What I’ve Learned

JOAN IRVINE SMITH

Businesswoman, founder of Irvine Museum and descendant of family that established Orange County’s giant Irvine Ranch.

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I’ve seen tremendous change in the areas of California where I lived as a child--certainly the coastal areas where I would spend summers at Irvine Cove. You have a little bit of feeling of that coastline where Crystal Cove State Park is. The Irvine Ranch was beautiful--rolling hills, grasslands, much of it in agriculture, the canyons with indigenous plants, the oak and sycamore trees. It was like coming to a pristine and virgin world--like the movie “Sea of Grass” with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn where they established this vast cattle ranch in the West.

Of course, as time has gone on that has all changed. Certainly, where we made our money in the Irvine Co. was through development; but it was planned development, for example, the master plan for the city of Irvine. That was one of the things that I fought so hard for in the company: to have a master plan so that development would not be done in a helter-skelter manner but would preserve as much of the environmental landscape as possible.

I was first exposed to the California Impressionists as a teen-ager when my stepfather, a federal judge, would take my mother and me to lunch at the California Club where we had the most magnificent collection of plein-air art anywhere. It brought to mind the places I recalled growing up. I would stand in awe of those paintings as a young girl and think, “My God, if I could ever be able to have some of this art!”

As time went on, I collected a few pieces. As the collection grew, it seemed to me that this would be a legacy to the people of Orange County. It not only is something that people enjoy looking at; it tells the story of what California was. It is indeed silent testament to the fact that our environment is in danger. When you look at these paintings, you can see what California was nearly a century ago--the unspoiled areas, the wildflowers, the clean air.

This doesn’t mean you stop progress. But you plan your progress so that it can preserve as much of the natural environment as possible. And I’ve learned that for both sides in this issue it must be a matter of enlightened self-interest.

We need to bring the development and environmental communities together. We need to be at a conference table rather than before the Bar.