Frank Capra Quotes

Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.

Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important.

I definitely am concerned with preservation. For me, what's interesting is the archival state, or how long oil paintings last.

The photographs that are art have to be separated from the rest - then preserved.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unsurpassed at presenting more than 50 centuries of work. I go there constantly, seeing things over and over, better than I've ever seen them before.

Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books.

Restorers of paintings and pottery follow a code of conduct in their work to distinguish the original material from what they are adding later.

You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.

Like surgeons trying to save a life, the conservators and preservers at New York City museums dedicate themselves to ensuring the longevity of works of art for public view.

The Met is not only the finest encyclopedic museum of art in the United States; it is arguably the finest anywhere.

I have 17 full-time archivists working for me who put away in books all the diversity of artwork I do, from drawing to etching to monotypes to prints to lithographs.

Children do have the potential to kill art. But now I think they kill the bad art. At least that is what my son has done for me.

MoMA is one of the world's most admired cultural institutions.

Owners of valuable works of art don't give to institutions that don't provide good air conditioning and have good shows.

Nobody really needs a painting. It's something you kind of create value for in a way that you don't with a company. It's an act of collective faith what an object is worth. Maintaining that value system is part of what a dealer does, not just making a transaction but making sure that important art feels important.

I pledge allegiance to the living, and I will defend art from history. I will rescue art from the future, from its attrition into taste, and from the speculative notion that it will become more valuable with time.

If the arts are in peril, we must do our small part to to fight the good fight and protect and preserve.

Artificial light is used because you can control it better. Technically, it is more homogeneous, more delicate, and less damaging to artwork. But I think it's interesting when the visitor can see variations in the light, when it is not only technical or suitable.

Each year, tens of millions of museumgoers walk through the entrance of the Getty, or the Metropolitan or the Prado or the Hermitage, and never consider the possibility of having to arbitrate for themselves the authenticity of what they have come to see.

The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.

When I was young, beautiful ancient statues were castrated, so that the eye might not be corrupted.... Nothing was gained, unless horses and asses had also been castrated.

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few.

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.

The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it'll be paraded round Sotheby's by people wearing white gloves.

Shouldn't it give us pause that the oldest works of art are as impressive today in their beauty and spontaneity as they were many thousands of years ago?