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AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS
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32nd ANNUAL NANCY HANKS LECTURE ON ARTS AND PUBLIC POLICY
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MONDAY MARCH 4, 2019
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The Lecture was held in the Concert Hall at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington, D.C., at 6:30 p.m.
PRESENT
ROBERT LYNCH, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts
SONIA SOTOMAYOR, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL, Performing Artist
RITA MORENO, Lecturer
JULIE MURACO, Chairman, Board of Directors,
Americans for the Arts
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
2 6:30 p.m.
3 MR. LYNCH: Good evening, everyone.
4 I want to welcome you all to Americans for the
5 Arts' 32nd Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and
6 public policy.
7 I'm Bob Lynch, President and CEO of
8 Americans for the Arts, and I want to thank you
9 for joining us here tonight.
10 (Applause)
11 Was that my mother who started that?
12 For joining us here tonight at the John F.
13 Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
14 We are joined on this auspicious
15 occasion by several Members of Congress,
16 including Representatives Suzanne Bonamici, David
17 Cicilline, Betty McCollum, Chellie Pingree, and
18 Carol Miller, as well as the Head of the National
19 Endowment for the Arts, Mary Anne Carter, and
20 the Head of the National Endowment for the
21 Humanities, John Peede.
22 Thank you for all being here.
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1 Several Members of the Americans for
2 the Arts Artists Committee are also with us
3 tonight, including opera singer Carla Dirlikov
4 Canales; musician Ben Folds; and Tony-award-winning
5 Broadway star Bryan Stokes Mitchell, who will
6 also be performing on stage this evening.
7 We are so pleased that they're all
8 here with us tonight but also all year round to
9 help advance our mission to educate and promote
10 the value of the arts as core to our society and
11 as the essence of our individual creative spirit.
12 In order to achieve that vision, we
13 realized that we needed to help the general
14 public better understand the ways, the multiple
15 ways, that the arts touch every aspect of their
16 lives.
17 And as a result, last year Americans
18 for the Arts unveiled its, I think, engaging and
19 very easy-to-use tool called the Arts and Social
20 Impact Explorer. 21
22 This award-winning interactive online
23 tool on the AmericansForTheArts.org website draws
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1 together over 1000 data-points on how the arts
2 integrate into and impact community life by
3 showing a full range of how the arts support
4 traditional non-arts sectors.
5 For instance, you can read about how
6 arts therapy programs are assisting veterans
7 recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder,
8 or how urban neighborhoods dedicated as arts
9 districts are economically and visually
10 revitalizing previously blighted downtown areas
11 and infusing them with energy and jobs.
12 The Arts and Social Impact Explorer
13 tool includes detailed citations of the research
14 data documenting the effectiveness of the arts
15 programs along with vivid stories of how local
16 projects are making an impact in many different
17 areas.
18 Because the truth is that the arts
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5 19 offer opportunities for creative solutions, from
20 better education to greater health outcomes, to a
21 more civically engaged citizenry.
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1 It's just that people don't always see
2 the connection to the arts, decision-makers don't
3 always see that connection, and they don't
4 necessarily see that the arts made change happen.
5 So, what's the goal? The goal is to
6 provide local, state, and federal decision-makers
7 and arts leaders with the information and
8 research that they need on the spot, that moment,
9 to make that impact visible and to encourage
10 deeper investment in the arts through pro-arts
11 policies and public and private funding.
12 We want you to use it often and well
13 and in ways that surprise and open up
14 opportunities to advance the arts in your
15 community or your state, or in this nation.
16 I am very honored to share that
17 Americans for the Arts and the Arts Action Fund were
18 recognized nationally with the 2019 Public Affairs
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19 Counsel Innovation Award because of the innovation,
20 advocacy, and policy work that we are doing with the
21 Arts and Social Impact Explorer.
22 (Applause)
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1 Thanks for the hardworking staff that
2 did it and the hardworking Board that enabled it
3 so thank you for that.
4 In addition to collecting and
5 documenting great research data and compelling
6 art stories, we also regularly gauge the pulse of
7 what Americans think about the arts through
8 public opinion polls.
