UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art
UC Irvine has completed its acquisition of the Orange County Museum of Art and will now be called UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Both Costa Mesa and Irvine locations will operate as a combination of the two entities through 2027.
Founded in 1962 by thirteen visionary women, the Orange County Museum of Art 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.
Steve Roden: Wandering
Through May 24
Los Angeles–based artist Steve Roden (b. 1964, Los Angeles, CA; d. 2023, Los Angeles, CA) worked across painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video, music, and sound. He described himself as a ragpicker, someone who builds meaning from discarded things—an approach that began when, as a teenager, he went treasure hunting on the Los Angeles city streets. He also called himself a wanderer, one who walks, looks, listens, and, most importantly, spends time with his surroundings and with the objects he encounters serendipitously. Through these habits, Roden developed a deeply personal way of moving through the world, connecting elements that were never meant to be joined.
Organized to mark the museum’s recent acquisition of his work, Steve Roden: wandering focuses on his works on paper, presenting drawings and collages as forms of travel without a set destination. Influenced by conceptual artists such as Tom Marioni and Robert Morris, Roden treated drawing as an experiment rather than a finished statement, welcoming failure and valuing vulnerability. This openness led him away from prescribed paths and fostered a cross-disciplinary practice that places special emphasis on listening.
Roden showed how drawing could function like his acts of wandering—meandering, pausing, sensing through time and space. Using notation, scores, maps, and symbols, his practice does not simply illustrate; it records an unfolding journey in which discord, silence, chance, and translation are as vital as narrative.
Jon Serl – As One, As Many
Through June 7
Painter Jon Serl (b. 1894, Olean, NY; d. 1993, Lake Elsinore, CA) lived a life as vivid and unconventional as his artistic practice. A former vaudeville performer, Hollywood voice actor, firefighter, and gardener who reinvented himself as a painter after World War II, Serl spent decades in California, particularly in San Juan Capistrano and Lake Elsinore, creating expressive works on scavenged materials. His paintings—filled with free-form figures, vibrant color, and eccentric theatricality—reflect a deeply personal world and an unyielding search for truth beyond convention.
Starting from the 1940s, the exhibition traces Serl’s transformation from depicting the external world of rural Southern California to conjuring an interior landscape shaped by perception, imagination, and memory, evolving alongside the shifting cultural and social currents of the 20th century. For Serl, painting was an act of discovery, mirroring his own restless search through life. As he once said: “The painting is inside. I just find it.”
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
