A Wrye Vision: Arts Importance in Society

“I believe that art (painting, music, sculpture, and literature) is the most important manifestation of human culture. It is art, ‘the finer things of life’, that makes any human activity seem worthwhile. It is though the cultural heritage of the past (that) today’s man thinks himself as a civilized being… There must be art, no culture has ever existed without it that has deserved to be called a civilization. There must be art, and to make arts there must be artists… I feel that art in galleries is lost to many people who would benefit otherwise if they could be induced to consider art as one of the basic elements of all societies.”

– Zimmerman in a letter to his parents from Paris, France, March 18, 1952