9 It not only gives us insight but it
10 also measures whether we're moving the needle in
11 the right direction to advance the arts across
12 America.
13 In 2018, Americans for the Arts
14 interviewed 3000 people and released one of the
15 largest national public opinion surveys of
16 American perceptions and attitudes towards the
17 arts and art funding, entitled Americans Speak
18 Out About The Arts.
19 And so what did we learn? We learned
20 that the great majority of Americans continue to
21 be highly engaged in the arts, the great
22 majority, believe more strongly than ever that
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1 the arts promote personal wellbeing and agree
2 that the arts help us understand other cultures.
3 We know that they are essential to a
4 well-rounded education because a huge number, 90
5 percent, of the public believes that. And they
6 further believe that government has an important
7 role in funding the arts.
8 As many of you know, tomorrow is Arts
9 Advocacy Day and Americans for the Arts will be
10 highlighting the top-line findings of this
11 national survey.
12 And this will be done in ads that are
13 being placed in key newspaper here in Washington
14 that decision-makers will take a look at.
15 And our message is simple, the arts
16 transform communities, and more specifically, 86
17 percent of Americans believe that the arts are
18 good for the economy and support jobs.
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19 94 percent of Americans believe that
20 the arts should be taught in K-12 education.
21 (Applause)
22 And 72 percent of Americans across the
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1 country across sectors believe that the arts
2 unify us regardless of race, age, or ethnicity.
3 So here's the bottom line, we are quite simply
4 better people with the arts in our lives.
5 We are healthier, we're more creative,
6 and we're more actively engaged citizens who feel
7 better about today and more optimistic about
8 tomorrow.
9 In a society struggling to find equity
10 and social justice, Americans understand that
11 even in challenging times, the arts make our
12 communities healthier and stronger, and more
13 unified.
14 And with that spirit of unity,
15 Americans for the Arts has worked to promote more
16 equitable access to a full creative life for all
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17 people since its inception, some almost 60 years
18 ago in 1960.
19 While the type of work may have varied
20 over time, our commitment to equity, diversity,
21 and inclusion has not. Our commitment was shaped
22 by the strong guidance of early Board Members
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1 Judy Baca and Harry Belafonte and Ralph Ellison
2 and Billy Taylor, who was on our Board and who
3 was a previous Hanks lecturer.
4 Ellison, who in 1968 was the first
5 artist to join our Board, famously said America
6 is woven of many strands, I would recognize them
7 and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one
8 and yet many.
9 That strong Board guidance has
10 continued through the years. In 2016, the
11 Americans for the Arts Board of Directors pushed
12 further and unanimously adopted a more specific
13 strategic and long-time commitment to cultural
14 equity.
15 We are committed to championing
16 policies and practices of cultural equity that
17 empower a just, inclusive, equitable nation
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14 18 through the arts.
19 We are also actively encouraging our
20 local and state member organizations across
21 America to adopt similar cultural equity policies
22 in both their programming and their grant-making
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1 within their communities. And that work is going
2 on very, very well as I see it across the
3 country.
4 But we also know that it's important
5 to showcase great leaders of cultural equity to
6 advance the arts, and that is just one reason why
7 we are so thrilled to be presenting the
8 incomparable Rita Moreno tonight.
9 We've had the honor of working with
10 her a bit in the past and honoring her once
11 before, along with the United States Conference
12 of Mayors. An absolute trailblazer for women,
13 Hispanic heritage, and the arts.
14 And you know what? Groundbreaking
15 policies don't happen without risk-taking leaders
16 behind them, like Rita Moreno.
17 At Americans for the Arts we seek out
18 those leaders and we support them, and perhaps
19 more importantly, we make sure that their own
20 constituents, or using today's lexicon, their
21 followers, understand the importance of what they
22 do as well.
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1 For instance, last week we wanted to
2 showcase another great arts leader, Congresswoman
3 Chellie Pingree of Maine who is here with us
4 tonight.
5 Congresswoman Pingree last year
6 graciously agreed to fill the very big shoes left
7 behind by the sudden passing of the legendary
8 Congresswoman, Louise Slaughter. Louise was a
9 powerhouse who founded and led the Congressional
10 Arts Caucus on Capitol Hill for over 20 years.
11 So, we got together last week with
12 local and state arts leaders in Maine like Julie
13 Richards, Head of the State Arts Council in
14 Maine, to host a meeting about the arts with
15 Congresswoman Pingree.
16 And to commemorate the moment, we took
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17 17 out a full-page color ad in the A Section in the
18 Sunday edition of Maine's largest newspaper to
19 showcase and thank her for stepping into this new
20 role as the Head of the Congressional Arts
21 Caucus.
22 A round of applause for Chellie
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1 Pingree, please.
