Neil MacGregor Quotes

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

Shouldn't a great museum foster serious seeing before all else?

Art is the ultimate luxury good, but one that can make you think, give a you a blast of beauty and enhance your life. Even if the work's made of plasticine.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

People who look at Greek statues never say it's a shame because they're not complete.

Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.

What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended.

Art matters.

The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.

So, in other words, how you respond to a sculpture, how a viewer sees the sculpture, is vital.

Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

Art evokes emotion. It doesn't have to be a thing of beauty.

Museums are not normally presenting the works on the walls as provocations to work. It's more like going to a Jacuzzi.

You have to be careful when you use beauty as a guide. There are many theories people didn't think were beautiful at the time but did find beautiful later - and vice versa.

The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.

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.