Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, passed away at the age of 100, the Carter Center in Atlanta announced on Sunday. While Carter was known for his tireless advocacy of human rights and world peace, he also left a long legacy of support for the arts and free speech.
Carter’s association with the art world began during his successful 1976 presidential campaign. That year, in an effort to position the then-Georgia governor as a new-faced progressive, the Democratic National Convention commissioned Andy Warhol to create a portrait of Carter at his home (and peanut farm) in the quiet city of Plains. Warhol painted three portraits, but they were photo collages jimmy carter i The book was sold in print form to raise funds for the campaign.
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After Carter became president in 1977, he invited five American artists, including Warhol, to the White House for the opening of the “Inaugural Impressions” exhibition, which included works commissioned for Carter’s inauguration. Other artists include Jacob Lawrence, Jamie Wyeth, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. The works are also sold as a limited-edition collection to raise funds for the inaugural committee and to cover the costs of keeping the Washington museum open during inaugural week.
In 1978, Carter signed a bill doubling the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). He also unveiled the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, designed by the famous modernist architect I.M. Pei. At the time, Carter called the expansion an “architectural masterpiece.”
It was in that speech that Carter most clearly articulated his vision of the relationship between art and the public sector in America. He noted that while the NGA is “sustained by public funds,” the museum “owes its existence to private philanthropy” and that its acquisitions were “funded entirely by private donations.” He further noted that his support for the NEA has largely come in the form of “challenge grants,” in which government funds are matched with private donations.
“In an open society like ours, the relationship between government and the arts is necessarily delicate,” he said. “We have no Ministry of Culture in this country, and I hope we never will. We have no official arts in this country, and I pray we never will. No matter how democratic a government is, no matter how responsive it is to the wishes of the people, the role of government can never be precisely defined. is good, true or beautiful.”
The vision of public and private funding working together remains the dominant model for arts institutions across the United States.
Also in 1978, Carter signed the Omnibus Employment and Training Act Amendments, which revised and expanded a Nixon-era program that employed more than 10,000 artists in the federal government during its active period. At its peak in 1980, it injected $300 million into the U.S. cultural sector through grants to local arts nonprofits.
In 1980, during his final year in office, Carter signed a bill authorizing the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was ultimately designed by architect Maya Lin, who won a design competition as an undergraduate at Yale University. In that piece, two black granite walls are engraved with the names of Americans who died in the Vietnam War, which Carter campaigned on promising to move the country past.
In his later years, Carter began to engage in oil painting and furniture making. Last year, the Carter Center, which he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded after leaving office, sold one of his 2013 bald eagle paintings for $225,000 as part of an annual fundraiser.
