Each week, Arts Orange County and Culture OC deliver you this look at the stories and events happening in our arts and cultural community.

Lunar New Year with Pacific Symphony

A wide array of guest artists join Pacific Symphony, with emeritus conductor Carl St.Clair at the podium once again, in this annual spectacle of music and dance that ushers in the changing calendar for many Asian cultures around the world MORE

UCI Health’s New Medical Complex Promotes Healing Through Art and Nature

UCI Health’s newest campus features 1,600 artworks that reflect the beauty of Southern California.

Thousands Celebrate Year of the Horse at Tết Festival at Golden West College

More than 20,000 people attended the 44th annual UVSA Tết Festival, held this past weekend at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. Organized by the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California, this Tết Festival is recognized as one of the largest – if not the largest – Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebrations in the country.

Attendees dressed in their finest áo dài – traditional and colorful Vietnamese garments often made of silk chiffon fabrics – as performers danced in lion and dragon costumes, firecrackers exploded and people of all ages enjoyed singing onstage and eating pho and other Vietnamese foods in contests and from booths through the weekend.

A Candid Talk with Kathryn Kanjo, the New CEO at UC Irvine Langson O.C. Museum of Art

Kanjo, who has spent three decades as a museum director and curator, is steering the Orange County institution through many changes and changing times.

Each week, we recommend a variety of events and experiences from the listings at SparkOC.com, our free website for Orange County's arts and cultural community.

Dance Visions 2026

This highly anticipated annual showcase from the Department of Dance at UCI Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts presents world-premiere works created by department faculty and performed by the student dancers MORE

Open Mic Poetry Show

Storytellers, musicians, artists, poets, dancers of all ages are invited to take five minutes in the spotlight at the Anaheim Public Library's Euclid branch, hosted by Kat Davis MORE

Enchanted Melodies

A unique, interactive musical fairytale experience from Lyric Opera of Orange County gets kids in the audience involved with singing, crafting activities, and more, this weekend only at the Yorba Linda Cultural Arts Center MORE

Lido Isle: The Island No One Wanted

Join Historian Laureate Bill Lobdell at the Balboa Island Museum for a unique journey through rare images and documents that tell the strange tale of a little strip of land that's now such an unforgettable part of California's coast MORE