an encyclopedic collection of over 55,000 works of art, an art school, a theater, and a fine arts library. Norton-Westbrook was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, lived for several years in London, England while working towards her graduate degrees, and took up her role in Honolulu in January 2020, having most recently served as Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Toledo Museum of Art. Prior to that, she was the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Leadership Fellowship at the Toledo Museum of Art, a program inaugurated in 2012 to train the next generation of museum leaders.

Norton-Westbrook is a passionate advocate for museums and the vital role that they play in providing accessibility to the arts and fostering greater empathy, connection, and creativity in the lives of individuals and communities. Norton-Westbrook has an expertise in the formation, history, and evolution of museum collections in the 20th century and in Modern and Contemporary Art. She received a B.A. in American History and Studio Art from Mills College, an M.A. in Art History from Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and a Ph.D. in Museology from the University of Manchester.

Hawaii