The Great Orange Artventure

In 2006, the Art Alliance of the Riverside Art Museum came up with the idea of doing a public art project, such as the cows in Chicago, the pigs in Seattle, etc., etc. After a lot of brainstorming, they came up with the orange. Why oranges you ask? Well, Riverside’s claim to fame was due to Eliza Lovell Tibbets introducing the Navel Orange to Riverside and beginning the California citrus industry.
Eliza Tibbets was given two Brazilian navel orange trees by someone she knew with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The navel orange trees loved the warm, mild climate and began to thrive here. By 1882, nearly half of the citrus trees in California were in the Riverside area and definitely contributed to Riverside’s prosperity.
With this project being a fundraiser, 32 large oranges were sponsored for $ 5,000 each. Some sponsors requested their favorite artist submit a design for them and some designs were submitted to the Art Alliance. Eventually, the artists were chosen and each were sent a giant orange to start painting.
Finally, in June 2006, all the giant oranges were completed and first displayed at a Premier Party. Soon after the party, all 32 oranges were installed in their various public viewing locations in the downtown Riverside Mile Square area until the end of September 2006.
While they were on display, there were docent led walking tours or you could do your own self-​guided walking tour, which I opted to do in early September.
What I really liked about the walking tour was that the oranges were really spread out. Sometimes you’d get 2 or 3 in one square, but then the next one would be a 10 minute walk away. You really got to explore downtown Riverside and what surprised me was how many permanent public art installations were scattered all over, from statues of Gandhi and Martin Luther King to a war memorial.
The architectural styles were also quite eclectic, ranging from very ornate structures to more modern, glass buildings. During the walk, you also got to see quite a few municipal buildings from the court house to the library to the city hall.
As for the Giant Oranges themselves, they ranged from being very graphical (patterns, shapes, etc.) to having a sense of whimsy to really reflecting Riverside’s history. Unfortunately, 4 out of the 32 weren’t on display, so I wasn’t able to see all of them.
After the display period was over, the Giant Oranges were either kept by their sponsor or auctioned off to raise additional money for the Riverside Museum of Art. Quite a few of the oranges are still available for public viewing and if you’d like to see where they are located, be sure to check out
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In general, it was a fun experience and not only was I able to do some great art appreciating for a couple of hours, I was also able to explore a city that I previously only knew about through my experience with visiting the Mission Inn.
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