2 (Applause)
3 I mentioned earlier that tomorrow is
4 Arts Advocacy Day. Advocacy efforts take
5 collaboration and I'd like to recognize our 85
6 national partners, our 50 state captains, our 500
7 grassroots registrants who have flown in from
8 every corner of the country.
9 You can't read all the names up there
10 but you can see the back page of our Arts
11 Advocacy Day Handbook filled with their names,
12 and also our Board of Directors, who have worked
13 hard with us right now.
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1 And I'd like to ask all of these
2 amazing Arts Advocacy Day participants in the
3 audience to please now stand and be recognized.
4 (Applause)
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19 5 Thank you and good luck tomorrow. And
6 now, before we begin tonight's lecture program,
7 please join me in thanking the sponsors who
8 helped make this evening possible.
9 First, long-time supporter and
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1 Americans for the Arts Board Member, Nancy
2 Stephens, who chairs the Rosenthal Family
3 Foundation and chairs our Americans for the Arts
4 Action Fund, along with Ovation, the nation's
5 only television arts network, and finally, two
6 local sponsors the Max and Victoria Dreyfus
7 Family foundation as well as Newmark, Knight, and
8 Frank.
9 Thank you to them.
10 (Applause)
11 And thank you to all of you for being
12 here tonight.
13 So now, to begin tonight's program, we
14 kick things off with an artistic performance by
15 Tony-award-winning actor and singer and Americans
16 for the Arts Board Member, Brian Stokes Mitchell.
17 Stokes, as he prefers to be called,
18 has been dubbed the last leading man by New York
19 Times. He enjoys a rich and varied career on
20 Broadway, in television and film, along with
21 appearances in America's greatest concert halls.
22 His musical versatility has kept him
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1 in demand by some of the country's finest
2 conductors and orchestras. In 2005, he debuted
3 Pulitzer-prize-winning composer, David Del
4 Tredici's Rip Van Winkle with the National
5 Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard
6 Slatkin.
7 He has been invited to the White House
8 many times, including performances for Presidents
9 Clinton and Obama. His Broadway career is rich
10 and vast.
11 He won a Tony and Drama Desk Award for
12 best actor in a musical for his iconic
13 performance in Kiss Me Kate. He's also earned
14 several Tony nominations for Man of La Mancha,
15 ragtime, and August Wilson's King Hedley II.
16 In 2000, Stokes returned to Broadway
17 after a seven-year absence to do concerts, film,
18 and television. The show was Lincoln Center
19 Theater's production of Women on the Verge of a
20 Nervous Breakdown, which also starred Patti
21 Lupone.
22 In 1998, he joined the likes of Helen
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1 Hayes, Sir John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, and James
2 Earl Jones when he became the sole recipient of
3 that year's distinguished performance award from
4 the Drama League, the nation's oldest theatrical
5 honor, for his performance in Ragtime.
6 Numerous film and television
7 appearances include his roles on Glee, One Last
8 Thing, recurring roles of Crossing Jordan, and
9 Frasier, PBS Great Performances, DreamWorks, the
10 Prince of Egypt, and his presidential debut in
11 the Singer in the Rain at the White House.
12 In May of 2011, he appeared in the
13 film Jumping the Broom playing opposite Angela
14 Bassett for the second time. He continues to
15 perform in concerts all over the United States
16 when he's not busy visiting Capitol Hill for us.
17 Stokes works closely with multiple
18 charitable organizations from the March of Dimes
19 to the USO.
20 In addition to that and to serving on
21 the Americans for the Arts Board of Directors,
22 Stokes is currently serving his 14th term as
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1 Chairman of the Board of a great organization,
2 The Actors Fund. And he received the 2016
3 Isabelle Stevenson Award at the Tony Awards
4 ceremony in honor of his service to the arts.
5 So this evening, Stokes will perform
6 three songs and he'll be accompanied by the
7 wonderfully talented Tedd Firth on piano.
8 Brian Stokes Mitchell.
9 (Performance)
10 MR. STOKES MITCHELL: Thank you so
11 much, good evening.
12 I am feeling good tonight, definitely.
13 I hope you're feeling good too, I feel good to be
14 down here at this time with fellow arts makers
15 and creators and supporters.
