Remarks at the Annual Conference of the Associated Councils of the Arts

Mr. Anderson and ladies and gentlemen:

As you can imagine, I have the responsibility and the very great honor and privilege of welcoming many groups to Washington. And of those groups, there are very few that I could greet with as much pleasure as this Conference of the Associated Councils of the Arts.

One reason, of course, is here on the platform with me. I feel a special debt of gratitude to you because you gave us Nancy Hanks, not only because she adds beauty to the White House Staff in many ways but because she was the president of this organization when I appointed her Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. And I hardly need tell you how vigorously and effectively, not only in Washington with the Congress and all over the Nation that Nancy Hanks has worked, together with many of you here, to make the Endowment's programs a success.

Another reason is quite simply this: It is a lesson from history. We, this Nation of ours, could be the richest nation in the world. We could be the most powerful nation in the world. We could be the freest nation in the world but only if the arts are alive and flourishing can we experience the true meaning of our freedom and know the full glory of the human spirit.

We all, no doubt, remember the debates that went on in this Nation over many years, over government involvement of the arts, the feeling of some that it was a frivolous waste of the taxpayers' money, the concern of others that government support might lead to government control or a drying up of the private funds on which ultimately the arts, of course, depend.

The important thing now is that government has accepted support of the arts as one of its responsibilities, not only on the Federal level but on the State and local levels as well.

And increasingly, governments at all levels see this not only as a responsibility but also as an opportunity, for there is a growing recognition that few investments in the quality of life in America pay off so handsomely as the money spent to stimulate the arts.

We can spend billions on new scientific miracles as we do, on education, on housing, on medical care, on highways and airports, and all of the other goods and services, those material things that government is expected to provide. And in doing so, we can meet very genuine needs for people and discharge very real responsibilities. But all of this, all of this together, alone would be like designing a violin without the strings.

As we look ahead, 10, 20, 30 years, we can chart the prospect of many great achievements. We have seen technological advances speed up by almost a geometrical proportion. Already we take moon landings almost for granted. Computers and industrial advances, agricultural breakthroughs, all are multiplying the goods and services that our economy can provide.

These material advances are important. They extend man's reach. They widen our range of choices. They make it possible to look ahead toward an end to hunger and misery and disease, not only in America but elsewhere in the world as well.

But by themselves, these advances can never be enough. The engineers and the scientists can take us to the moon, but we need the poet or the painter to take us to the heights of understanding and perception.

Doctors are enabling us to live longer and healthier lives, but we need the musician and the dancer and the filmmaker to bring beauty and meaning to our lives.

So on urging greater support for the arts, I do it not only because the arts need help. I do it also because the Nation needs what the arts and only the arts can give.

That is why I have urged the Congress to provide full funding for this year's authorization for the arts and humanities Endowments, funding that would raise each to $30 million, more than three times the level of 2 years ago.

This is an investment in cultural resources that we can expect to find repaid, in my opinion, many, many times over, not only in terms of a strengthening of the arts themselves and their supporting institutions but also in terms of a new awareness and appreciation of the arts and artists by people all across the Nation.

And we should remember that we add immeasurably to the store of human happiness as we help millions of persons find in their lives the added meaning that only the arts convey, the appreciation that only they can provide.

To my mind, one of the most exciting new directions charted by the National Council on the Arts has been its effort to take arts to the people and to the people in all walks of life, all across this Nation.

By doing this, we not only build a deeper, more solid base of support for the arts in the future, attracting new people to an understanding and appreciation of what they can offer in terms of spiritual enrichment and therefore building audiences for the future, but also the arts themselves do more to enrich the quality of life for people, whatever their background may be throughout America.

I had this brought home to me when I was the devil's advocate in asking a question of a group of motion picture producers and directors and others with whom I met at the Western White House in San Clemente just a few weeks ago.¹

One of those who was there was a producer, as I recall, and a very successful one, one of the new successful ones at the moment in monetary terms in Hollywood. He told me that he was very proud to work with Nancy Hanks and others in the work that you are devoting so much time to.

Then I asked him the question that sometimes I am asked of Congressmen and Senators when they say, "Why in this period when we have so many other priorities do we spend $30 million on the arts?"

I asked him, "How do you answer this question when you talk to somebody who is in a deprived area of a city or of rural America? How do you answer it to those who live in a ghetto?"

He gave me an answer, an answer that I share with you, one that you probably already know. He said, "Let me tell you what we have used the major portion of the funds for, that have been allocated to southern California. We have used them for the purpose of bringing the arts to those areas of Los Angeles and other parts of southern California where not simply those children who are in schools from upper-income families live, but particularly emphasizing those children who come from the lower-income families."

He told me--and I am sure I am not exaggerating what he said--that as a result of the program in southern California which we support as a government, which you support individually, that there were literally thousands of schoolchildren from Watts who had been brought to musical entertainments, to other kinds of activities in the field of painting, et cetera, as far as the arts are concerned, who otherwise would never have an opportunity to have this kind of experience.

This doesn't mean that all of them will become artists. It doesn't mean that all of them will become wealthy enough to support the arts. But it does mean that some of them, some who otherwise might never be taken on this mountain top, get a new view of life, a life they can never get living in that ghetto, a life that they could never get through the other things that we want to provide.

We can provide the housing. We can provide the education. We can provide the medical care. We can provide mass transit for transportation. But unless we reach the quality of life through activities like this, we have not met our responsibility to all the people of this country.

That, to me, was one of the most dramatic stories that I have heard.

Now, I hope I can get that kind of a response when I try to sell it to some recalcitrant Congressmen and Senators on the Appropriations Committee.

I can assure you, however, that when I fail to make a sale, Nancy Hanks always makes the sale.

