Year of the Arts

“ Mankind’s most enduring achievement is art. At its best, it reveals the nobility that coexists in human nature along with flaws and evils, and the beauty and truth it can perceive. Whether in music or architecture, literature, painting or sculpture, art opens our eyes and feelings to something beyond ourselves, something we cannot experience without the artist’s vision and the genius of his craft.”

— Barbara Tuchman, Pulitzer Prize winning historian

“ Art is perhaps humanity’s most essential, most universal language. It is not a frill, but a necessary part of communication. Indeed, the quality of civilization can be measured by the breadth of the symbols used …Now more than ever, all people need to see clearly, hear acutely, and feel sensitively through the arts. These languages are no longer simply desirable but are essential if we are to convey adequately our deepest feelings, and survive with civility and joy.”

— Ernest Boyer, American educator

“ Reaching deep into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence. The imagination calls us to leave our personalities behind and to temporarily inhabit another’s experience, looking at the world through new eyes. Art invites us to meet the Other—whether that be our neighbor or the infinite otherness of God—and to achieve a new wholeness of spirit.”

— Gregory Wolfe, Editor of Image Journal

“ If you are a painter or a poet or a musician or an actor—you carry within you a prize of great worth. [If you do not create], you must learn to love one of the arts in a way that allows the power of another’s creation to come alive within you. Once you love an art enough that you can be taken up in it, you are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that mysteriously has given life to us all.”

— Kent Nerburn, in Letters to My Son

“ Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts —to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.’”

— Exodus 31: 1–5

“ Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”

— President Lyndon Johnson