$93 Million Orange County Museum of Art Officially Opens This Weekend
October 7, 2022
The brand new state-of-the-art Orange County Museum of Art held a ribbon-cutting on Friday ahead of its official grand opening this weekend.
Years in the making, the striking $93 million structure boasts 53,000 square feet and is nestled on the same campus as the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.
A 24-hour public opening celebration takes place this Saturday Oct. 8 at 5 p.m. For the entire day, the museum will remain open and feature music, food, films, yoga, dancing, and more.
Admission is free and no tickets or reservations are required. After the grand opening, admission will remain free for 10 years thanks to a $2.5 million grant from Newport Beach-based Lugano Diamonds.
The museum was founded in 1962 and has gone through several iterations, starting as the Balboa Pavilion Gallery. It was later renamed the Newport Harbor Museum of Art before becoming OCMA.
For many, OCMA’s addition will place Orange County on the map as a new home for preeminent modern art outside of Los Angeles.
OCMA is opening with five inaugural exhibitions:
- A revival of the “California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold”
- “Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World)”
- “Peter Walker: Minimalist Landscape”
- A newly commissioned outdoor sculpture by Sanford Biggers
- “13 Women” – An homage to the women who founded the museum 60 years ago
“I am so excited to welcome everyone to the new OCMA at Segerstrom Center for the Arts,” said Heidi Zuckerman, CEO and director of OCMA. “And by that, I mean welcome everyone, not just today but every day. Our mission here is to enrich the lives of people in a diverse and fast-changing community. We carry out this work with the conviction that access to art is a basic human right. And we want to provide that access in such a way that everyone feels welcome and at home.”
The museum’s collection includes more than 4,500 works of art including California-inspired pieces by John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Bruce Conner, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Irwin, Catherine Opie, Charles Ray and Ed Ruscha.