16 And I'm glad we're all here together
17 at the same time and in the same space trying to
18 do something, put some good food into the world,
19 help out the arts a little bit. So thank you all
20 so much for being here and being a part of this.
21 (Applause)
22 I've been doing this for a very long
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1 time now and the one thing I think keeps coming
2 back to me is what a collaborative endeavor the
3 arts all are.
4 It's really obvious when you see a
5 movie or a TV show or a Broadway show, there's
6 hundreds and hundreds of other artists and non-
7 artists as well that are collaborating to make
8 that art happen.
9 But it even happens on a smaller
10 scale, even the painter is collaborating with the
11 canvas maker and the paint-maker and the arts
12 dealer. The arts involve so many, so many
13 different people seen and unseen.
14 I'm just very happy that I am being
15 seen here and I'd like to re-introduce my pianist
16 collaborator for a long time and great friend Mr.
17 Tedd Firth on piano, a great artist.
18 And for a singer, the unseen
19 collaborators are many. We have lighting people,
20 sound people, all the crew that make this happen
21 as well and are part of this wonderful space
22 here.
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1 But also the songwriters, of course.
2 That last song was written by Anthony Newley and
3 Leslie Bricusse. The next song I'm going to do,
4 my unseen collaborator, my songwriter, is a
5 gentleman by the name of Mr. Stephen Sondheim, a
6 few of you might know that name.
7 And the song I'm going to sing,
8 though, is a song that probably very few of you
9 know. It's a song that actually he wrote about
10 35 years ago and it was cut from a show that he
11 was working on then.
12 But one of the reasons I wanted to do
13 this song tonight, I just kind of discovered it
14 myself only about a year ago, is because it's a
15 patriotic song but it's a patriotic song coming
16 from the mind of Steve Sondheim so you know
17 that's going to be interesting.
18 But also I think if Steve Sondheim
19 were asked today to write a patriotic song for
20 today, for what's going on not only in the world
21 but particularly in our country, I think this is
22 exactly the song that he would write.
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1 And it tells us also and reconnects
2 us, and reminds me, how the arts can reconnect us
3 to our beliefs, our passion, and is something
4 that we may have lost touch with.
5 (Performance)
6 Steve Sondheim, what an incredible
7 artist, right? That could have been written
8 yesterday. Doesn't it make you feel good?
9 It's about feeling good today, that's
10 what we're here for, so we can pass some of that
11 on tomorrow especially.
12 I was having a hard time deciding what
13 to sing as the third song, and final song, for
14 this and I kind of kept going back and forth.
15 And then Ms. Rita Moreno happened to walk on
16 stage and I said, hey, what would you like to
17 hear?
18 And I could sing this or this or this,
19 and she said, oh, sing that one. So, I'm going
20 to sing “that one” and it's actually two songs.
21 One is from a show I did called Ragtime. Thank
22 you.
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1 The other one is a song that everybody
2 knows and likely I've liked to combine these two
3 songs together because they are essentially both
4 songs of hope.
5 It's the song that Coalhouse Walker
6 sings when he holds his child in his arms for the
7 very, very first time, and instead of being
8 filled with fear and trepidation, he's filled
9 with hope, he's filled with this vision for what
10 the future could be.
11 And at that time, his future didn't
12 look too good, actually, back then when it took
13 place in the early part of the last century. So
14 it's what I love about art too, art has this
15 magical quality to make us hope, to put us in
16 touch with something kind of special.
17 Like I said about the flag song, it
18 puts us in touch with something that we might
19 have felt that we have lost.
20 So I'm going to leave you with these
21 two favorite songs of hope of mine, and take it
22 out with you when you leave this place as well.
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1 Wherever you go, take it to your
2 families, your neighborhood, your work and spread
3 that joy or spread that feeling, spread that hope
4 if you feel it as well.
5 (Performance)
6 Mr. Tedd Firth. God bless, thank you
7 so much for being here.
8 MR. LYNCH: Okay, wow. He's our Board
9 Member. Thank you, Stokes, and thank you, Tedd,
10 for that spectacular performance and gift to all
11 of us here.
