FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Chivan Wang June 6, 2008 Communications Department
(949) 750-1122 ext 205
ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES PLANS TO MOVE TO SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS
ORANGE COUNTY, CA—The Orange County Museum of Art today announced that it has received legal title to a 1.64-acre parcel of land as part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts, located in Costa Mesa, California. With the announcement of the land transfer, the Orange County Museum of Art has taken the first major step toward moving to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus. The land transfer agreement, executed between the Orange County Museum of Art and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, requires the museum to break ground for the new facility no later than 2013 and to open the new museum by 2016. The new facility will be wholly owned and operated by the Orange County Museum of Art as an autonomous organization within
Segerstrom Center for the Arts which is currently comprised of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, South Coast Repertory Theater, and an arts plaza which features the Richard Serra sculpture Connector.
Henry Segerstrom, managing partner of South Coast Plaza, stated, “The addition of the Orange County Museum of Art will create a unique arts complex, one of the largest and finest in America. The museum’s opening will mark the milestone of a dream come true: the Segerstrom’s family’s long-held vision of Segerstrom Center for the Arts as an internationally recognized home for the visual and performing arts.”
The land now being transferred to the Orange County Museum of Art is part of a six-acre gift announced in 1998 by South Coast Plaza and the Segerstrom Family, establishing Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Under the terms of the original land
donation by South Coast Plaza, the six acres were given to Orange County Performing Arts Center, which committed to convey them over time for the development of three separate arts projects—-an expansion of South Coast Repertory Theater (completed in 2001); construction of a new concert hall (achieved in 2006 with the opening of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall); and construction of a visual arts facility. With this conveyance of the last parcel of land to the Orange County Museum of Art, the plan for Segerstrom Center for the Arts is now a reality.
Orange County Museum of Art Chairman David Emmes II, stated, “When the history of American cultural philanthropy is written, the Segerstrom family’s accomplishments in Orange County will demand an entire chapter, and their commitment to elevating our community through the arts will inspire generations. The Museum is delighted to receive title to a choice parcel of land directly adjacent to the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall with extensive frontage along Avenue of the Arts.”
The Orange County Museum of Art began a comprehensive $2 million master planning process in 2005 to lay the groundwork for the new facility at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. This planning process included a vision and needs analysis that involved a broad cross section of Orange County leaders and community representatives; a new facility program that determined the Museum’s space needs over the next 20 years; an international architectural competition; extensive real estate studies to determine the best use of the museum’s land assets in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa; and
preliminary budgeting for the cost of the new facility and its ongoing operating needs. The master planning process will conclude later this summer with the announcement of the design architect. The museum’s Newport Beach site will remain its home until the new facility is completed.
Museum Director Dennis Szakacs stated, “The board and staff of the museum have long dreamed of a new home, one that can better serve the needs of Orange County’s 3 million people, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts is the ideal location for us to build the first great 21st century art museum in Southern California.”
The 1.64-acre parcel at Segerstrom Center for the Arts presents an extraordinary opportunity for the Orange County Museum of Art at a point in its history when it is poised for major growth in programs, attendance, and visibility both locally and internationally.
In 2003 Dennis Szakacs joined the museum as director after serving for six years as deputy director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, where he led the planning for the New Museum’s acclaimed new building on the Bowery. Over the last five years, Szakacs has transformed the Orange County Museum of Art into a national leader in modern and contemporary art, increased the museum’s budget from $2.5 to $4.2 million, built the endowment from $7 to $13 million, and doubled the museum’s acquisition funds.
Recent accomplishments
The Orange County Museum of Art is now one of the finest mid-sized museums in America, with a renowned collection of 2,500 works, an ambitious exhibition program that rivals that of much larger museums, and groundbreaking education programs that explore new and better ways of connecting modern and contemporary art with people.
