Lewis H. Lapham Quotes

Most museums in Moscow, like Tretyakov, were established by philanthropists, whose passion for art allowed the development of culture on many levels.

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

When I'm in New York, my favorite place on the planet is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Eventually, most people felt MoMA had filled a very important gap.

But if I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I'd choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My own interest in art was because of my mother. My father didn't like contemporary art, so he didn't give her large sums to spend. So, she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days, I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings.

The Metropolitan Museum has all of our collections online, all our scholarly publications and catalogues since 1965. We have online features like the timeline of art history.

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.

It was my father's hope, and it is ours, that the National Gallery would become not a static but a living institution, growing in usefulness and importance to artists, scholars and the general public.

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

I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation.

Constable himself knew the value of such studies, for he rarely parted with them. He used to say of his studies and pictures that he had no objection to part with the corn, but not with the field that grew it.

All the rich people collect traditional Chinese art. So it's very natural for Chinese families to still see art as the highest human performance and send their children to this field.

The Barnes Foundation is the only sane place to see art in America.

Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality.

I don't buy art just to make artists happy any more than I want to make them sad if I sell their work.

Many say an art dealer running a museum is a 'conflict of interest.' But maybe the art world has lived an artificial or unintentional lie all of these years when it comes to conflicts of interest.

My mission is not to forbid French art. If the quality is there, I buy; if the quality isn't there, I don't.

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.

When you're buying paintings, it feels grown up.

If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which, for two months every other year, new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by.

I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: 'Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.'

I love art dealers. In some ways, they're my favorite people in the art world. Really. I love that they put their money where their taste is, create their own aesthetic universes, support artists, employ people, and do all of this while letting us see art for free. Many are visionaries.

I love art; I collect mostly modern art.

When I teach classes at the School of Visual Arts,, I'll ask the students, 'How many of you have been to a museum this year?' Nobody raises their hand and I go into a tirade. If you want to do something sharp and innovative, you have to know what went on before.