Orange County Museum of Art to open in Costa Mesa

The stunning Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Studio, will open to the public on Saturday October 8, 2022 on the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus. The new 53,000-square-foot home includes 25,000 square feet of gallery space with a collection of more than 4,500 works of modern and contemporary art, dedicated education space filled with natural light, and open public areas including a set of grand stairs and spacious upper plaza roof terrace for exhibitions, events, and a gathering place. The Orange County Museum of Art’s mission is to enrich the lives of a diverse and changing community through modern and contemporary art. OCMA’s vision is to be a destination museum that is locally relevant and globally significant.

“We welcome all to our new home,” said Orange County Museum of Art CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman. “We believe access to art is a basic human right, and so our new building beckons the many communities of Orange County and beyond to come and explore and make art a part of their lives.”

The museum, originally called the Balboa Pavilion Gallery, was founded in 1962 by 13 women who were dedicated with providing Orange County with contemporary and modern art.

The museum opens with five inaugural special exhibitions including 13 Women, drawing from the museum’s collection and honoring the women who originally founded the museum, Of many waters… a newly-commissioned outdoor sculpture by Sanford Biggers; Reflecting Back (the World), a survey of work by artist Fred Eversley; Minimalist Landscape, a site-responsive project on landscape architect Peter Walker, and California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold, which explores the richness of the state’s expansive and diverse creative communities through a set of distinctive voices, which question, challenge, and animate the past while looking to the future. The museum also features the Verdant cafe, the Sweet James Bergener Bar, and the MIND gift shop.