Q. What are you reading?

A. One is "Status Anxiety" by Alain de Botton and the other is "Worlds Changing: A User's Guide to the 21st Century," edited by Alex Steffen. It's a new whole-earth catalog on technology in the global setting and ways in which technology can be used to protect the environment.

Q. What do you like about them?

A. I'm always fascinated with how stature plays a role in how people behave in society, and working in a museum, I'm fascinated how works of art are used to convey social status. De Botton's book is illuminating and entertaining ... and I'm totally fascinated by propaganda and the whole mechanism of how people get addicted to these symbols of status, and how propaganda to achieve status works in our culture. And Steffen has brought together a lot of voices from around the world that would be hard to access were it not for this book ... with points of view that are very different than ones in America. I think that's really useful and very relevant in Hawai'i with our multicultural and diverse ethnic community.

Q. Do these books influence your thinking about how to guide Hawai'i's cultural dialogue, perhaps through a future propaganda exhibition?

A. As far as the academy goes, I find both books really stimulating, one because we're trying to look at how we can use technology to make our collection available to the world outside O'ahu. ... And about the status book. ... I'm really interested in taste, which is always changing, whether fashion, art or architecture, and is very much about status. These are issues any human can relate to and museums are a great place to explore that in a safe, nonjudgmental environment.