Edit info for Lahaina Galleries

Lahaina Galleries was est. on Front Street, Maui in 1976 by Jim & Nancy Killett, who never meant to be art dealers. They now run Hawaii's largest art gallery and most well known in America. Locations are: Wailea Maui, HI | Lahaina, HI | Kohala Coast, HI & Newport Beach, CA.Brief history of how we came to be!Raised in small towns in Arkansas, Jim and Nancy Killett met in college and married right after graduation. With their dual physical education degrees-Jim coached football, Nancy gymnastics-they taught school in New Mexico, Florida, Okinawa, and Ger- many in addition to Jim’s four years of Ma- rine Corps service.The Killetts never dreamed of becoming art impresarios. While teaching in damp, drizzly Germany, Jim watched “Hawaii Five-O” once a week. As the show brought Hawaii into their home in living color, “We decided to move to Maui.” The Killetts quit their jobs, sold their possessions, took out their retirement money, and said goodbye to friends and family. A couple of months later they wound up on the doorstep of a real-estate office in Lahaina, ready to plunk down their life savings for just about any business they could buy. When the ice cream parlor they wanted to buy proved unavailable, Jim and Nancy bought into the 1,500-square-foot business next door to the real-estate office-an art gallery selling $400 paintings and puka shell necklaces.And the rest as they say...is history, a thirty-eight year history of which many of you have been a part.