Bronwen Solyom: A life of librarianship, scholarship & cultural preservation
Librarian Emerita Bronwen “Bron” Solyom spent more than 37 years helping to preserve Hawaiʻi’s cultural heritage, mentoring generations of librarians, and connecting researchers with remarkable collections. She died in Honolulu on May 23, 2026.
Solyom’s colleagues, friends, family, and scholars gathered in Hamilton Library’s Hawaiian & Pacific Collection Reading Room on July 17 to celebrate a life defined by curiosity, generosity, and scholarship. Special guests included Solyom’s husband, Garrett Solyom, friend Maya Soetoro-Ng, and Jean Charlot Foundation President Allison Wong.
University Librarian Clem Guthro, Russian Collection Librarian Patricia Polansky, Art Archivist Ellen Chapman, and Jean Charlot Collection Curator and Art Archivist Librarian Malia Van Heukelem made remarks at the event, where guests reminisced and viewed some of Solyom’s favorite items from the Jean Charlot Collection that she curated from 2003-2016.
Chapman knew Solyom for 55 years and they used to exchange books. “She would find the most interesting books. I would try to find interesting books for her, and we would just swap them all the time. I’m going to miss that a lot.”
Chapman volunteered to help with the Charlot Collection when Solyom took a leave after being diagnosed with cancer, which eventually led to her current position. “She had a big influence on my life,” she said. “She helped my career.”
She also made an impact on Van Heukelem, who succeeded Solyom as curator of the Charlot Collection.
“Bron was incredibly generous with her time and energy. When I was hired a year and a half after she retired in 2016, she came in nearly every day for the first 8 months that I was here,” Van Heukelem remembered. “She was here to help me make sense of this incredible, complex collection. Without her help, it would have taken me years to get oriented. I’m so grateful for her enduring support and friendship.”
Sharon Weiner, a retired public relations executive and former UH Regent, recalls how Solyom inspired her dissertation research. Weiner had decided to pursue a PhD in English literature at UH Mānoa after retiring at age 71.
“Among her many achievements was presenting the idea of a biography of Juliette May Fraser to the UH English department,” Weiner wrote. “That seed, when planted and, in part nurtured by her enthusiasm for the project, resulted in my PhD dissertation. She gave me not only specific guidance, but also her distinctive smile-filled support that will always be part of that work.”
When Yoshiro Sakamoto, a friend and former dissertation researcher in the Charlot Collection, learned of her passing, he wrote to Van Heukelem: “She was and still is the beauty of this planet. It was such a grace to be with Bron and Garrett and to touch their beautiful life full of love towards every being in the island world.”
A life well lived … on many islands
Solyom was born on June 21, 1944, in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, an island state of Australia.
In the Obama Presidency Oral History Project’s Interview with Bronwen Solyom (2022), Solyom talked about her early years and how she came to be in Hawai‘i. She said attended a Quaker school in Hobart before studying psychology at the University of Tasmania.
After she graduated in 1964, she took a TA job at Australian National University, Canberra, where she realized she did not want to be a psychologist. Then, she said, “I met my husband and I eloped and hitchhiked off with him to see the world.”
She said a friend introduced her to Garrett Solyom in a bookstore. “I’d say it was like, prophetic,” she said.
The two hitchhiked across Australia together and ended up flying to what is now East Timor.
“That was the beginning of our shared love affair with things Indonesian and Southeast Asian,” which would become a lifelong interest for the couple, who published numerous works and curated exhibitions about Indonesian textiles and the Javanese keris.
Remembering a ‘Renaissance woman’
They traveled throughout Indonesia until Garrett decided he needed to return to his home state of Illinois to deal with the draft board midway through the Vietnam War. Bron returned to Hobart before later reuniting with Garrett in Chicago. They were married and lived there for a year. She was there on a tourist visa, which ran out.
“Eventually I got a green card, and that enabled me to go to school and to work. I had decided that by then I was so interested in everything, being a librarian would be a good career.”
