David Rockefeller

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the current economic recession, which is particularly powerful in New York City, have put a number of building plans on hold for the time being.

I hope the Guggenheim plan will be revived.

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past.

I can only say that I have had a wonderful life.

You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.

MoMA is doubling its space, and I decided to raise the money for it.

Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

Bad artists imitate, great artists steal.

She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.

An artist can only be evaluated after he’s dead. At the 11th hour he might do something that will eclipse everything else.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past.

There is nothing new… everything has roots in the past.

Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of…recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it.

I hope the Guggenheim plan will be revived.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

The essence of all Art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band and jump in a river holding hands.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

There’s no collection that has a better representation of post-war American art than David Geffen’s.