The Orange County Museum of Art this month marks the first anniversary of its new $94 million building at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.
Officials point to one significant metric when quantifying its success over that time—attendance.
On Sept. 8, the museum registered its 250,000th visitor.
“That is more than 12 times what we used to see in a year” at its prior facility, Chief Executive Heidi Zuckerman told the Business Journal.
OCMA counts an annual operating budget of about $8.5 million; museums with budgets between $5 million and $10 million average about half the attendance seen at OCMA the past year, according to data from the Association of Art Museum Directors.
OCMA’s attendance figures are well above what many well-known, established art museums with far larger budgets see, according to Zuckerman.
Those attendance figures highlight the success of what was once a controversial subject, when the museum announced plans to move from Newport Beach, where its average annual attendance was around 20,000.
To celebrate OCMA’s first anniversary, the museum on Oct. 7 kicks off a week-long series of events, beginning with its annual fundraiser called Art Sense, which is aiming to raise $2 million.
The New Members
A who’s who of Orange County business executives and community leaders have served on the museum’s board over the years.
Zuckerman has kept that tradition alive at its new home, bringing on new board members such as Alexandra Airth, who is chair of the Mars Inc. Foundation, Dr. Semira Dariushnia, who this year won the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and Carolyn Klein, co-owner of the KIFLP family office that manages about 1 million square feet of industrial properties in California.
The museum dates to 1962 when it opened as the Balboa Pavilion Gallery on Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula, created by 13 local women.
The museum spent the past year honoring these 13 women with a year-long homage of works from the 1960s.
The exhibit was curated by Zuckerman, who featured more than 100 female artists this past year.
In 1977, the museum moved to Newport Center, on land donated by Irvine Co. In 1997, it was remodeled and renamed the Orange County Museum of Art.
The museum is noted for its major holdings of California-centric art, highlighting such movements as early and mid-century modernism, Bay Area Figuration and pop art.
The Move
The move to Costa Mesa’s arts district, first proposed around 2007, took time to realize.
The museum initially tried to sell the Newport Beach property to Related California for a high-rise residential project.
After local pushback against that plan, it later sold the land for about $24 million to Santa Ana’s Nexus Cos., which built a high-end senior living complex on the site, with the money from the sale going to fund a portion of the new building.
The museum broke ground in September 2019 on 1.6 acres of land donated by the Segerstrom family, whose name adorns the Center for the Arts. The family’s various business interests built and own nearby South Coast Plaza, the largest luxury shopping center in the country with over $2 billion in taxable sales.
The 54,000-square-foot museum has been described by some as Orange County’s “most significant piece of architecture.”
It has an atrium with glass skylights, a grand staircase and a rooftop mezzanine that can hold 1,000 people for events such as fashion shows, weddings or conferences.
It was designed by Brandon Welling and Thom Mayne of the Morphosis architectural firm; the latter was a 2005 winner of the Pritzker Prize for his design of Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona. Mayne previously said he didn’t want to build “a shiny object,” but rather a place where the community can gather for events.
“We built this building and left three quarters of the site empty, and it’s a piazza,” Mayne said last year. “It’s about community engagement, making relationships. It’s not just an art building. It’s much bigger than that.”
24-Hour Festival
The building opened last Oct. 8 with a 24-hour festival that attracted 10,000 visitors. Within a couple of weeks, it was up to 20,000 visitors.
“The location cannot be underestimated,” Zuckerman said. “Geographically, it’s a place people associate with culture.”
A big incentive was the free general admission for the first decade, made possibly by a $3.5 million donation by Newport Beach-based Lugano Diamonds.
A survey showed 65% came because the museum was free and 70% said they’d return because it’s free, Zuckerman said.
A key strategy is to make sure every single person is greeted upon entry and guards wear “sky blue shirts” so as not to intimidate visitors.
“The front door has a sign that says everyone is welcome,” Zuckerman said. “It’s not just words. It’s a philosophy. Every single person is greeted. It’s a strategy of the business.
“We’re creating this art sanctuary experience.”
Arts Plus
Zuckerman, who took over as CEO in 2021, has a long history in the art world, having previously managed the Aspen Art Museum from 2005-2019. She’s hosted a podcast called “About Art” and is the author of the “Conversations With Artists” book series.
The museum has about 25,000 square feet for exhibits, about the same size as New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and double the size of the prior Newport Beach location.
Out of its 4,500-piece art collection, about 100 to 200 are on exhibit at any one time. The collection is changed every four months with five exhibits currently on display.
In the coming months, it’s kicking off programs for veterans and Spanish speakers. It’s also enlarging the number of school visits to teach children about art.
“We know that early access leads to lifelong access,” Zuckerman said. “What we do is arts plus. The skills that kids learn helps them with social awareness.”
