Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA)
Founded in 1962 by thirteen visionary women, the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) emerged from a shared belief in the need for a space to showcase contemporary art in Orange County. With a history rooted in supporting living artists and presenting innovative exhibitions, OCMA has shaped the modern art landscape. Originally known as the Newport Harbor Art Museum, it has continually evolved to provide transformative experiences for its visitors. Now housed in a striking new building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Studio at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, OCMA remains a vital cultural hub, pushing the boundaries of art through its collections, exhibitions, and groundbreaking programming.
Exhibitions
Amy Adler: Nice Girl
Now – September 7
Los Angeles–based artist Amy Adler works across the disciplines of drawing, performance, photography, and film. For nearly three decades she has blended narrative fiction, appropriated imagery, and personal history to generate images that occupy the tension between what we are given visual access to and what is withheld.
Nice Girl presents a new body of oil pastel works that investigate the ubiquitous social media mirror selfie, reflecting how people both see themselves and share outward their own reflections. Across the 20 canvases that comprise the show’s installation, a series of anonymous young women meet our eye, each having made the choice to share their likeness online with the public. Raising questions of identity, femininity, youth, imagination, and performativity, Adler’s process is intimate, laborious, and physically demanding, requiring time not generally reserved for our contemporary mode of image viewing. Nice Girl demands a slowing down, asking us, as viewers, to examine the power dynamics inherent in the creation of an image and to reflect on our own assumptions about what makes someone a “nice girl.”
Adler’s work offers a poignant reminder of what it feels like to search for who you are—trying on identities, assessing your self-worth through the eyes of others, and ultimately experiencing what it’s like to be observed: by friends, family, strangers, and, ultimately, oneself.
Desperate, Scared, But Social
June 21 – October 12
The 2025 iteration of the California Biennial focuses on the richness of late adolescence, a stage of life full of hope and potential yet fraught with awkwardness, anxiety, and myriad pressures. Titled after the first album by Emily’s Sassy Lime, a band founded in 1993 by three Orange County teens, the Biennial takes a range of approaches toward young adulthood, featuring early work by established California artists and others who revisit their own youth as material, artists who collaborate with their own children, and work by present-day teenagers and those of the past who have unabashedly shaped the culture of their moment. By bringing these works together, the Biennial emphasizes the important dialogue between artists in different places and of different generations who strive to build creative communities.
In addition to the 12 featured artists, Desperate, Scared, But Social includes two exhibitions within the Biennial. One is a presentation of paintings drawn from the Gardena High School Art Collection—a pioneering collection of California Impressionism that began in 1919 and was assembled by the student body. The second is organized by OCMA’s inaugural Orange County Young Curators—a select group of teen curators who have been invited to participate in a yearlong exhibition-making program at OCMA that culminates in a show drawn from the museum’s collection. At a time when the future may seem bleak, the 2025 California Biennial shines a light on the fearless youth of the recent past and offers a platform to the young people who will shape the world to come.
The Orange County Museum of Art is located at 3333 Avenue of the Arts Costa Mesa, CA 92626. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.ocma.art
