Bowers Museum

The Bowers Museum is located in Santa Ana, California, in the United States. The museum offers exhibitions, lectures, art classes, travel programs, children's art and music education programs, and other community events. The museum's philosophy is to help people learn about other cultures through their arts, and offer a greater understanding of themselves and an appreciation of the world.

History

The museum's name comes from Charles Bowers, a late 1800s Orange County land developer, who donated the land on which it stands to the City of Santa Ana. The building was constructed in 1931, after the death of Ada Bowers (Charles's wife) who left the property unoccupied. The new building remained empty for four years after because the Great Depression prevented the city from paying any operating funds.

The Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum first opened the doors of its Mission Revival-style building in 1936 as a city-run museum devoted primarily to the history of Orange County. In 1987, the City of Santa Ana closed the museum, to reopen as a totally transformed building. In October 1992, the Bowers opened its 63,000-square-foot (5,900 m²) facility (some six times larger than the original museum) to a crowd of over 17,000 people.