12 And now I am extremely honored to
13 welcome a friend of Rita's who also just happens
14 to be an Associate Justice on the United States
15 Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born
16 -- yes, even the name --
17 (Applause)
18 She was born in the Bronx (Applause)
19 to Puerto Rican parents (Applause)
20 appointed by President Barack Obama in
21 2009. (Applause)
22 Justice Sotomayor has the
23 distinction of being the first Hispanic Supreme
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24 Court Associate Justice. (Applause)
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1 In 1976, Justice Sotomayor earned a B.A.
2 from Princeton university, where she graduated
3 summa cum laude and received the university's
4 highest academic honor.
5 In 1979 she earned her Juris Doctorate
6 from Yale Law School, where she served as an
7 editor of the Yale Law Review, the Yale law
8 journal.
9 And in 1991 President George H.W. Bush
10 nominated her to the United States District Court
11 for the Southern District of New York, which
12 she's served on for six years.
13 In addition to her stellar legal
14 career, Justice Sotomayor is an author of two
15 books, Turning Pages: My Life Story, and My
16 Beloved World.
17 She not only appreciates the literary
18 arts, but she can be regularly spotted at
19 performing arts events and museums.
20 She even has a magnet school in Los
21 Angeles named after her as the Sonia Sotomayor
22 Center for Arts and Sciences.
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1 (Applause)
2 To introduce her friend, Rita Moreno,
3 please join me in now welcoming friend of the
4 arts, great friend to America, Supreme Court
5 Justice Sotomayor.
6 (Applause)
7 MS. SOTOMAYOR: (Spanish spoken: “Esperó que hay mas de un aquí.”
8 Thank you, Bob, for your kind welcome and
9 thank you to Americans for the Arts for
10 hosting this wonderful event. I will be dreaming
11 about those songs tonight.
12 Stokes and Tedd, that was just an
13 extraordinary performance. But we're here for a
14 very special reason, it's to honor and learn from
15 a dear friend and role model of mine, Rita
16 Moreno.
17 Rita's achievements as an actress and
18 a performer are numerous, and they are dazzling.
19 Over the course of her vibrant career, she has
20 captivated audiences in countless films, plays,
21 and TV shows.
22 She danced with Gene Kelly in Singing
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1 in the Rain, she shared a steamy screen kiss with
2 Marlon Brando -- it was a real kiss. She
3 cavorted with Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show, she
4 made audiences laugh in The Ritz, and helped
5 children learn on The Electric Company.
6 And she brought home an Oscar, the
7 first ever awarded to a Latina actress for her
8 iconic portrayal of Anita in West Side Story. I
9 was seven when I saw that film and I remember
10 still how brilliant she was.
11 By the way, she did not stop with that
12 Oscar, she went on to win a Tony, a Grammy, and
13 two Emmys. That makes her one of only 15
14 quadruple threat stars ever to win that coveted
15 combination, which I am told is known as E.G.O.T.
16 When she was awarded the Presidential
17 Medal of Freedom in 2004 and a Kennedy Center
18 Honor in 2015, she joined an even more exclusive
19 club. Only two people have ever achieved all
20 six.
21 I will let you guess the other but Bob
22 Lynch mentioned one of the others' name. How is
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1 all that for a career? At 87 she shows no signs
2 of quitting with a hit show on Netflix, One Day
3 at a Time, and a movie in the works.
4 I have my share of life-tenured
5 colleagues but even I am amazed by Rita's
6 tireless devotion to her craft. As we recognize
7 tonight, however, Rita is much, much, much more
8 than a star, she is also a guiding light.
9 For more than half of a century now,
10 Rita has broken barriers, advocated for equality,
11 and supported causes and communities dear to her
12 heart.
13 She has always had the imagination to
14 see possibilities others did not, and the grit
15 and determination to make dreams reality.
16 As a child she found her talents
17 acting on Broadway and dancing under the
18 instructor who taught Rita Hayworth, whose name
19 she adopted when show business beckoned.
20 Back when the big studios called all
21 the shots and there were no Latina role models in
22 Hollywood, she dared to imagine herself as a
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1 Puerto Rican version of her icon, Elizabeth
2 Taylor. With talent and tenacity, she got her
3 foot in the door. Now, Hollywood in the 1950s
4 was a tough place to be a trailblazer.
5 At first, the roles available to Rita
6 were mostly one-dimensional stereotypes, sexy
7 Latina spitfires -- she was very good at that --
8 and generic ethnic damsels.
