If you’ve gone to an art exhibit in Hawaii and enjoyed it, chances are you have Tom Klobe to thank.

The retired University of Hawaii at Manoa professor and founding director of the UH art gallery designed more than 200 exhibits at the gallery and had a hand in countless others. His students have gone on to design exhibits in Hawaii galleries and elsewhere.

When Klobe visits a gallery, he doesn’t just see objets d’art; he sees how they’re displayed, how well they "say what they want to say."

"Sometimes it’s so disturbing," he said. "I’ll go into a museum and the color that’s selected for the walls, it makes the works fight together rather than be compatible. … Works of art, when you put them together, they need to be in a conversation and talking with each other and not fighting."

Klobe’s life and career are being commemorated at Gallery ‘Iolani at Windward Community College. While his life’s work will be represented by some of his sculptures and paintings, and by photographs of his work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran, the exhibit is chiefly to celebrate his newly published book, "Exhibitions: Concept, Planning and Design" ($59.95, AAM Press of the American Association of Museums).

"I always wanted a textbook but never could find one," he said. "After retirement I went to working on the book, and now I don’t have any students to teach it to."

While the book targets students and academics in museum studies, it should nonetheless strike a chord with local museum visitors, with 50 case studies of exhibits that Klobe designed at UH. "I think for a lot of people in Hawaii, they’ll go, ‘Oh wow, this helps me recall all of these incredible exhibitions that we’ve done here in Hawaii,’" said Klobe, who retired from UH in 2006 after 29 years of service.

An exhibit of Russian and Greek icons, a photo of which graces the cover of the book, is one of the more memorable exhibits, and one that demonstrates Klobe’s creative approach to design. His early concept for the exhibit had the icons grouped together in a large space, but he realized that he "had just forced all these things in."

"I realized I had really created not a Byzantine church, but a Romanesque church," he said. "I started tearing things apart … and then I started creating a space for each icon. I discovered that what I was creating was exactly a Byzantine church plan.

"I still get people stopping me and saying, ‘I never will forget that exhibition.’ People were just stunned by it."

Klobe laughs as he remembers an exhibit of hell as viewed in Chinese culture. It consisted of narrow passageways and small alcoves displaying scrolls depicting hell. Klobe knew the exhibit would be packed on opening day.

"I remember making an announcement after the fireworks: ‘Please go and have something to eat first and then go to hell,’" he said. "But then it didn’t do any good because everyone rushed to go to hell."

A native of Minnesota who moved to Hawaii when he was 18, Klobe did his undergraduate and graduate studies at UH.

Even then he was often volunteering to help put up exhibits, a passion that continued when he moved to Southern California to pursue his own artistic career.

"Occasionally I’d be asked to design a case," he said. "Gradually people would say, ‘Would you curate an exhibition, work with the artist and put it together?’"

Exhibition design as a formal area study was in its infancy in those days, with many exhibits put together by curators who were experts in art history and culture but not so much in details such as lighting and presentation. Klobe, who became director of the UH art gallery shortly after it opened in 1977, was a pioneer in exhibition design, teaching a course in it at UH as well as other museum-related courses.

He’s become so immersed in his work in design that, even for the Gallery ‘Iolani exhibit, he seemed more excited that it was his installation — rather than his art — that people would see.

The exhibit mostly features Plexiglas sculptures, lit in various ways, in three-dimensional rectangular shapes.

The sculptures were his way of bringing art, science and religion together, using the principles of minimalism to relate his experiences living in the Middle East and the religious connotations of light.

"I reflect on man’s traditional beliefs and contemporary explorations and create that which might suggest mystery or solace but at the same time be an expression of a personal belief that whatever man attempts with sincerity and integrity is an act of faith," he explains in his artist’s statement.

Klobe admitted he wasn’t immediately bowled over at the idea of showcasing his sculptures.

"To tell you the truth, I thought it was kind of a humbug," he said. "But then, two months ago, I started gathering works together, seeing which ones had to be repaired, and I started getting excited about it."