Viewing page 79 of 136

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

78

me pleasures and rewards beyond anything I had a right to expect when I first began to collect.

I must admit that it is difficult to set an objective 40 years ahead of the fact. I started to collect out of some personal need, and for my own pleasure. It wasn't until many years later that I began to realize that the collection had outgrown that personal need and belonged to the people. It was not an easy or a simple decision. I am now speaking of more than 40 years of expended energy and time, time taken from my business, my leisure and even from my family. Naturally, I am concerned about what happens now that these works of art, these adopted children of mine, have a new home of their own, and the Smithsonian Institution to pamper them, keep them in good health and introduce them to millions of new friends.

If I have learned one thing as a collector, it is that a contemporary collection must acquire constantly, and keep up with significant developments and new modes of expression in painting and sculpture. The artists are our guides, and we must be responsive to their creations or we will stop functioning as a living and vital contemporary Museum.  Some of the items in the collection have already been judged by time and will take their place with the masterpieces of past ages. Others are still to be judged. I refer to the works which are relatively recent and still require history's verdict. We can afford to wait. But I am thinking of the present and the future, of the art of today and tomorrow, which may be as puzzling to future generations as Picasso and