[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[May 27, 1998]
[Pages 845-846]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies Dinner
May 27, 1998

    Thank you, Ann; thank you, Jo Carole 
Lauder. Thank you very much, Robin 
Duke, for your remarkable work, and your 
partner John Whitehead out there. I thank our 
good friend Lee Annenberg and 
Walter and the people from the Packard 
Foundation, the Sara Lee Corporation, and the others who have 
contributed to the FAPE Gift to the Nation program.
    I'd like to thank all the Members of Congress who are here and to 
say to Chuck, there still is, albeit smaller, a 
deep level of bipartisan support for the arts. And to the extent that it 
still exists, those who are part of it should be given even more credit 
because it's harder for them today. And I thank the Republicans and the 
Democrats who are here tonight for their support of the arts and our 
country's future.
    I had the enormous privilege of giving Roy Lichtenstein the National 
Medal of the Arts a couple of years ago. He was especially treasured by 
us here in the White House for many reasons that Dorothy knows, but I want to thank you, Dorothy, for giving 
this wonderful gift. And I want to thank you, Chuck, for giving this wonderful gift and making Roy be here 
in a way tonight. I'm particularly grateful.
    I understand that when Chuck paints and he's 
feeling especially good about his work, he does it to the music of 
Aretha Franklin, which brings him into my ambit of the arts. [Laughter] 
And judging by the energy of your work, I may issue an Executive order 
instructing all agencies to play Aretha Franklin from 9 to 5 every day 
from here on out. [Laughter]
    I want to also thank all of you who are here who are in the 
diplomatic corps, who both benefit our country and are benefited by the 
generosity of those who place the arts in our Embassies. I have been 
literally exhilarated and stunned with surprise from time to time as 
I've gone into our Embassies all around the world and seen the result of 
your efforts. And it is altogether fitting that the world's oldest 
democracy should have a program like this.
    In 1935 President Roosevelt said ``the conditions for democracy and 
art are one. The arts cannot thrive except when men are free to be 
themselves and to be in charge of the discipline of their own energies 
and ardors.'' Our freedom and our diversity has stimulated some of the 
most remarkable art in the world, and FAPE and the Arts in Embassies 
program are sustaining that art and brightening its exposure to people 
all around the globe.
    Tonight a young man whom I met in a different context came up to me 
tonight and showed me the card he got to certify that he was eligible to 
vote in the Irish election last week. And I think even those of you who 
aren't Irish felt a certain absolute exhilaration when the Irish people, 
both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, voted for peace, 
and when the Protestants as well as the Catholics voted for peace.
    And I think that we felt it not only because it was a good thing in 
itself but because we are so animated and often frustrated by seeing 
conflict after conflict after conflict after conflict in this allegedly 
blissful post-cold-war era, where people are fighting each other over 
ancient differences. And yet when you think about it, when you strip the 
external veneer that being in the

[[Page 846]]

Communist or the anti-Communist world provided all of us a sort of 
comfortable identity, each individual and each group of people and each 
nation then are confronted with what is a very elemental human question: 
How can you recognize that you're different from other people without 
thinking that you're better than they are and that there is something 
wrong with them and that therefore you have to do something to them in 
order to really count for something yourself? Or is there another way in 
which you can recognize your differences, be proud of what is unique to 
you and to your tribe or your clan, and still believe that underneath 
you're connected by something that's even more important than what is 
different?
    I submit to you that that dilemma is being played out in some of the 
great epic battles around the globe today and in some of the more 
pedestrian and, for me, occasionally frustrating battles in this city 
today. And that in this context, when we look ahead to the 21st 
century--when Hillary convinced me we 
should start this millennium project, she said we would name it 
``Honoring the past, and imagining the future.'' And I submit to you 
that it happens to be that we're on the verge of a new millennium, but 
because of all that's happened in the last few years, there is upon this 
country and upon all of us and, indeed, thoughtful people throughout the 
world, an enormous obligation to imagine the future in a way that honors 
our past but does not chain us to its darkest moments.
    So what kind of future are we going to create? How would we go about 
honoring the past? How will we meet the challenges of the future? What 
real gifts will we give to our children and our grandchildren? Our 
artists will have to help us find those answers. And every time someone 
walks into an American Embassy anywhere in the world, I want them to see 
that in America we are many people--we are many religions; we are many 
races; we are many backgrounds; we fight like cats and dogs--but we 
believe in the common values of freedom, and ultimately we believe that 
what unites us is far more important than what divides us, and it finds 
expression in the creative genius of the art they will see on the walls 
of our Embassies. That is what I hope.
    And if somehow we can permeate the world with the sense of 
possibility that was so manifest in that Irish election, then all over 
the world we'll be giving people with and without the brilliance of 
artistic gifts a chance to live as God meant them to live. That is your 
ultimate gift, and I'm very grateful to you.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at approximately 9:45 p.m. on the South Lawn 
at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Ann Gund, president, 
and Jo Carole Lauder, chair, Friends of Art and Preservation in 
Embassies (FAPE); Robin Chandler Duke and John Whitehead, cochairs, FAPE 
Millennium Project; Leonore Annenberg, chair emeritus, FAPE, and her 
husband, Walter, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom; Dorothy 
Lichtenstein, whose gift of an original painting, ``Reflections on 
Senorita 1990,'' by her late husband, artist Roy Lichtenstein, was 
unveiled at the dinner; and contemporary artist Chuck Close, whose lino 
cut entitled ``Roy'' was also unveiled at the dinner.