established the Pinelands Planning Commission, a successor body to a review committee he’d already created. In his second term as governor, he passed the Pinelands Protection Act authorizing a comprehensive plan for the 1.1 million acre Pinelands National Reserve. The Brendan T. Byrne State Forest (formerly Lebanon State Forest) is named for the 47th Governor of New Jersey (1974-1982) who was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2011. Citing McPhee, Governor Byrne has said: “If there’s one person without whom there wouldn’t be a Pinelands Act it would have to be John McPhee. I got to know John because his brother was in my class in both college [Princeton University] and law school [Harvard]. … When I got to be governor, John and I were part of a tennis group that played on the next court from Scott McVay’s court in Princeton. When we finished playing tennis, we would discuss whatever topics seemed appropriate...Certainly, if I had not read The Pine Barrens, I would not have had the kind of interest in the Pinelands that I developed...” To present Byrne’s achievement in this short space does little justice to a long and complex process. Byrne faced serious opposition not only from powerful outside interests but often from members of his own staff. Morven’s exhibition
honors his leadership, sustained today by groups like the New Jersey Conservation Foundation and Pinelands Preservation Alliance. Byrne described the preservation of the Pinelands (about 20 percent of the land mass of the State of New Jersey) as his greatest achievement: “The Pinelands was on nobody’s particular political agenda; it was on no political party’s agenda,” he said in 1987 at a discussion of The Pinelands Protection Act at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. Speedy recalls meeting Governor Byrne at Morven, then the governor’s residence, at a reception for New Jersey artists. “There were about 150 people there and Byrne spoke to each and every one of them. We connected over the Pine Barrens. There were some pretty scary plans in the works and what he did benefitted everyone.” The Morven exhibition relates an encouraging story of preservation as Speedy’s lens reveals a watery landscape in turns mist-filled,
eerie and still; burgeoning with plant life in a palette of greens, blues, and purples; glittering in sunlight; and dreamily romantic. “Richard’s images capture many aspects of this ecosystem,” comments Morven Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Elizabeth G. Allan. “The diversity of this land is breathtaking.” The Pine Barrens: A Legacy of Preservation opens January 25 and continues through April 14 with a public reception on January 24 from 5:30PM to 7:30PM at Morven Museum and Garden, 55 Stockton Street, Princeton. Admission: $6, adults; $5, seniors and students; free for Friends of Morven. The Pine Barrens by John McPhee will be available for purchase. For more information and hours, call 609.924.8144 or visit: www.morven.org. For more on Richard Speedy, visit: www.richardspeedyphotographer.com. Photographs by Richard Speedy from the exhibition The Pine Barrens: A Legacy of Preservation.
february 2013 PrINCeTON MaGaZINe
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