They need to work on getting better art at the museum. The museum is beautiful, but the art is low quality and not interesting.

The building has exquisite architecture. But that’s it. It’s free, but at the time of our visit there were no exhibitions unfortunately.

This modern building housed a small art museum with spaces for gathering and lectures as well as ample outdoor space for the community. On the day of our visit, the upstairs gallery space were closed for upcoming exhibit, so we only experienced the main floor exhibit. The collection was small but nice. It somehow reminds me of a college art exhibit. Near the front entrance it has a nice sized gift shop in comparison to the exhibit space ratio. It is more than fair to say this place feels more like a cultural arts center than an art museum. But if I don't see it as an Art Museum than the design of the building and its functions probably makes more sense to me. What I like is that it is free and open to the public which for Orange County.. it's quite notable.

We were disappointed in our visit to the museum which we had heard about in recent years due to its controversial and expensive building campaign. Typical for Orange County that has lots of wealthy donors to produce this behemoth monument. The problem is there very little art to show. Because of the building's design there is minimal gallery space but tons of public spaces for cafe, store, meeting rooms, theater, etc. It feels more like a cultural arts center and not an art museum. It seems the intent is to show case regional art and artists with a concentration of various periods of time. We saw very little of a permanent collection, and what they had was not very interesting besides a few Ed Ruscha paintings. The temporary exhibit was repetitious ceramics that were quite lackluster. I thought the interpretations were weak as well. The region has so many more interesting museums such as UC Irvine's art museum, the Bowers Art Museum and the Hilbert Museum of California Art. Of course right next door is the Noguchi Garden which is much better use of your time. In the end it feels like this colossal building exists simply to hold benefit galas and the like.

The museum had a wonderful art collection of Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World). It was amazing. The other displays were not particularly engaging. The building was quite astonishing. We ate in the cafe on the top floor and were disappointed in the food and service.