Jane Alexander Quotations

What we do is look for high standards of excellence in the arts.

Senator Helms might very well do that. I would point out to him that we in the art world are not necessarily in the business of making controversial art.

If a panel feels that a grant is worthy and they know the content of the work of art in question, we at the endowment will be prepared to defend it.

Most of our funding goes to organizations and is then used to leverage the private sector.

Well, in the 1990 reauthorization legislation, there was a phrase that said we do not fund obscenity as defined by a court of law.

I knew as well as anybody what the endowment does for artists because I had been someone it had supported through not-for-profit theater.

I began to think, The endowment has had a bad reputation in the last few years, and that's unfair.

This thing called love was a total mystery to me, but the vagaries of passion and despair that accompanied each devotion kept my life in high drama.

There are two parts to the creative endeavor: making something, then disseminating it.

Part of the reason I make things realistic is, I don’t really want to have to explain my work. What I wish to communicate is done so people can make their own interpretation, and if it’s different to my idea it doesn't matter.

I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs.

No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody.

All I want to do is make sure that art is available to all Americans in a participatory way, whether you engage in the art process yourself or you're an audience member.

Now, I cannot approve anything the council has rejected, but I can reject anything the council has approved.

When we teach a child to sing or play the flute, we teach her how to listen. When we teach her to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach him about his body and about space, and when he acts on a stage, he learns about character and motivation. When we teach a child design, we reveal the geometry of the world. When we teach children about the folk and traditional arts and the great masterpieces of the world, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their own place in history.