Adrienne Kaeppler, a leading expert in Pacific Islander culture, music, dance, poetry and visual arts, died March 5 in Washington, D.C. She was 86.

A graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Kaeppler worked for roughly four decades as a Pacific islands research anthropologist and curator in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. She retired in December.

Born in Milwaukee, she moved to Honolulu to pursue her love of museums and music. She earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in anthropology from UH Manoa and worked as a music and dance lecturer for 12 years.

While attending graduate school, she also worked at Bishop Museum, initially as a research analyst and later as an anthropologist.

Mary Jo Freshley said she met Kaeppler in 1962 when they both took a Korean dance class at UH Manoa. The pair bonded over their love of dance and culture, she said. Freshley, a UH Manoa lecturer who runs the Halla Huhm Korean Dance Studio on King Street, said they remained close friends and would see each other almost yearly.

Kaeppler, who danced hula and loved Hawaiian culture, would fly regularly to Hilo to attend the Merrie Monarch Festival, Freshley said. During those trips to Hawaii, Kaeppler would often stay with Freshley. They also traveled together to attend the Festival of Pacific Arts &Culture on nine occasions, including to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Palau and the Solomon Islands.

“We just sort of hit it off. She’s from Wisconsin and I’m from Ohio. We had a common interest in dance,” Freshley said. “We had fun together. I think she had a very big impact.”

In addition to her extensive knowledge of Pacific Islander culture and arts, Kaeppler was well known for her research of the collections acquired during Capt. James Cook’s voyages across the Pacific, artifacts of which are now housed in museums around the world and in the Smithsonian.

Kaeppler published several books, including “Hula Pahu,” and more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She also won numerous awards, including the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Award in 2017 from the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association.

She also served as chair of the Smithsonian’s Anthropology Department, as well as president of the International Council for Traditional Music and the World Dance Alliance-Americas.

Mary Jo Arnoldi, a close friend, said Kaeppler was “an extraordinarily generous person” and a mentor to many of the female leaders at the Smithsonian. Arnoldi, who lived in the same building as Kaeppler in Washington and worked with her at the Smithsonian during her entire career, said she has received many tributes to Kaeppler from around the world, including from Tonga, Samoa, South Korea, the Cook Islands, Indonesia and Hawaii.

“She was just an extraordinary person who was both a scholar and community advocate,” Arnoldi said. “I was with her the whole last week of her life. She had a life well lived.”

A private service will be held in Washington. The Smithsonian is working on plans for a formal celebration of Kaeppler’s life. Freshley said friends and colleagues in Hawaii also are planning a service for a later date, but details are pending.

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Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national serv­ice organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under­covered issues and communities.