Franklin D. Roosevelt

Statement on Art Week.

November 29, 1940

In view of the gratifying success achieved during the observance of the first Art Week, which will close tomorrow (Sunday, December 1), I feel justified in recommending that Art Week be made an annual event under the sponsorship of the President.

While I believe the Federal Government has a proper responsibility in fostering national interest in American creative expression, I strongly recommend a decentralized organization, working in partnership with the Government, to emphasize as its first objective, democratic support of American artists and craftsmen through purchase of their work.

The proposed annual observance also should embrace a broader participation of the several arts, active in each community, on a year-round basis. My hope is that through the concentrated effort we put into one week we can create an interest in art which can be maintained and enlarged and intensified in every part of the country during all the other weeks of the year.

Excellent organization has been done this year under the chairmanship of Mr. Francis Henry Taylor, Director, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I would recommend, therefore, the setting up on a permanent basis of a National Council for Art Week, with chairman, secretary and other national officers. This council should function with the collaboration of government agencies and should be composed of leaders in the field of the arts and representatives of other organizations, both public and private, interested in the further development of our cultural life. It is the present Chairman's suggestion, which I approve, that a larger national interest will be forthcoming if a new Chairman is appointed each year from a different section of the country.

The national council would work in collaboration with state councils and local committees. Naturally, the present government committee, in cooperation with the government art programs, would continue to act in a coordinating capacity to develop a year-round continuing program. Our aim should be to provide for circulation of exhibitions of the work of American artists and craftsmen, with special emphasis on making them available to all the people- urban and rural—particularly those groups which have not hitherto had the opportunity to enjoy them. I think a valuable advisory service could also be rendered both to States and communities to aid them in establishing art centers in public buildings, schools and other accessible locations. Our aim must be to arouse and satisfy an interest in art in every community.

A very practical and highly desirable result of this activity would be to create a market for the works of contemporary artists. I am very much gratified to learn from reports thus far available that more than five hundred State and local committees with upwards of six thousand members organized more than sixteen hundred sales exhibitions of works by some thirty-two thousand American artists and craftsmen during the week now drawing to a close.

What we shall be able to do for American art and American artists is further reflected in the fact that associated with the National Council in their work were some two hundred and ten Government agencies, including the WPA, NYA, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, besides seven hundred and eighty-two art organizations, six hundred and fifty-three museums and schools, and almost five thousand commercial outlets.

The fact that so much was done in a brief preparatory period this year justifies the establishment of this work on a permanent basis.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Statement on Art Week. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209375

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