Mission

Founded in 1936 by the City of Santa Ana through a bequest from Charles and Ada Bowers, the Bowers Museum is one of California's finest and Orange County's largest museums. The mission of the Bowers Museum is to enrich lives through the world's finest arts and cultures; to achieve its mission, the Bowers offers exhibitions, lectures, art classes, travel programs, children's art education programs, and other special community programs. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 130,000 works of art. These works were donated from 1935 to the present and represent many regions and cultures of the world. The museum's largest collections are in the areas of Native American art, Pre-Columbian art, Asian art, art of the Pacific, art of Africa and Orange County history.