Before the Members of the School Art League
at the
Brooklyn Museum, November 20th.

It is a great pleasure to be facing so large a group of young
girls, the future mothers of our nation, to speak to them on a sub-
ject so essential to the _life of a nation_.

I wonder if you have realized the importance of art in a commu-
nity, or through your history lessons have realized that a nation lives
longest through its arts - therefore unless we, as a nation, become
conscious of this, we, as a nation, will die.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a young mother,
who had in my judgment one of the most remarkable attitudes towards
her children. She asked me to come and talk to them on Modern Art
away out in China, for she said "I am trying to bring them up to
realize that it is their responsibility that the art of their genera-
tion does not suffer".

An artist must have an audience, as well as a singer, a poet or
a writer. When Emerson wrote his beautiful poem about Rhodora in the
Woods, he emphasized that the value of it was that the selfsame Power
that brought forth the beauty of this flower had also brought him there
to value it.

Rhodora ! If the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why thou wert there, oh, rival of the rose
I never thought to ask - I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance supposed
The selfsame Power that brought me there brought you.

- 2 -

We had a remarkable illustration of the revival of interest in a
nation, which seemed dead to us, when two years ago the tomb of Tut-
An-Kamen was unearthed in Egypt and its wonders revealed to the twenti-
eth century. Egypt, from being an absolutely dead country to the
average American, suddenly became of front page importance and for no
other reason than because of its art.

We are passing through a very dangerous period for art in American
history, for we are facing a curious situation and that is the audacity
of a group of people who call themselves interior decorators, proclaim-
ing that art should not enter the home, that it is no longer chic to
have pictures on the wall.

I have traveled around the world and visited many countries, I have
been to South America as well and I know no country where a group of
people could be so audacious as are our present day home decorators.

Unless we, as a nation, value art, we will not live. Unless we, as
individuals, live with art, we cannot understand it. For art is a silent
language of the eyes and through the eyes opens long vistas to the soul.
If you shut out art from the home you are killing one of the most vital
arteries of life for the nation.

Can you imagine a group of people saying that we will have no music
in the home. All phonograph records, all music received over the radio,
all pianos, violins, guitars etc. are not to be in the home any longer,
for it is bad form, bad taste - therefore, it must be banished. We would
think them mad. And yet that is exactly what is happening to the art of
painting and sculpture to-day.

Therefore, the work which Miss Newcomb is doing in bringing you to
the Museums to see what is being done and to awaken your interest is, in