Zawe Ashton Quotes

Art is for everybody.

It's wonderful to see art in a museum, but it is institutionalised. I don't like the idea of the artwork as something that requires special conditions. I would like it to be universal.

The public has a right to art ... Art is for everybody.

I believe in the democratization of the arts. What do I mean by that? I think museums, with some exceptions, have a responsibility to educate a much broader public.

All I want to do is make sure that art is available to all Americans in a participatory way, whether you engage in the art process yourself or you're an audience member.

I love the idea of bringing my work to the general public, not just people who go to gallery openings.

People act like art is a white thing - or not for people of colour - when, really, so much culture and art comes from people of colour. I want everyone to get into what I am doing. So sometimes I don't like to work just in an art context because it feels like a lot of people aren't going to see it. I like it to be a part of everyday life.

I'm interested in making art that is available to everybody.

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

I always want to design a frame that’s open to everyone. I don’t see art as a secret code.

I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

History should belong to all of us, and it needs to include people from different cultural backgrounds. Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant to children, who could then become disenchanted with education.

I think it's probably the Dutch who are to blame for starting the whole 'art business', because before they came along, art was attached to relatively stable structures, and it was everybody's. It was like going to the movies.

Why should be elite, music? Excuse me. Music must be for everybody.

If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can't afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I'm all for it.

When I became director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was stodgy, gray, run by elitists. I said, 'Hey, let's kick the thing around.' I wanted to attract young people to the museum. I said, 'Make it hospitable. I want them to come. I want them to make dates, pick up girls, pick up boys - either way; I don't care.'

Growing richer every day, for as rich and poor are relative terms, when the rich are growing poor, it is pretty much the same as if the poor were growing rich. Nobody is poor when the distinction between rich and poor is destroyed.

I do worry because it takes all types to make our culture, to make our art. We need it to be available to all.

A truly vibrant and creative culture depends on a system of education which is not divided along class and sectarian lines.

One often forgets that even if art is a very successful field in contemporary culture, there are still a lot of people alienated by it. Even if people don't fully understand where my work is coming from, at least there's somebody who looks kind of sane standing in front of you and politely engaging with you. People react.

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots.

If Eleanor Roosevelt has her way, how are we going to tell the rich from the poor?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a profound institutional reluctance to address the question of what art is for. This is a question that has, quite unfairly, come to feel impatient, illegitimate, and a little impudent.

You have to accommodate the rich and the new rich under the same roof.

A civilised society ought to make ample provision for everyone, no matter their background, to enjoy the arts and culture.