A new cultural landmark for modern and contemporary art, Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, California, recently opened its new home on Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ campus, a performing arts complex. The opening of the museum last month was a long time coming. It took many years to finally obtain a permanent location for its extensive art collection.

Advancing its public mission, OCMA offers free admission for the next 10 years, generously sponsored by Lugano Diamonds. OCMA’s new 53,000-square-foot home offers 25,000 square feet of gallery space for exhibition programs. Several of the scheduled exhibits will inaugurate the new building.

© Orange County Museum of Art Designed by Morphosis Architects

The California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold exhibit (through Feb. 26, 2023) is on view in The Anton and Jennifer Segerstrom Permanent Collection Pavilion and The Avenue of the Arts Gallery. The exhibit explores the richness of the state’s expansive, diverse and creative communities. The exhibition features 19 artists from across the state, from the high desert to the oceanside of Bolinas and Monterey through the dense metropolises of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The artists reflect on California and its unique place in the American imagination. The more than 60 works in California Biennial cover a range of disciplines, including ceramics, painting, sculpture, textiles, mixed-media, video and large-scale installations.

Another, 13 Women through Aug. 20, 2023) marks the museum’s 60^th anniversary, paying homage to the 13 women who founded Balboa Pavilion Gallery, the earliest iteration of OCMA, opened in 1962. Heidi Zuckerman curated it, presented with multiple rotations over the course of almost a year. The exhibition presents work from the 1960s to the present by artists central to the museum’s collection. Each rotation centers on the work of 13 pioneering female artists, each of whom share the visionary qualities of the museum’s founders.

The new OCMA building was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, the founder of the influential studio Morphosis and co-founder of the prestigious Southern California Institute of Architecture.

In a nod to the steps at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a set of grand stairs serves as a gathering place for OCMA visitors. The upper plaza, equivalent in size to 70 percent of the building’s footprint, serves as an extension of the galleries, with open-air spaces used for installations, programs and events. Hovering over the soaring, light-filled lobby atrium is an inspiring and dynamic architectural space for performance and education, illuminated by a dramatic window overlooking the upper plaza and grand stairs. The lower stairs on the outside of the building curve toward the entrance, linking the museum to Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the Julia and George Argyros Plaza and the adjacent performing arts venues, while creating an inviting gathering space for pedestrians and visitors. A façade of light-colored, undulating bands of glazed terracotta paneling creates a distinctive character for the new building, playing off the forms and language of neighboring works of architecture.

© The Orange County Museum of Art Designed by Morphosis Architects

OCMA’s café, Verdant, seats 75 guests and is open for lunch six days a week (closed on Monday). It is located on the museum’s second level and includes The Sweet James Bergener Bar. Verdant’s menu offers fresh, innovative, plant-forward items that highlight the bounty of local produce available in Southern California. Verdant, and the coffee bar located on the museum’s first floor, are being developed by executive chefs Ross Pangilinan and Nick Weber with general manager Alyssa McDiarmid. Chef Pangilinan also oversees catering services for events at the museum’s new building, including the Chalmers Pavilion event space.

The MIND, the museum’s store, is located within OCMA’s lobby and provides a unique shopping experience while featuring glimpses into the museum’s first-floor galleries and the natural light streaming from the lobby’s atrium. It will feature a distinctive selection of vintage and artist-designed products.

The Atrium is the signature architectural feature of the new OCMA building, a dynamic, spectacular space through which all visitors enter the museum. Visitors can glimpse the surrounding galleries and museum shop, while the primary views are upward into the light-filled atrium that reveals those who are crossing the sky bridges.