In a historic merger last September, the University of California, Irvine, acquired the Orange County Museum of Art, bringing together several monumental collections. The new institution houses the Irvine Museum, Gerald Buck, and OCMA collections all in one space, showcasing more than 9,000 works from the 19th century through the present. Kanjo, formerly the David C. Copley Director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (the first woman to hold that position), will oversee the new museum. The California native brings with her decades of curatorial experience as well as a love of contemporary art.
What made you want to take on this new role?
It’s a great moment for California because through the museum, these really storied art collections are coming together in one place. For me, as an art historian, it’s a chance to tell a new history of our place. These collections haven’t been together before. Irvine, Buck, and OCMA. It combines these really interesting histories that are absolutely rooted in Orange County. It should be a real point of pride for folks in Orange County to see these collections together and wrapped up and supported by the academic and research strength of UCI.
What can visitors expect from the new museum?
They are finally going to have the opportunity to see the really renowned collections together and in a space that is adequate. People will be familiar with these art objects and want to see works by these artists, but then they also are going to have the surprise of learning from the exhibitions that come out of the museum thanks to the backing of the university. It is contextualizing it and giving you sort of a broader cultural context to the collection to help explain our place in this world and our recent histories and our cultural developments. I think folks are hungry for an encounter with everything from visual lushness to authentic ideas.
Tell us about the collections on display.
The collections span more than 100 years of art making. The earliest works come from a more traditional landscape painting and show parts of the state that we know well, and then it evolves through the innovation of the mid-20th century, where there was more a spirit of experimentation and breaking out of the traditional frame of painting. California is essential to this institution, but we are also reminded that California is expansive. We’re a state of rich histories. We’re made up of immigrants. It’s not that it gets narrower by being from or about California. It’s coming from a local angle, but it’s speaking to broader, more global issues.
What do you love most about art?
It lets you see and understand your world in a different way. You’re learning about the art, but you’re also learning about the time and the culture in which the art was made. I actually shifted to contemporary art when I realized art history is still being made. If you’re looking at art that’s being made by living artists, you are in the thick of it yourself, even if you’re not a producer. I’ve worked at museums for more than 30 years. One of the hallmarks of my efforts was working to create commissioned works by artists, helping them realize projects that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
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