Modern Art Gets a Building Worth the Trip
Some museums make you work to find them. This one announces itself. The UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art rises at 3333 Avenue of the Arts in Costa Mesa in a sweep of curving terracotta bands, a design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne that opened to the public in October 2022.
Inside, roughly 25,000 square feet of galleries showcase modern and contemporary art with a deep focus on California artists. Exhibitions rotate through the year, and the rooftop terrace gives visitors a view over the Segerstrom arts campus that surrounds the building.
For Orange County families, it has quickly become an easy cultural outing. You can pair a morning at the museum with lunch across the street and a show next door, all without touching a freeway.
Surrounding Areas
- UC Irvine: A top-ranked public research university founded in 1965, now the museum’s parent institution.
- Upper Newport Bay: A coastal estuary of about 1,000 acres where birders spot species from all along the Pacific Flyway.
- John Wayne Airport: Orange County’s commercial airport, renamed in 1979 to honor the actor who called the county home.
- Discovery Cube Orange County: A hands-on science center in Santa Ana known for the giant tilted cube out front.
Other Nearby Points of Interest
- Segerstrom Center for the Arts
Shares the same campus and fills its halls with Broadway tours, ballet, and symphony concerts all year long. Segerstrom Hall alone seats nearly 3,000, and the concert hall next door houses an organ of more than 4,300 pipes. - Sherman Library & Gardens
Offers a quiet change of pace in Corona del Mar, where a fern grotto and orchid conservatory fill a leafy coastal block. The gardens have grown on the site since 1966, alongside a working research library. - Balboa Pavilion
Is the 1906 waterfront landmark where this museum’s own story began, in a small upstairs gallery. Today its dock serves the Catalina Flyer, whale-watching boats, and harbor cruises. - Bowers Museum
Has served Santa Ana since 1936 with collections spanning California history, ancient China, and the Pacific Islands. A 1992 rebuild made it roughly six times larger and turned it into the county’s biggest museum.
History of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art
The museum began in 1962, when thirteen determined local women opened an art gallery on the second floor of the Balboa Pavilion in Newport Beach. That small gallery grew into the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1968, and by 1996 it had become the Orange County Museum of Art, with a collection featuring major California figures like John Baldessari, Chris Burden, and James Turrell.
After decades in Newport Beach, the museum made its boldest move yet. The new building by Thom Mayne of Morphosis opened in October 2022 on the Segerstrom campus, giving the collection fifty percent more gallery space than its old home.
The latest chapter came in September 2025, when UC Irvine completed its acquisition of the museum and gave it its current name. Sixty years after those thirteen founders hung their first show above a boathouse, their gallery is now a university museum in a landmark building.
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