Veteran curator and museum director Kathryn Kanjo takes the helm of the new UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art
An undergraduate internship at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art set Kathryn Kanjo on a path to becoming a curator – and, eventually, a museum director.
“As part of my college experience, I interned for two celebrated scholars of Indian and Southeast Asian art,” Kanjo recalls. “And I feel incredibly fortunate that, as an undergrad, I had that experience that gave me access to thought leaders and to objects of art.”
Now leading the new UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, Kanjo is focused on creating those same kinds of opportunities for UC Irvine students – while also bringing together faculty, alumni and the broader community.
“My vision is to share the fullness of the cultural history of this region, and for the people who live here to see art that reflects them.”
The university acquired the Orange County Museum of Art in late 2025. The 53,000-square-foot building is on the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus in Costa Mesa.
Located at the heart of Orange County’s thriving arts scene, the space is now home to more than 9,000 works of modern and contemporary art spanning the 1850s to the present. Among many gifts and acquisitions, the museum is also home to collections donated to UC Irvine by The Irvine Museum in 2016 and the Gerald Buck trust in 2017.
The combined collection features influential artists such as John Baldessari, Joan Brown, Ruth Asawa, Richard Diebenkorn, Charles Ray and Ed Ruscha, alongside work by acclaimed UC Irvine alumni and faculty including Alexis Smith ’70; Chris Burden, M.F.A. ’71; Catherine Opie; Robert Irwin; Simon Leung; Daniel Joseph Martinez; Amanda Ross-Ho; and Bruce Yonemoto.
“We are Orange County’s visual arts museum,” says Kanjo. “My vision is to share the fullness of the cultural history of this region, and for the people who live here to see art that reflects them.”
Few alumni have witnessed the evolution of these collections more closely than Carol Choi ’85. Having supported both the Orange County Museum of Art and UC Irvine’s museum efforts over the years, she sees the acquisition as an opportunity to expand access to art while creating new opportunities for students, scholars and the broader community.
“This is their museum – a museum on a global stage where students have a place to come and visit and showcase their work,” says Choi, chair-elect of the UC Irvine Foundation Board of Trustees. “That’s something I’m looking forward to – weaving the thread between students, professors and the community.”
With ample, light-filled gallery space in the Costa Mesa museum, Kanjo envisions showcasing important pieces from the collection for extended periods of time, complemented by rotating exhibitions that offer new perspectives and spark conversation.
“The museum is really an intergenerational opportunity,” she says. “We have moms come in with strollers, parents come in with students, grandparents with their grandchildren. We try to connect with all of them through cross-generational programming.”
She hopes the museum feels both welcoming and unexpected.
As a member of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art Advisory Board, Choi has helped champion the vision behind the museum’s next chapter.
“It’s not just one collection – it is a holistic destination,” says Choi. “That all-encompassing approach is exactly what ensures this museum belongs to everybody.”
Video tour of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art
In June, the museum unveiled its first exhibition drawn from the newly combined collections.
Staging California in Early Hollywood explores a lesser-known chapter of 20th-century art history, when landscape painters crossed into film, creating Hollywood backdrops during the Great Depression.
Opening alongside Staging California is the special exhibition Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden, celebrating the artist’s six-decade career of inventive, improvisational painting that blends abstraction, figuration and found imagery to explore art, history and the Black experience in America.
Admission is free for everyone, and frequent free shuttles make it easy for students to get from campus to the museum in Costa Mesa.
“As an alumna, I find it a joy to see this legacy of art and education unite, creating a permanent home for inspiration that will empower UC Irvine students and Orange County for generations to come.”
While Kanjo plans to expand opportunities for students, the museum already offers a year-long graduate program in exhibition curation, along with a summer internship program that introduces undergraduates to the behind-the-scenes work of a museum, from marketing to art preservation – the type of experience that led Kanjo to a career in the arts.
“The evolution of this space under UC Irvine Langson Museum marks a brilliant new horizon for our community,” says Choi. “As an alumna, I find it a joy to see this legacy of art and education unite, creating a permanent home for inspiration that will empower UC Irvine students and Orange County for generations to come.”
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