[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 22 (Monday, June 1, 1998)]
[Pages 971-973]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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

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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 Prostestants 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 communist or the anti-communist world 
provided all of us a sort of comfortable identify, 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

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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; Lee 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.