This fall, the University of California, Irvine, and Orange County Museum of Art completed their amicable merger, creating a new entity: the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Today, the new institution named its first director, Kathryn Kanjo, who currently leads the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). She will assume her new role in February 2026, and will also oversee the UC Irvine Jack & Shanaz Langson Institute of California Art.

Kanjo ascended from MCASD’s chief curator to its director and CEO in 2016. Her newest appointment marks a homecoming of sorts: Kanjo previously served as the director of the University Art Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She brings more than three decades of experience, including a tenure as executive director of Artpace San Antonio and curatorial positions at the Portland Art Museum and the Whitney Museum.

“This is a watershed moment for the visual arts in Orange County and beyond. The UC Irvine Langson Museum unites three celebrated California art collections—Irvine, Buck, OCMA—into a singular museum supported by UC Irvine’s commitment to critical inquiry and excellence,” Kanjo said in a statement. “I am honored to lead this newly formed organization, working alongside the talented museum team, world-class faculty, and brilliant UC Irvine students to provide all visitors exceptional museum experiences while also creating distinctive learning opportunities for students.” 

In June, UC Irvine announced that it was negotiating a potential merger with the OCMA in Costa Mesa. The proposed institution was described by UC Irvine as a “new chapter for OCMA” that would  “establish a new model for public arts engagement, scholarship and access.” By September, the possibility was made reality: UC Irvine acquired OCMA and combined it with the campus’s Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art.

UC Irvine now oversees OCMA’s 53,000-square-foot, $98 million facility Costa Mesa facility located at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, which showcases contemporary art alongside UC Irvine’s Gerald Buck and Irvine Museum collections, totaling some 9,000 works. 

“Kathryn brings a tremendous combination of deep curatorial expertise and demonstrated visionary leadership at premier institutions throughout the country,” UC Irvine chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement. “She is the ideal person to lead the museum during this transitional period and into an exciting new future.”