One of the most promising developments during 'these first years of the arts Endowment has been the extent to which Federal funds, far from replacing local and private funds, which as you know many thought would be the case, have actually stimulated a greater flow from other sources.

It is essential that this pattern be continued, that we maintain and strengthen the working partnership among the governmental and private efforts in support of the arts.

I would also stress one other point, which I know has been of concern to many of you here at this conference, and that is: In its relation to the arts, the role of government should not be simply that of patron. Government uses the arts, and I think we can learn to use them more creatively; government supports the arts, and we are moving to support them more broadly.

But government also needs the ideas of artists, not only the special perceptions they so often bring but also the artistic and aesthetic values for which they speak.

Concerned as we constantly are with the economic and social development of the Nation, we must also bear in mind that the values the artist represents are essential if our Nation's growth is to be balanced and truly to represent quantity with quality.

I know that a great deal of your discussion here these past 3 days has been directed toward the question of how agencies of government, other than this Endowment, can bring the arts more prominently into their own thinking, planning and programing. That question, of course, is a very important one, and as a result, I am sending a memorandum today to the heads of the various departments of the government and agencies of the executive branch--all of them--asking them to look at the new ways in which their agencies can more vigorously assist the arts and artists and also, perhaps more important, how the arts and artists can be of additional help to the agencies and their programs.

Whatever my influence with the Congress may be, at least for the time being I still have influence with the agencies of government where I have appointed them.

Your discussions, the book you produced for this convention, "Washington and the Arts," will provide a very helpful beginning, and we will see that that is well distributed among the various agency heads.

I hope and believe that as we follow through we can write a new chapter in developing partnership to the lasting benefit of the arts and artists, the Government, and most important, the people of America.

Before concluding, I would like to share with you a personal experience, if I could, which relates to this problem of priorities; what it means.

Of course, in this particular field, I cannot pretend to be an expert. Len Garmen,² I know, has already exposed the fact that in addition to the piano, I have at one time played the violin. It didn't have any strings, but I played it.

But be that as it may, I do recall my first year in college in California. I went to a very small college--we had only 300 students at that time--Whittier College. It was 1931, the beginning and the depths of the depression.

And as a college freshman, I recall a convocation that we had in which the president of the college, who was a man enormously interested in the arts, whether in music or painting or whatever the field was, brought to us a very outstanding lady.

I do not remember who she was or where she came from. As a matter of fact, she must have come without an honorarium, because we couldn't afford honorariums at Whittier College in those days. So for her it was a labor of love, and certainly nothing else was involved.

But I remember of all the many convocations I sat through at Whittier College in 4 years--and we were required to go to convocations every week at Whittier College in those days--but I remember of all those convocations, this one particularly stood out in my mind.

She talked about the arts and her interest. She had paintings that she displayed. And we were interested in that. Most of us knew very little about it, because we had no courses in art of that type, portraits or painting, in any respect at Whittier in those days.

But then she told a story which got the lesson through. Remember the time again, 1931, the depths of the depression, people were just thinking, "How do we get a job? How do we make a living?" And here is a lady talking about the arts and how important it was.

She told of an experience that she had had when she was in her teens, about our age. Her father, apparently, was a man not very, very wealthy, but relatively well to do. He took his family, a fairly large family, on a steamer to Europe.

They went over second class. All the way over, the children, the teenagers particularly-there were three or four of them--heard the music of the orchestra on first class, and they talked to their father and said, "Couldn't we come back first class?"

They went to Europe, they traveled through Europe, and she said they had a very exciting experience. But just before traveling to Cherbourg for the boat that was to bring them back--or the steamer-she said that they went through, in Paris, a very interesting gallery where paintings were for sale.

Her father and mother fell in love with a particular painting. The children also saw the painting, and they liked it very, very much. They wanted to buy the painting.

It cost, for them, a great deal of money. Then the father thought about whether or not he should make the purchase, and they had a family conference.

In the family conference, he said, quite frankly, to the whole family, "We really can't afford the painting. But, if we could go back second class, we could do so. So I will let you decide. We will go back first class, which I have already promised you, or we will buy the painting and go back second class."

They voted. It was unanimous. They bought the painting. They went back second class. And she said to us, "We have never regretted it."

So that brought home to me, as it brought home, I am sure, to the 300 in that convocation, the meaning--the meaning which all of you sense in this audience and all of you with whom you work also sense, and what you live for, the meaning of understanding what art can mean, even in a period when we have difficulties in economics, when we are thinking of the material considerations and the rest.

It is that particular lesson, I think, that this group can most effectively bring home to the people of America, not just those in the higher income brackets--all of them for fashion may want to be with you, some of them because they deeply believe, as you believe--but to open for those who otherwise, like those children in Watts, would never have any experience except simply grubbing along to make enough to live on, to make enough to have a house to live in, to have enough food. They could have an experience which raised the level of their lives far above what it otherwise would be.

So when I reflect on the importance of the arts in America, I also think in personal terms of the magnificent performances that we have been privileged to hear at state dinners and at our "Evenings at the White House," where so many gifted artists have helped us present some of the best in American music and other performing arts.

And I also think of a January evening a year ago. I went to Philadelphia to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra--it celebrated its 70th birthday--and on that occasion to present the Medal of Freedom to its conductor, Eugene Ormandy.

The citation on that medal incorporated a great truth about the arts. Let me read it to you: "He has reminded audiences here in his adopted country and all over the world that the heart of music is a human heart and that the glory of music reflects and sustains the true glory of the human spirit."

The heart of music is a human heart, and this is true not only of music but of all the arts, and their glory does reflect and sustain the true glory, of the human spirit. By working as you are to bring the arts to a new pride of place in American life, you and the organizations you represent here today are making this Nation a gift, a gift of spirit--and our lives, and those of our children, will be made immeasurably richer because of your gift.

Thank you.