At first glance, the most striking thing about the Honolulu Museum of Art’s new installation of European and American art isn’t just the art — it’s the walls.

Painted in bold colors, from orange to aqua to purple, the walls are intended to frame the art in an outspoken way that turns something that might be considered a facelift into something that’s in your face.

That’s intentional, said Theresa Papanikolas, curator of the European and American collection and the designer of the installation. She was looking for a color for a portrait gallery — one of the new "themed" galleries in the installation — and came across a bright orange.

"It just hit me, this is it, this is the color," she said. "Our installation guys are like, ‘You’re crazy.’ Our director (Stephan Jost) was like ‘Yeah let’s do it.’ So we took a risk."

That approach, Jost said, seemed appropriate after the museum’s recent merger with The Contemporary Museum suggested a break from its traditional, history-based installation was in order.

"We’re one museum, and it’s not what you thought it was," said Jost, who became museum director as the reinstallation was underway. "So whenever we had a conversation, I always pushed (Papanikolas) to make the less conservative choice."

The result is 10 redesigned galleries, some based on traditional chronology, such as Medieval and Renaissance Art, 17th-Century European Art, 18th-Century European Art; and other galleries based on the themes of portraiture and nudes. Another gallery will display temporary exhibits. The installation was funded by a $130,000 grant from the Walter F. and Mary Dillingham Frear Trust.

The intention is to showcase the best works in the museum’s collection "in a way that’s really engaging, that’s both informative, that’s pretty, that makes you want to stay," said Papanikolas. "We wanted to strike a balance between art’s historical chronology — artwork that comes from a specific place and time — and themes."

For example, the nudes gallery, formally called "Antiquity and the Body," includes works by modern sculptors such as Rodin interspersed with classical Greek and Roman sculptures. The classical works used to be presented with tiles and bottles from the same era, which emphasized historical context but not necessarily artistic merit, Jost said.

"People don’t come to museums to learn about art history," he said. "They come to museums to look at great art and learn about great art."

A nude by Modigliani, which used to hang with works by his fellow Impressionists, is placed next to a delicate scene of an artist and his nude model by the American realist painter Thomas Eakins. Next to that is a well-known abstract work by contemporary artist Vik Muniz that is actually a cibachrome photograph of a figure outlined in chocolate.

"You can see different continuities, like abstraction, or artists who are looking at classical forms," Papanikolas said.

The new installation also respects the original architecture of the museum, with walls that disrupted sightlines from gallery to gallery taken down, and the building’s ventilation ducts — carved in Hawaiian motifs — now standing out. At the same time, fun but comfortable furniture encourages those who want to sit awhile and take things in.

The museum’s Impressionist and post-Impressionist galleries are designed to simply put the works in the best light — literally. One of the galleries is large and airy, painted white, and lit by an arched glass door. Claude Monet’s "Water Lilies" — one of the museum’s most popular works — hangs opposite the glass door as if reflecting nature outside.

Some galleries seem to send a subliminal message of shock that hints at a deeper message behind the works displayed therein. The orange portrait gallery, for example, contains a painting that on its face seems very conventional — an elegantly dressed woman, titled "Arrangement in Black No. 5: Lady Meux."

"This painting was unbelievably radical for its time," Jost said, explaining that the subject was a "dance-hall lady — a prostitute" who married into wealth and had her portrait painted as a means of social promotion. What was also outrageous was that the painter, James McNeill Whistler (of "Whistler’s Mother"), managed to make the portly woman look slender and elegant. "Let’s not pretend this is a boring picture," he said.

Hawaii also has a place in the new installation. The portrait gallery has paintings of Hawaiian monarchy, because "if this is our best portrait gallery, let’s not exile those things" to the Hawaiian gallery, Jost said. Paintings of Maui by Georgia O’Keefe hang in the modern galleries.

"There are things here you will never find in another museum," he said. "And that’s good. I don’t want to be like any other museum."