On the front door of the Orange County Museum of Art hangs a sign that says “everyone is welcome.”
And since the new museum opened on Oct. 8, more than 100,000 visitors have stepped through those doors.
For Heidi Zuckerman, OCMA’s director and CEO, it is important for the community to understand the museum is for everyone.
“I hoped people would hear that and be curious about it and interested,” Zuckerman said. But hitting 100,000 visitors so soon has “been beyond all of my hopes and dreams and expectations.”
In line with the museum’s message of welcoming all is a new solo exhibit from artist Daniel Arsham — his first major one in the U.S. — which utilizes sculptures, architecture and other designs to explore the “history, symbology and the material nature of time,” according to OCMA.
The “Where You Go, There You Are” exhibit includes a wide array of art created over the past 20 years, including a Cleveland Cavaliers jersey (a Cleveland native, Arsham is the creative director for the team), a Porsche and haute couture, Zuckerman said.
“Anyone who is interested in fine art, design, music, architecture, cars — there’s something for everyone,” Zuckerman said.
And then there’s the next installment of “13 Women,” which pays homage to the women who founded the Balboa Pavilion Gallery in 1962, an earlier iteration of OCMA. This collection, featuring about 20 female artists and seven male artists, according to Zuckerman, is “a little playful” as it conceptually references those 13 women.
Other than a Sanford Biggers sculpture on the roof deck, everything is different, Zuckerman said of the rotation in of new pieces. “If you’ve been here before, if you come now, everything is new.”
The $94 million OCMA opened to the public in October at its new home at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. The museum, one of the earliest contemporary art museums in California, is free to the public for the next 10…
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