Lady Bird Johnson? Claudia Alta Johnson? Jill Biden? Henry Seldis?
Question for Quote Investigator: A First Lady of the United States once spoke about the importance of experiencing great art. She said that art was the window of person’s soul. Art was required to see beyond the immediate everyday world and to see the inner world.
I do not recall the precise phrasing. Would you please help me to identify the speaker, and to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1964 the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York was considerably enlarged. The First Lady of the United States Claudia Alta Johnson spoke at the rededication ceremony. She was known to the public as Lady Bird Johnson. The art critic of the “Los Angeles Times” Henry Seldis reported the words of Johnson. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
“This great and growing museum makes it possible to leave our ‘dailyness’ and see what we never saw before in the daily round—for art is the window of man’s soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.
“We are so often pictured as a society entirely devoted to technological advance that it is good to have this abundant proof to the contrary,” the First Lady said.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
The same statements were credited to Lady Bird Johnson on the same day in the “New York Times” by reporter Richard F. Shepard.2
The remarks were memorable enough to appear as an entry in the 1988 collection “Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations”:3
CLAUDIA (“LADY BIRD”) JOHNSON
Art is the window to man’s soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.
At opening of an addition to Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. NY Times 25 May 64
In 1992 the quotation credited to Johnson appeared in “The New York Public Library Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations”.4
In 2022 First Lady Jill Biden delivered a speech at the groundbreaking of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and she referred to the quotation:5
As many of you know, First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson was a key figure in the creation of the Hirshhorn.
She once said, “Art is the window to a man’s soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.”
In summary, Claudia Alta Johnson deserves credit for this quotation although she may have had advice from a speech writer. Jill Biden also employed the quotation, but she credited Johnson.
Image Notes: Allusive illustration of the soul from geralt at Pixabay. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jonathan Watson whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1964 May 26, Los Angeles Times, First Lady Rededicates Museum of Modern Art by Henry J. Seldis (Times Art Editor), Quote Page 5, Column 1, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1964 May 26, New York Times, Modern Museum Reopens With New Wings by Richard F. Shepard, Quote Page 1, Column 4, New York, New York. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1988, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, Compiled by James B. Simpson, Section: Art: Observers & Critics, Quote Page 264, Column 1, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1992, The New York Public Library Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, Edited by Stephen Donadio, Joan Smith, Susan Mesner and Rebecca Davison, Section: The Arts, Quote Page 49, Column 2, Warner Books Inc., New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- Website: The White House, Speech title: Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by First Lady Jill Biden at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden Groundbreaking, Speaker: First Lady Jill Biden, Date of speech on website: November 16, 2022, Website description: Official website of the United States White House. (Accessed whitehouse.gov on June 24, 2024) link ↩︎