This is a list of museums in Orange County, California, defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific, or historical interest and make their collections or related exhibits available for public viewing. Also included are non-profit and university art galleries. Museums that exist only in cyberspace (i.e., virtual museums) are not included.
To use the sortable tables: click on the icons at the top of each column to sort that column in alphabetical order; click again for reverse alphabetical order.
See main article: List of museums in California.
| Name | Town/City | Type | Summary | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arden Modjeska Historic Home & Garden | Historic house | Open by appointment, home of Shakespearean actress Helena Modjeska | ||
| Astor Classics Event Center | Multiple | automobile museum and communications & radio museum | ||
| Balboa Island Museum | Local history | operated by the Balboa Island Historical Society | ||
| Bowers Museum | Multiple | Orange County history, Native American, African, Pre-Columbian and Asian art, paintings, South American ethnographic items, decorative arts, natural history | ||
| Bradford House | Historic house | Operated by the Placentia Founders Society, furnished in 1900-1920s style | ||
| Art | part of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at University of California, Irvine, exhibitions that explore new relationships between the arts, sciences, and engineering including digital technologies | |||
| Brea Museum and Heritage Center | Local history | operated by the Brea Historical Society | ||
| Art | Cultural arts institution and botanical gardens with international art exhibits in historic Ole Hanson home | |||
| Children's Museum at La Habra | Children's | |||
| Costa Mesa Historical Society Museum | Local history | |||
| CSUF Grand Central Art Center | Santa Ana | Art | Contemporary art center with a theatre | |
| Historic house | Operated by the Costa Mesa Historical Society, early 19th-century adobe house with rooms reflecting the Indian, Mission, Spanish and Victorian periods | |||
| Discovery Cube Orange County | Santa Ana | Science | ||
| Dr. Willella Howe-Waffle House and Medical Museum | Santa Ana | Historic house | Operated by the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society, late 19th century home of a female physician | |
| ExplorOcean | Maritime | formerly the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, marine aquariums and touch tanks, ship models, life on the ocean floor | ||
| Fullerton Arboretum | Multiple | Includes the Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum, and Heritage House, an 1890s Victorian house museum | ||
| Fullerton Museum | Multiple | history, cultural and fine arts, and sciences | ||
| Historic house | 1898 historic house and collection of dry farming and citrus farming equipment and tools | |||
| Open air | Includes the Jose Serrano Adobe, 1863; El Toro Grammar School, 1890; St. George's Episcopal Mission, 1891; Harvey Bennett Ranch House, 1908 | |||
| Heritage Museum of Orange County | Santa Ana | Historic house | Victorian-era Hiram Kellogg House, exhibits of local history, formerly the Centennial Heritage Museum | |
| Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University | Orange | Art | collection focuses on the California Scene Painting movement of roughly the 1920s through the 1970s and has a Disney Production Art gallery, as well as exhibitions of American illustrations and contemporary California scene painting. | |
| International Surfing Museum | Sports | History of the surfing culture throughout the world | ||
| Irvine Fine Arts Center | Irvine | Art | municipal fine arts center | |
| Irvine Historical Museum | Irvine | Historic house | operated by the Irvine Historical Society, mid 19th-century ranch house | |
| Jack & Shanaz Langson Institute & Museum of California Art (Langson IMCA) | Irvine | Art | California art from the impressionist period 1890–1930 to contemporary works. Major collections are the Irvine Museum collection and the Buck Collection | |
| Kawasaki Museum | Lake Forest | Motorcycles | ||
| Laguna Art Museum | Art | California art | ||
| Los Alamitos Museum | Local history | |||
| Lyon Air Museum | Santa Ana | Aerospace | Located at John Wayne Airport, features military aircraft, rare automobiles, military vehicles and motorcycles, related memorabilia, with an emphasis World War II | |
| Marconi Automotive Museum | Automotive | historical, exotic, and classic cars including super bikes, open wheel racing cars, American muscle cars, vintage racing and high performance exotics | ||
| Mission San Juan Capistrano | History | Remains of the historic Spanish mission and church | ||
| Mother Colony House | Anaheim | Historic house | George Hansen, superintendent of the Los Angeles Vineyard Society, built the house in 1857, one of the first buildings constructed in Anaheim, and the oldest remaining wood-framed building in Orange County.[1] [2] | |
| Muckenthaler Cultural Center | Art | Cultural arts center with exhibit gallery | ||
| Murphy-Smith Bungalow | Local history | operated by the Laguna Beach Historical Society, 1920's beach cottage with local history displays | ||
| Museum of Teaching and Learning | Fullerton | Multiple | educational artifacts and traveling exhibitions about topics related to education | |
| Museum of The Republic of Vietnam | Westminster | Military History | History of the Republic of Vietnam and its Military | |
| Muzeo | Anaheim | Multiple | Changing exhibitions about the arts, knowledge, entertainment, culture and local history | |
| Historic house | Oldest residence in the city of Huntington Beach, operated by the Huntington Beach Historical Society | |||
| Ocean Institute | Maritime | Open to the public seven days a week, features marine life aquariums, marine science exhibits and programs, tours of Pilgrim, a replica museum brig ship | ||
| Old Orange County Courthouse | Santa Ana | Local history | Contains the Orange County History Center | |
| Orange County Center for Contemporary Art | Santa Ana | Art | ||
| Orange County Museum of Art | Art | Modern and contemporary art | ||
| Pretend City Children's Museum | Irvine | Children's | ||
| Ralph B. Clark Regional Park Interpretive Center | Natural history | Features an ice age fossil and local geology exhibits | ||
| Ramon Peralta Adobe | Anaheim | Historic house | mid 19th-century adobe house, exhibits on the history of the Santa Ana Canyon area, open for special events and by appointment | |
| Biographical | Life of President Richard Nixon, includes his birthplace home | |||
| Santa Ana Fire Department Museum | Santa Ana | Firefighting | ||
| Open air | Operated by the Garden Grove Historical Society, includes several historic buildings from the 1880s to early 1900s[3] | |||
| Sports | [4] | |||
| Susanna Bixby Bryant Museum and Botanic Garden | Local history | operated by the Yorba Linda Heritage Museum and Historical Society | ||
| Tustin Area Museum | Local history | operated by the Tustin Area Historical Society | ||
| University of California, Irvine University Art Galleries | Irvine | Art | 3 galleries on campus | |
| Open air | operated by the Westminster Historical Society in Blakey Historical Park | |||
| Whitaker-Jaynes House | Historic house | turn of the 20th-century Victorian period house, operated by the Buena Park Historical Society, also the late 19th-century Bacon House, home of a miner's family |