One of National Museum of the American Indian's first Visual and Expressive Arts Grants program is going to Honolulu's Bishop Museum.

The grant program offers support to active artists, with the goal of increasing knowledge, understanding and appreciation of contemporary Native American arts. The grants are intended to strengthen scholarship and create opportunities for new and innovative work in an underserved field.

The visual arts award for the Bishop Museum's "Ili-ho: The Surface Within" exhibition will explore, from an indigenous perspective, four textile treasures: a feathered cloak, a makaloa mat, an intricate kappa and a protest quilt.

Native Hawaiian artist and professor Maile Andrade serves as guest curator. Eight contemporary Hawaiian artists will be invited to explore these ancestral creations and create their own works. The exhibition emphasizes the role of Native Hawaiian artists in interpreting their own material culture.

This exhibition is being presented in conjunction with the Textile Society of America's 11th Annual Biennial Symposium in Honolulu, in September. This exhibition will be a part of a city-wide presentation of textile exhibitions at a variety of venues including Bishop Museum, Honolulu Academy of Arts, University of Hawai'i, Mission Houses Museum, and Queen Emma Summer Palace, among others.

For more information about the Textile Society of America symposium visit www.textilesociety.org.