Remarks on presenting Arts and Humanities Awards - US President Bill Clinton

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 11, 1993

Thank you very much. To our distinguished honorees and all of you in the audience. I want to say a special word of thanks to Jane Alexander and to Dr. Sheldon Hackney for their leadership of our administration's efforts in the arts and humanities.

As a person who at various times in his life has been a frustrated writer and a frustrated musician, this is an extremely humbling event for me today. [Laughter] But I've been getting a lot of training in humility lately. I have a Vice President who humbles me all the time by all the things he teaches me about things great and insignificant and who unlike me actually got to go on David Letterman to prove how funny he was. [Laughter] And I have a wife who swept the television ratings last week talking about the arcana of health care with a passion and an eloquence. As if that weren't bad enough, USA Today had the bad grace to go out and poll the American people, and 40 percent of them said she was smarter than I am. [Laughter] To which I reply, "Of course, what kind of dummy do you think I am. How else would I have gotten elected President."

And just to drive this humility home--this is the actual true part of this wonderful story--I went to southern California last week, or the frist of this week, and I was looking forward to staying in the Beverly Hilton. It seemed like an exotic sort of place. And I showed up, and Merv Griffin, who owns it, shook hands with me and took me up to the floor where I was staying. There is only one person who is a permanent resident of the floor where I stayed in the Beverly Hilton, Rodney Dangerfield, who said they had put me there because we seem to belong togehter--[laughter]--and gave me 12 roses with "a little respect" on a gift card.

I am delighted to be here to honor this year's winners of the National Medal of the Arts and the Charles Frankel Prize, men and women whose achievements represent the enduring power of the arts and humanities and, in a larger sense, of the creative spirit in all of our lives.

Throughout history, the arts and humanities have been the cultural signature of this great Nation. They have enabled Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life to gain a deeper appreciation of who they are as individuals and who we all are as a society, stirring our minds and our senses, stimulating learning and collective discourse, the arts and humanities teach us in ways that nothing else can about the vastness and the depth of human experience. They are our great equalizers. We inherit them, and we can all participate in them.

Whether or not one plays an instrument, reads, poetry, learns to pirouette, or spends hours alone in a local art gallery, we all have the capacity to be moved by a song, a poem, a story, a dance, a painting. We can feel our spirit soar when we see an intriguing film or the sudden illumination of a new idea or an old idea put in a new way.

At a time when our society faces new and profound challenges, at a time when we are losing so many of our children, at a time when so many of our people feel insecure in the face of change, the arts and humanities must remain a vital part of our lives as individuals and as a Nation.

For 200 years, the freedom of our artistic and intellectual imagination has contributed to the quality of our civic life. It has helped to shape American ideas of democracy, of pluralism, of tolerance. There decades ago, President Kennedy said this: There's a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, betwen achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The Jeffersonian era gave birth not only to the Declaration of Independence but also to beautiful Monticello. The age of Lincoln produced the Emancipation Proclamation, along with the Hudson River school of painting and the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The first half of this century gave us universal suffrage and the empowerment of American workers, as well as Charlie Chaplin, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Faulkner, Marian Anderson, and Duke Ellington. The same unbridled energy and potent imagination that took Americans to the moon inspired rock and roll, Motown, modern dance, and a new emphasis on civil and human rights.

Those of you gathered with us today are reminders that the human imagination is still the most powerful tool we have in moving forward as a civilization. You provoke our minds, you enliven our senses, endow our souls, help us to give our lives meaning. That's why public support for the arts and humanities remains essential today and for the generations to come.

Today, we are indeed fortunate to have inspiring new leaders working in Government to expand our artistic and humanistic endeavors, to carry on our heritage to future generations. I'm very proud of the work and the life that Sheldon Hackney and that Jane Alexander have lived before they came to this work. I think them for their work here. And I tell you that we welcome all of you to give us your ideas, your suggestions, and your energy as we try to move forward together. Now it is a privilege to call forward the following recipients of the National Medal of Arts.