So Solyom started library school at the University of Chicago just before the couple decided to move to Hawai‘i, where Garrett could pursue an interdisciplinary studies program, combining Southeast Asian studies, anthropology, archaeology, and art history.
Solyom said she had to wait a year before they could afford for her to resume her library studies at UH Mānoa. She worked as the librarian’s assistant at Bishop Museum during that time and finished her Master of Library Science degree in 1971.
“Bron had a long and distinguished career in Hamilton Library. She was hired out of library school by then University Librarian Stan West as his assistant,” recalled Polansky. “She learned about all aspects of our library—including blueprints for the building, organization charts, and liaising with faculty and other units on campus.”
It was around this time when Solyom met Ann Dunham Soetoro, the mother of Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng, in a Southeast Asian art class at UH in 1972.
“Bron was great friends with Ann Dunham,” Polansky said. “Bron organized Ann’s papers—the archive that was sent to the Smithsonian Institution.”
After earning a second master’s degree in Asian Studies at UH in 1976, she became a cataloger in Hamilton’s Acquisitions and Cataloging departments in 1978.
Solyom returned to Tasmania in 1985 to care for her ailing parents. She was a cataloger at the University of Tasmania Library for a year before returning to Indonesia. In Jakarta, she was a consultant for a number of organizations, including the National Library of Indonesia and the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. In 1993, the Solyoms returned to Hawai‘i.
‘Tireless librarian’ made connections, strengthened collections
Solyom resumed her cataloging work at Hamilton Library. Polansky said her time as a cataloger “greatly enhanced titles being added to the Asia Collection, particularly Southeast Asia,” and that she was able to use her knowledge of Southeast Asian languages to help process the materials.
Three years later, University Librarian John Haak tapped Solyom to work with the UH Foundation to establish a fundraising program for the library. Chapman recalled Solyom’s work with the Hawai‘i Congressional Papers Collection (HCPC) during this time.
“She had done some research on [it] before we had a congressional papers collection, and was mentoring me along the way,” Chapman said.
Solyom helped to promote and build the collection, which the library launched in 1998. She wrote a white paper making the case for a centralized resource for the state and urging former Hawai‘i lawmakers to consider donating their papers to the collection. Thanks in part to her efforts, Hamilton Library’s HCPC now includes the papers of most of Hawai‘i’s former members of Congress since statehood.
In 2003, University Librarian Diane Perushek transferred Solyom to the library’s renowned Jean Charlot Collection, an internationally-recognized archive documenting religious art, Mexican art, Hawaiʻi artists, and other unique cultural materials.
Over the next 13 years, Solyom systematically organized and preserved the collection, created finding aids, mentored library and museum studies interns, and assisted researchers from around the world. Her dedication helped strengthen one of Hawaiʻi’s most distinctive cultural and research collections.
“Bron’s lasting and most excellent contribution not only to the university, but to the scholarly world, will be what she did as curator of the Charlot Collection,” Polansky said. “Scholars from around the world visit to use these materials. Bron has mentored countless numbers of interns from the library school and the museum studies program.”
Solyom’s Hamilton Library colleagues recognized her career contributions with the Nina D.P. Horio Award for Excellence in Librarianship upon her retirement in 2016, and she stayed connected with the library long after retiring.
“Bron was a lifelong learner, committed to the local archive and museum community,” said Van Heukelem. “She was a tireless librarian dedicated to promoting the Jean Charlot Collection. She supported students, interns and volunteers, as well as researchers and community groups. She had a passion for this collection I think she never wanted to leave.”
In many ways, she never did. Through the collections she preserved, the librarians she mentored, and the scholars she inspired, Bronwen Solyom’s work will continue to shape Hamilton Library for decades to come.
See also on UH News: Bronwen Solyom: Passionate curator of Jean Charlot collection at Hamilton Library and In memoriam: UH librarian Bronwen Solyom’s life of scholarship, cultural preservation
