“Parks are works of art just as a painting or sculpture is.”
“Great art should be shown with great excitement.”
“My address book of dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers, agents, runners and the peculiar assortment of art hangers-on was longer than anyone else’s in the field.”
“My heavily-cleverly disguised low self-regard manifested itself in my constant showing off, my addiction for publicity, and my intolerable ‘me-me-me’ attitudes and actions. But it’s done, isn’t it? And no one can really change, can they? And, hey, it has been a lot of fun being the life-long irresponsible, snarky, nasty art scamp.”
“The ‘Artful Tommy’ will never change – and perhaps shouldn’t.”
“If you don’t work yourself up into a fever of greed and covetousness in an art museum, you’re just not doing the job.”
“When I became director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was stodgy, gray, run by elitists. I said, ‘Hey, let’s kick the thing around.’ I wanted to attract young people to the museum. I said, ‘Make it hospitable. I want them to come. I want them to make dates, pick up girls, pick up boys – either way; I don’t care.’”
“No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.”
“Utopia would mean a park – some large, some small – every four or five blocks.”
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