The Orange County Museum of Art, formerly the Newport Harbor Art Museum, presented a difficult series of challenges. The core of the program is devoted to a wide ranging inquiry into contemporary art. Large scale installations, and large scale work are integral to the museums mission. Most of this had previously been carried out in a large undefined space that provided great flexibility but at a high cost of effort and entirely without any aesthetic character. The solution involved moving all non exhibiting functions out of the main building into an adjacent and vacant Public Library Building and creating within the volume of the first building a sequence of spaces that could handle large scale work, coherent permanent collection presentations in a variety of scales and styles, and the most technically challenging installations that required the equivalent of a “black box” theater. The execution of the program matched very well with the museum’s sense of mission, achieved within a clean and very present modernist aesthetic that gave character and resonance to the spaces.

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