Glenn

Wednesday morning I had breakfast with the Director of The Museum of Modern Art, Glenn D. Lowry.  He generously agreed to speak to our Summer Art Circle members (law firm summer associates).  I’m sure everyone who was part of the conversation felt inspired and empowered to create a space for art in their lives, whether by becoming a member of MoMA or by buying a $200 drawing at a Williamsburg, Brooklyn gallery.  I appreciated most his comments about the enduring importance and value of culture.  In the years and centuries to come, that is what will last.  Not military things, governments, medical breakthroughs and technology. These things loom large in our lives now, but history will note them all as facts, simply as things that HAPPENED.  But our culture will continue and its impact will be felt and referenced in the world until the end of time.  I have often relected on the fact that our understanding of world history, people, places and ways of life is almost entirely through the art that has been left behind.  From cave pictures to the pyramids to the Bible, even, each was the creative expression of the human spirit–drawing, architecture and literature, respecitively.  The story of human existence always has and always will be told through what we create, through the works of artists that survive throughout time.  By supporting the arts, one literally plays a vital role in establishing the record of our modern existence, shaping our own understanding of life today and how mankind will understand life in the future.