Patti Smith Quotes

We are similar to a museum. My function is to present old masterpieces in modern frames.

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.

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

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

Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness.

My mum is a big collector of art.

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.

An art book is a museum without walls.

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.

Let Rome’s art tell the empire’s story.

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

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

The Atlas belongs to the Lenbachhaus in Munich - it's long since ceased to belong to me. Occasionally I run across it somewhere, and I think it's interesting because it looks different each time.

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times.

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

I'm an art collector, have been for years, and I paint. Needless to say, the artwork in my houses, apartment is extensive.

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

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.

As an artist or musician, you want to be remembered for the music you make.

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.

The V&A is an amazing museum, and the collections have always been a great inspiration to me.

I'm just a fan of art and culture.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

I'm fully aware had I stayed with my art, I would be well known, respected and most likely rich.