“There is no government metric or policy report that can ever fully capture this basic truth: that art matters for its own sake.” So said a leading political figure this week. Can you guess who?
I thought it might be fun to gather together a series of quotes from different, high-profile, individuals, and to set a little quiz for any readers who care to drop in. Call it a little early-Christmas quiz!
See if you can match the following quotes to the list of names (sadly, all men at this point) which follow at the end…..
“Museums are lighthouses of utopianism and social well-being”
“The Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
“The time has come to reclaim the word ‘excellence’ from its historic, elitist undertones and to recognise that the very best art and culture is for everyone; that it has the power to change people’s lives, regardless of class, education or ethnicity.”
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
“Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.”
“The cause of art is the cause of the people.”
“The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.”
“All art is quite useless”
“Thinking about political and social matters ought to be done by minds of some real literary education, and done in an intellectual climate informed by a vital literary culture.”
Robert Kennedy
RB Kitaj
FR Leavis
Frank Lloyd Wright
Stalin
JM Keynes
William Morris
Oscar Wilde
George Osborne
Sir Brian McMaster
Graham Hitchen 