After nearly five years at the helm of the Orange County Museum of Art in Southern California, CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman announced she’ll depart the institution this December. A longtime advocate for access to art as a basic human right, Zuckerman will focus on expanding that accessibility through her experience-based media platform, HZ Inc. But before she moves on, she’s giving Nice News an inside look at one of the final exhibitions she’s bringing to life at OCMA.
Opening Saturday and running through Sept. 7, “Amy Adler: Nice Girl” is a collection of 20 oil pastel works by Los Angeles-based artist Amy Adler. Playing off the ubiquitous “social media mirror selfie,” the portraits of young women who chose to share their likenesses online invite visitors to slow down and reframe their assumptions about what makes someone a “nice girl.”
“I am really interested in how women and girls are represented in popular media and hope to ask questions about some of the adjectives that are often used,” Zuckerman told Nice News of the exhibition. “I believe that kindness matters and always try and err on the side of generosity. These works ask questions about how we see ourselves as well as how we want to be seen, and suggest the same love and kindness that we show toward others can be directed toward ourselves.”
The exhibition will be the last Zuckerman had a hand in at OCMA while she’s still museum director.
In her tenure at the institution, Zuckerman oversaw the museum’s successful move into a much larger building designed by prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, doubling the size of the former building’s gallery space and introducing a pavilion dedicated solely to education. In the two years following the grand opening, OCMA welcomed over 500,000 visitors — “a surge 12 times greater than its former location’s annual attendance,” per a news release on her departure.
“Jennifer Guidi: And so it is.”
“Heidi has been a trailblazing force at OCMA, realizing a long-held dream of building and operating a new museum that is now a cornerstone of Orange County’s cultural landscape,” David Emmes II, chair of the OCMA Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “Her dedication to bringing world-class exhibitions and thought-provoking programming to our community has elevated OCMA to unprecedented heights.”
“Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression”
Of that thought-provoking programming, Zuckerman cited 2024’s “Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression,” which traveled from the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakesh, Morocco, and 2023’s “Daniel Arsham: Wherever You Go, There You Are,” a multimedia exploration of fictional archaeology, as among the most personally memorable.
Going forward, Zuckerman will focus on HZ Inc., which she created in 2019 and Nice News’ parent company Pardon Ventures is a partner in. Through the media platform, she produces and hosts the podcast About Art, holding authentic conversations with leaders in the field about why art matters. She told Nice News her goal is for HZ Inc. to “become the go-to voice and platform for people looking to live artfully and curate their life.”
“Daniel Arsham: Wherever You Go, There You Are”
In 2024, Zuckerman published Why Art Matters: The Bearable Lightness of Being, which explores the many ways that art can help us connect with the world.
“Art is what allows freedom to exist,” Zuckerman said, adding: “Art keeps us company in times of joy as well as in times of sorrow.”
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