COSTA MESA — Just three years after it reopened in a brand-new $98 million facility, the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) has become part of the University of California, Irvine. In a statement released on Monday, September 29, the university announced that it had finalized its acquisition of the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). The merger will result in a new institution, bringing together OCMA with the UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA).
UC Irvine will assume fiduciary responsibility for the new organization and will be responsible for curatorial and programming decisions following a transition period. Dubbed the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, the museum will house a collection of over 9,000 works of art, approximately 4,500 from each institution.
Founded by a group of 13 women in Newport Beach in 1962, OCMA was first known as the Balboa Pavilion Gallery and later renamed the Newport Harbor Art Museum. Paul Schimmel was appointed chief curator in 1981, bolstering the museum’s collection with works by John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Ed Kienholz, and other significant California artists. The museum became OCMA in 1996, and in 2022, after more than a decade of planning, it unveiled its new 53,000-square-foot building designed by Morphosis, joining the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. A $2.5 million donation from the now disgraced Newport Beach businessman Mordechai “Moti” Ferder established free admission for the next 10 years.
The Langson IMCA was founded by UC Irvine in 2017, following the university’s acquisition of two groups of modern and contemporary California art: the Buck Collection and the Irvine Museum Collection. In 2022, Jack and Shanaz Langson donated money to kick-start plans for a new building for the institution, which is currently housed in a temporary site on Von Karman Avenue, a few miles from OCMA. Those plans will most likely be scrapped as the Langson IMCA is expected to eventually move into OCMA’s building.
Visitors at the UC Irvine Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (photo by Steve Zylius, courtesy UC Irvine)
The merger follows a rocky period for OCMA, which has seen leadership shakeups and a financial scandal involving a major donor. In the summer of 2024, 14 trustees left OCMA’s Board. They were quietly replaced by 10 new appointees, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, which described “an atmosphere of unrest” at the contemporary art museum. As a result of the acquisition, OCMA’s board has been dissolved.
Earlier this year, Ferder, the businessman who made a donation to OCMA for free admissions in 2022, was accused of fraud, civil theft, and other financial crimes in several lawsuits. Ferder was the CEO of Lugano Diamonds and Jewelry until his resignation in May, after which he fled to Israel, and is attempting to transfer assets out of the US, according to complaints filed in federal and county courts.
“The pledge made by Lugano Diamonds is current, and our goal remains to keep admission to the museum free,” a representative for OCMA told the LA Times last month.
This spring, OCMA’s CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman announced that she would be stepping down at the end of the year.
Langson IMCA has been operating with an interim director since May 2024, following the departure of its founding director, Kim Kanatani. A national search for a director to helm the new combined institution is underway, and a spokesperson told Hyperallergic that they are hoping to finalize the process to choose a successor by the beginning of next year.
Both organizations will continue their planned programming through 2026 “as a unified identity takes shape,” a statement said.
