Monuments of the coming future,
you advance on us by yourselves.
I hear the cast-iron tread.
I hear the voice of bronze.
There can be no rebuilding
without rebuilding memory,
and without rebuilding monuments
to those who built us.
Now is your time, monuments,
the time of honest marble.
(Yevgeny Yevtushenko)
Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed. (Helen Keller)
Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country - (Robert Hewison)
History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy - (Robert Smithson)