Since 2005, the Orange County Museum of Art has organized or co-organized eight exhibitions with tours to 20 museums and art centers throughout the United States and abroad—a key measure of the museum’s scholarly and artistic leadership in its field. Traveling exhibitions include Girls’ Night Out; Villa America: American Moderns, 1900-1950; Kutlug Ataman: Paradise; Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone; Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury; and the upcoming retrospective Peter
Saul. Institutions that have hosted OCMA exhibitions include The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio;
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
In response to these achievements The Los Angeles Times stated in 2004, “The Orange County Museum of Art is back. The new leadership has charted a course to restore the museum’s luster and expand its national presence.”
In addition, the increasingly important California Biennial continues to demonstrate the Orange County Museum of Art’s crucial role within Southern California, one of the world’s great creative centers. The 2006 California Biennial was the largest to date and showcased more than 125 works of art in all media by 32 artists. The museum
welcomed collectors, dealers, and artists from around the country for the opening weekend festivities which included a sold out performance by the band Sonic Youth. Attendance for this exhibition nearly doubled and the accompanying press in more than 50 publications brought a great deal of national and international recognition for the region.
In 2004 the museum launched the Orange Lounge at South Coast Plaza, the first museum space on the west coast devoted to new media and video, and the only space of its kind located in a major retail complex. The Lounge was cited in the Sunday New York Times as “one of the most innovative museum ventures to emerge on the West Coast in recent memory.”
The quality of the museum’s collection, and its importance to the history of 20th century art in California, was recently recognized with major grants from the Getty Grant
Program and the Henry Luce Foundation for a series of collection exhibitions and vastly expanded web resources based on new collections research. The museum’s web site now includes extensive material from the museum’s collections including rare audio and
visual recordings of some of the most important contemporary artists over the last forty years. This information is also available at OCMA’s new interpretive stations in the collection galleries.
The museum’s collection is a significant resource locally, nationally, and internationally, with important loans over the last year made to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne in Paris, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center at New York University, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf in Germany, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, among others.
Over the last three years, the museum has nearly tripled the number of teachers and students it serves. Most significantly, the museum developed exciting new curriculum based on our collection installations specifically for fourth graders studying California history. The museum has partnered with the Newport Mesa Unified School District to help the District meet its goal of making the visual arts an integral part of its curriculum, with every fourth-grader in the District participating in classroom instruction, exhibition tours, and hands-on activities developed by the museum.
In addition to these major program successes, the museum’s Newport Beach galleries were renovated with a re-designed lobby, café, and outdoor court areas. These
improvements have greatly increased the museum’s ability to present exhibition-related programs including Free Family Arts Days; Cinema Orange, which presents feature length films and documentaries by emerging film-makers; and Orange Crush, which brings the best independent bands from throughout Southern California to the museum.
Institutional Growth
The Orange County Museum of Art has built its budget from $2.5 million to $4.2 million over the last five years, while its endowment has grown from $7 to $13 million over the same period. Between 2003 and 2007, the museum attracted $3 million in contributed
income from new sources, many of which are now regular funders, and its traveling exhibition program generated over $700,000 in new net revenue. New funders include the James Irvine Foundation, Getty Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, and the Nimoy
Foundation. These new income streams, added to a long list of established supporters, points to the museum’s ability to broaden its fundraising base.
For the past several years, the museum has steadily built its attendance, with a 25% increase from 2006 to 2007, for a total visitorship of 50,000. School tours have grown from serving 4,000 students in 2003 to over 10,000 during 2007 and OCMA now
welcomes children from all 27 Orange County school districts. Members and contributors number nearly 3,000 and the museum employs 45 full and part-time staff.
Artistic excellence and strong financial performance encouraged the museum’s board and other major donors to provide $2 million, over and above the operating budget, to take the next major step in the museum’s development by supporting a comprehensive planning process for a new facility located in the heart of Segerstrom Center for the Arts. These funds were used for master planning, architect selection, real estate consultants, capital campaign consultants, and business planning. Spearheaded by the Bridge to the Future Committee, composed of the members of the museum’s board and senior staff, this planning process represents an institution-wide commitment to long-term capacity building at all levels. As the museum enters into a new era of growth and achievement, it will continue to build its artistic, financial, and managerial capacity to become a major Southern California arts institution.
