FIRST OFF . . .

Los Angeles artists Billy Al Bengston, Tony Berlant, Chuck Arnoldi joined top artists and art dealers from New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere in Honolulu over the weekend for the opening of Hawaii’s first contemporary art museum. With a view of Diamond Head and downtown Waikiki, the Contemporary Museum, a 12,000-square-foot restored 1920s estate, will house 1,000 artworks of 500 artists. Museum director Fritz Frauchiger, former chief of L.A.’s defunct Arco Center for Visual Art, said the museum will deal mostly with art of the past 40 years. The new museum’s primary backers are Lila and Thurston Twigg-Smith. Twigg-Smith is owner and publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper, which donated the museum building and as well as some of its artworks.