Standing on the grand staircase of Lynda and Stewart Resnick's luxurious Beverly Hills mansion at a party last fall – Diane Keaton, Bob Iger and Brian Grazer were among the celebrities chatting over crudités and Sazerac cocktails – writer Walter Isaacson I took a moment to say the following: Thanks to his host.
Not only did the Resnicks throw a party to celebrate Elon Musk's new biography, but they were also major benefactors of his former profession, the Aspen Institute, donating $36 million to the think tank over the years.
Isaacson wasn't the only one who had reason to be thankful for them. Hanging around the house, whose walls are lined with works by Picasso, Fragonard and Boucher, were Michael Govan, museum director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (which received $90 million from the Resnicks) and Ann Philbin of the Hammer ($30 million). ) as well as former junk bond king Michael Milken, who later founded the think tank Milken Institute ($25 million).
Overall, the Resnicks, who own the Wonderful Company business empire that includes Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice, Wonderful Pistachios, Fiji Water, Halos mandarins and flower delivery service Teleflora, have invested $1.9 billion of their estimated $13 billion fortune in investments such as academic institutions; Donated to climate change initiatives. , cultural organizations and programs in California's Central Valley. Their giving has placed them on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the 50 Largest Donors three times.
LACMA Director, Mr. “They should be viewed as one of the biggest advocates for investment in LA’s public institutions,” Govan said.
Mr. Resnick, 81, the driving force behind the couple's philanthropy, has focused on giving in the Central Valley, especially Lost Hills, where one in two households includes an employee of the Wonderful Company.
Over the past decade, the Resnick family has invested about $580 million in Lost Hills and Delano, another Central Valley city, to create charter schools that offer electives in robotics, yoga and mariachi. health, wellness and fitness center; affordable housing; park; And there's a new pedestrian bridge over Highway 46.
“This is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Mr. Resnick said in a recent interview at his home. “Meet these young people. You watch them go to school. You see them return to the valley that was my dream. Some of them are involved in politics. Many of them went back to work for us in middle management positions, rather than in the same field as their parents.”
But at a moment when philanthropists are increasingly under scrutiny, the museum distanced itself from the Sackler family for their role in the opioid crisis, and Warren Candace stepped down as vice president of the Whitney Museum of American Art after protesting the company's sale of tears. Gas and climate activists protested museum donors and board members. We discovered that the Resnicks are no exception.
They were investigated for their use of one of California's scarce resources: water. A 2016 investigation by Mother Jones found that the Resnick family's agricultural operations were “thought to consume more of the state's water than any other family, farm or company,” and their operations were featured in the following year's documentary “Water & Power: The California Heist.”
Last fall, two activists named the Lynda & Stewart Resnick Pavilion at LACMA in honor of their $45 million donation and the Resnicks at the Hammer, which named the Lynda & Stewart Resnick Cultural Center in honor of the couple's $30 donation. protested. A million gifts. One of the protesters, Yasha Levine, who is working on a documentary called 'The Pistachio Wars', held a sign that said 'Hammer Celebrates Climate Criminals'.
“They’ve made a lot of improvements, but it’s not all glitter and gold,” Rosanna Esparza, a Kern County activist who opposed the Resnicks’ water use, said in an interview.
In response to that criticism, Mr. Resnick said: “We have been under assault on our water for generations. We don't drain water from other people's faucets. I have nothing to do with the Seoul Metropolitan Government's water supply project..”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the Resnicks simply made the most of a good business deal, despite criticism of their farming practices and years of litigation that have so far failed to overturn water contracts that benefited them.
“These are the rules of the road, these are the rules we set, and they act accordingly,” Mr. Newsom said. “If we’re going to criticize, we have to reflect as policymakers on the system we’ve created.”
He added that the Resnicks' philanthropy is genuine, consistent and impactful. “I know a lot of wealthy people,” said Mr. Newsom, to whom the Resnicks have donated generously, along with other Democratic candidates. “Many of them are involved in charity work. Many of them are looking for big names in the building. This is something else. They are the real deal.”
On a recent afternoon in the Central Valley, Naomi Cruz stands in her classroom at Wonderful College Prep Academy, teaching middle school Spanish, a few years after graduating from the school in 2018. She has a graduate degree — she currently serves as Wonderful's Corporate Social Responsibility Program Manager — and last year she was elected to the Bakersfield City Council. Andy Anzaldo, the grandson of an undocumented farm worker, started working in the Wonderful Company's pistachio plant right out of college and currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for Corporate Social Responsibility.
“One day Stuart and Linda Resnick will no longer exist. So what happens? What happened to this community?” “The company therefore aims to build a sustainable model that will last for hundreds of years,” Anzaldo added..”
The Wonderful Company said its impact can be measured, including a decline in pre-diabetes rates among Central Valley employees, more than 90 percent of Delano students graduating each year, and about 70 percent going on to four-year colleges. (The Resnicks award more than 300 scholarships to graduating seniors each year.)
The environment was also one of the Resnicks' priorities. In 2019, they donated $750 million to Caltech for climate change and sustainability research, the second-largest donation to a U.S. university after Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins. The new Resnick Center for Sustainability is scheduled to open at Caltech next fall.
“What’s the point of curing cancer if we can’t solve climate change and sustainability?” Mr. Resnick said. “This is a long-term problem.”
The couple has given more than $110 million to other colleges and universities over the past five years and has now announced a $20 million donation to California Polytechnic State University to create a career services hub for first-generation students.
In Los Angeles, a city without a long philanthropic tradition, the Resnick family has become a model for large-scale giving and a fascinating nexus of Hollywood, art and politics. They are close to Nancy Pelosi and hosted (and attended) Norman Lear's 100th birthday party. Warren Beatty and Jane Fonda, among others), and recently co-hosted a Los Angeles fundraiser for President Biden with Steven Spielberg, Shonda Rhimes, and others.
“The Resnicks set a great example,” said Philbin of the Hammer, who plans to resign in November. “We did not directly solicit them for our building campaign, but Lynda reached out and offered us the largest gift we have ever received.”
Mr. Govan said he worried the Resnick family might abandon its naming gift for LACMA's new pavilion, which had just begun construction, as the economy collapsed in 2008, but Mr. Resnick told him the support was “need more than ever.” . .”
Mr. Resnick, who grew up in Philadelphia and Los Angeles where he regularly visited Philadelphia museums, founded his own advertising agency at age 19. (She helped Daniel Ellsberg copy the Pentagon Papers on the advertising agency's Xerox machines.)
Over the next few years, she applied a market research approach to charities in the Central Valley, where she learned through focus groups and surveys that residents feared for their children's future.
“You can’t come in, build a school and leave, and you can’t come in and build a hospital and leave,” Resnick said. “If you want to help, you have to go and stay. You should stay because staying is the most important thing. So we stayed.”
Mr. Resnick, who has been collecting art for many years, is a life trustee of LACMA and a trustee emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The couple has been collecting paintings, sculptures and decorative arts from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Offices and homes in Beverly Hills and Aspen are filled with art.
Since 1993 they have had a full-time curator, Bernard Jazzar, who previously worked at the Getty Museum.
Ultimately, their work will be presented to public institutions such as LACMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ms. Resnick said. To that end, she recently allowed the museum director to visit in person and express her own preferences.
“I’m not building my own museum,” she said. “This is all going to go to the museum. I think you rent it for your whole life and give it back to people when you’re done.”