Elvis Mitchell Quotes

I've been involved with Carnegie Hall for the last 13 years, and Chairman for the last six. I feel really good about what we've done growing our educational programs there, building a board that has made Carnegie Hall really a world-class institution.

The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance. They might not be explicitly religious, but they are civic and social spaces.

I grew up in a nonprofit theater company in the heartland of central California, so I am very aware of the importance that company had not only on my life but my community.

Unless we build theater and performing arts, then we're not going to be creating future patrons. We need to make it accessible.

Queen's University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond.

If you think about making a difference in the community, my family has always had a strong interest in the arts. I'm always interested in finding ways to innovate... It's a blend; it's not a point focus.

With my ministry of light, part of what I do is work on the California Alliance For Arts Education.

Less money for public media means less access to the arts.

I'm conflicted with theater in the city because you want to reach a diverse audience, and that audience doesn't typically go to the theater.

New Yorkers only cross water for visual culture if the water is an ocean. The East River throws us for a huge loop. If we started going to Queens and the Bronx for visual culture, many of our rent, space, and crowding problems would be over indefinitely.

I just like artist-driven projects, but for artists themselves: artist spaces, artist mentor programs, and artists buying buildings and making lofts. Doing whatever we can do. Because at the end of the day, I really think that we as a community only have each other.

I've always argued, unsuccessfully, that there's no point in giving money to the arts unless you educate people in them.

I'm a great candidate for why arts funding shouldn't be cut, because I had no experience other than what was at school, I'm from a working-class town, there were no theaters, and the cinema closed when I was a kid. Anything that gave me a voice or a way to express myself I went running headlong toward.

That's the reason support for the National Endowment of the Arts is so important. It enables those ventures that aren't viable commercially to be done.

I have long been interested in exploring and advancing the valuable relationships between the arts and society.

It's a false proposition that we have to take the arts away to fund something else.

We must carry the arts to the people, not wait for the people to come to the arts.

… perhaps we are awakening to the realization that if individuals can no longer patronize the arts in the way they did in the old days, we may come to a time where the public will undertake to do this for its own pleasure and profit.

I'm a chairman on the Board of Governors for the East-West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theater company in America.

The arts need funding.

I'm hoping someday that we'll be able to start a consortium with places like Carnegie Hall to work on early childhood education. I really feel that's the most important place to put the arts.

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

Just as a city cannot protect its manufacturing base without keeping its factories, we cannot have a strong arts sector without studios, rehearsal space, and performance venues.

It breaks my heart to hear of our theatres struggling to survive. As well as playing a vital role in community life, they're guardians of our heritage and should be cherished.

For my money, all theatre should be free.