Martin Filler Quotes

You re being handed a national treasure. Your main responsibility is that whenever you may leave it, it still remains a national treasure.

Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place in museums; others, we take for walks.

My work is as an ethnographic rescuer: a conduit between past and future generations. The urgency of this effort cannot be overstated.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

I feel like I have at least begun to make a contribution, but my most significant concern has to do with whether my actual art will be preserved for future generations or be erased.

High among the unpredictable variables that endanger the survival of worthy buildings are the vagaries of taste.

When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it.

I was absolutely delighted that those shows have been preserved.

When we find something new at Giza, we announce it to the world. The Sphinx and the Pyramids are world treasures. We are the guardian's of these treasures, but they belong to the world.

This country, and the West Coast, especially, is bad at preserving any cultural legacy.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.

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

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

I really don’t make history; I preserve it.

It may not be art, but it is history.

Our ancient historical monuments are national property and ought no longer to be left to the mercy of the many and variable ideas of ecclesiastical propriety that may at any time be prevalent among us

Leave it [The Grand Canyon] as it is. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it …. Keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as one of the sights which every American … should see.

Ancient monuments 300 to 1000-plus years old are never 'renovated,' only 'restored,' a distinction that escapes the babus.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

So our films had a lot more to them than entertainment value, and I'm glad that a lot of people recognize that now. People realize now the value of them as educational.

I believe the National Park Service has demonstrated strong partnerships geared towards respecting the private property of citizens in its administering of the current Trail of Tears National Historic Trail and will continue to do so upon the addition of the routes.