Orange County's largest museum, the Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum in Santa Ana, was founded in 1936 as a city-run museum devoted primarily to the history of Orange County. In the mid-1980's, the old museum closed its doors and, in October of 1992, the institution was reborn as the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Since then, the museum has presented over 45 special exhibitions from all over the world and opened six permanent galleries.
