JFK on Art

Quote on the wall at the Dallas Museum of Art for the Hotel Texas exhibit.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth... In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having 'nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.'

-President John F Kennedy, Amherst College, October 26, 1963