Patrick Brien Wants the Orange County Arts Community to Get its Due

Paul Hodgins
22 hours ago
5 min read

The new president and CEO of Arts Orange County brings a wealth of experience and some lofty goals to the job.

Patrick Brien. Photo courtesy of ArtsOC/Kenny Goldberg Photography

Patrick Brien, the recently appointed president and CEO of Arts Orange County, admits he felt a little flutter when he stood at the podium at the Orange County Arts Awards on Sept. 16 to honor his predecessor, Richard Stein. The annual ceremony, which honors the best emerging and established arts leaders in Orange County, was very much Stein’s baby, and he had built it patiently over the years into one of the major events on the arts calendar.

“Rick was sitting out there in the audience for the first time in 17 years, watching somebody else doing his job, and it made me feel a bit emotional,” said Brien, who assumed Stein’s role on July 1. “I cherished the opportunity to be able to take the stage in a grand way to really start things out. But I also did so in such a way that (would) make Rick proud, because he was handing it off to me.”

Brien, 63, is no stranger to a job like this. Before joining Arts Orange County in June 2022 as vice president and chief operating officer, he served for nearly 17 years as executive director of the Riverside Arts Council, where he helped to connect the regional arts and cultural infrastructure of the vast inland region. Brien was hired with the understanding that he would eventually succeed Stein, a decades-long veteran of the arts scene in Orange County as a theater director and arts administrator. But it wasn’t a done deal, Brien said.

“While that was the intent from the beginning, I could have come in and totally wound up not being the person that was right for the job.”

But Stein had done his homework, and recruiting Brien for the position actually started many years before he took the number two job at Arts OC.

“(Stein) did start off many years ago,” Brien said. “Just with planting the seed of, you know, ‘You should be my successor.’ We were doing some advocating together on behalf of the arts up in Sacramento when he first mentioned the possibility. And then COVID happened and we kind of just forgot about it; at least I did. Then at a certain point he said to me, ‘You know, that conversation that we had a while back, I wasn't kidding.’ Then we began talking in earnest and he began the process of recruiting me away from Riverside Arts Council.”

PHOTO 1: Brien and co-host Tiffany Ana López at the 2025 OC Arts Awards. PHOTO 2: Brien, and the honorees at the OC Arts Awards; Ana Jimenez-Hami of the Orange County Children’s Therapeutic Arts Center, Arnold Holland of the California State University, Fullerton College of the Arts, Genevieve Williams, Jared Mathis, Richard Stein, Bin He, Jorg Dubin and Patrick Brien. PHOTO 3: Brien with Mary Lyons, a founding and current board member for ArtsOC. Photos courtesy of ArtsOC

The Perfect Career Move

Born in Fort Lewis, Washington, Brien has an American father and a mother born and raised in Japan, and cultural and social equity has been a career-long prerogative for him. He has launched many programs focusing on underserved communities, including art as therapy for dementia patients and adults with developmental disabilities, and cultural outreach within the state prison system. Much of Brien’s work has focused on building the capacity of individual artists and small arts organizations. As an advocate for public arts funding, Brien has worked closely with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels.

Prior to his career in arts administration, Brien was deeply involved in professional theater. A Chapman University graduate with a B.A. in Theatre and Film and Television, he has produced, acted and directed for companies in the U.S. and Europe. He ran theaters in Germany and Wyoming, and more recently founded and served as producing artistic director of The Gestalt Theatre Project, which combines the principles of gestalt therapy and theater to promote self-awareness, emotional expression and personal development for performers and audiences.

Returning to Orange County after almost two decades away seemed like the perfect career move, Brien said.

“I had all of my first professional opportunities here in Orange County. The first play I ever saw was at South Coast Repertory in 1980. While I had spent a number of years away, it was very familiar territory. I find that when I have conversations with other members of the (Orange County) arts communities, we share common ground.”

While Stein was very successful in raising the profile and relevance of Arts Orange County, Brien has plans to take it down new paths in the years ahead. He wants to embrace even more constituencies in the county’s vast and diverse cultural community.

“I think that Orange County, for being geographically so small, is a very large place, and there are cultural enclaves here that are quite unique. Of course, there are (enclaves) everywhere. But here they can be quite big. Santa Ana is a large cultural community by itself. I would like to be able to delve more deeply into some of these enclaves.

“And how do we balance all of this? It's hard to put priorities on things when there's only one of me, but I need to figure out a way to do that. And I think that that's part of the fun – that's part of the challenge.”

O.C. is unfairly overlooked by state funders

Although Brien will be kept busy with his new duties at Arts Orange County, he remains committed to representing O.C. on the regional and national level as well.

“It’s important (for me) to serve our community at the state level, the national level, at a time of great uncertainty,” Brien said. He serves on the advisory committee for California for the Arts and California Arts Advocates.

Brien is concerned that Orange County sometimes gets overlooked from funding sources at the state level. “California Arts Council recently announced their current rounds of grant recipients. If you look and see who were the recipients from Orange County, that list is very small as compared to Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Now, why didn't they get funded? I can tell you that it's not because they scored poorly. In most cases it's simply because there was not enough funding to go around. And that's something that I have to consider: my responsibility to attempt to increase that funding pool.”

Brien said he intends to maintain the relationship that Stein started between ArtsOC and Culture OC. He assumed Stein’s role as chair of Culture OC’s advisory board, and he shares Stein’s belief in the crucial role that journalism plays in the vitality of an arts community.

“As somebody who grew up reading about the arts, even before I became involved in the arts, arts journalism has always played an important role in my life. And so seeing the dwindling (trend) has been heartbreaking. As we watch print media slowly shrink, I think that what Culture OC is doing is not only unique, but it's desperately needed. When Arts Orange County had an opportunity to become involved with (Culture OC), Rick leaped at that. He turned to me and said, ‘Do you want to continue this?’ And I leaped at it as well.

“People need to get information and be informed about the arts in Orange County. Otherwise they simply won't know that there are so many options out there.”

Patrick Brien serves as chair of the advisory board of Culture OC.