9 Complex characters and leading roles
10 were reserved for others, but she soon found ways
11 out of those boxes and into the conversation, and
12 she cultivated courage along the way.
13 When asked to cut her curly, black
14 hair for Singing in the Rain, she had the
15 chutzpah to respond, “I don't cut my hair, Mr.
16 Kelly.”
17 Acting alongside Marlon Brando
18 hastened her professional and personal growth,
19 and Brando's bravado for underdogs inspired Rita,
20 no stranger to discrimination, to use her
21 celebrity to raise awareness for civil rights and
22 political causes.
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1 (Applause)
2 She advocated for Native Americans,
3 she was one of a contingent of stars who lent
4 their statute to the March on Washington, and she
5 sat just a few feet from Martin Luther King
6 Junior as he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
7 Westside Story was a professional
8 turning point. Even though the film was all
9 about the lives of New York Puerto Ricans, the
10 leading roles of Tony and Maria were played by
11 non-Latinos.
12 But Rita stole the show. She threw
13 herself into the role of Anita and, according to
14 Rita, the first Hispanic character she was able
15 to play with dignity and a sense of self-respect.
16 Her performance and the Oscar that it
17 earned her were game-changers, but this being the
18 1960s, the professional opportunities that
19 followed her triumph often remain disappointingly
20 familiar.
21 She didn't get any offers in the
22 United States. She had to go abroad to perform.
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1 She was regularly typecast in Hollywood into one-
2 dimensional roles in movies about Hispanic gangs
3 and urban prostitutes.
4 Rather than cash in the easy way, she
5 sacrificed, insisting on dignified and
6 challenging roles. She also became a voice for
7 change in the industry, decrying what she labeled
8 “Hollywood Jim Crowism.”
9 Rita's film career undoubtedly took a
10 small hit for her principles but she set a
11 valuable example for the next generation. Latina
12 actresses no longer have to re-imagine being
13 Elizabeth Taylor to picture themselves on the big
14 screen.
15 Jennifer Lopez has said that watching
16 beautiful strong Puerto Rican Rita Moreno made
17 her feel that anything was possible. A
18 principled pioneer showed that little girl that
19 she had a place.
20 She gave me the courage to imagine
21 myself in impossible places. Rita never stopped
22 branching out. She satirized that tired, old,
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1 spitfire stereotype on her own terms as Googie
2 Gomez in The Ritz.
3 She became an educator and
4 spokeswoman, she wrote a poignant and insightful
5 autobiography, and entered the streaming world with
6 her current Netflix show.
7 And I can't help but add with pride,
8 a few years ago she narrated the audio tape of my
9 own memoir. Through that process, I have made a
10 dear friend. It's hard not to love Rita once you
11 know her and her great generosity of spirit.
12 Rita also has never stopped giving
13 back. Her work with charitable and civic causes
14 over the decades is too extensive to list, but
15 let me briefly mention just a few near to my
16 heart.
17 She has raised awareness about Type 2
18 diabetes, which is unfortunately all too
19 prevalent in the Hispanic community. She has done
20 extensive public service including working with
21 the National Endowment for the Arts, and she has
22 inspired and educated both young children and
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1 young adults, particularly minority students
2 pursuing higher education.
3 And do you remember I mentioned that
4 she has an upcoming movie? It's a remake of West
5 Side Story, this time with Latino actors in the
6 lead roles.
7 (Applause)
8 That is one small indication of the
9 strides Rita helped us make towards a more
10 inclusive world by working and advocating
11 tirelessly throughout her career to make that new
12 world a reality.
13 Now, I want to thank her and I think
14 all of you should join me. I'm a horrible singer
15 but I'm going to try my hand at something from
16 her Netflix show.
17 (Sings in Spanish: “Dalé Rita, Dalé! Dalé Rita, Dalé! Cómo a hecho toda tu vida”)
18 Come on out, Rita.
19 (Applause)
20 MS. MORENO: Wait a minute, I just
21 have to say I need to say my thank you, Seňora
22 Justicia, and you said something that really
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1 shocked and alarmed me about me, about you and
2 me. Were you really seven when you saw that?
3 MS. SOTOMAYOR: Yes.
4 MS. MORENO: That's interesting. But
5 I need to say one more thing.
6 MS. SOTOMAYOR: But you were a baby
7 when you played that role.
8 MS. MORENO: Well, if you call 27 a
9 baby. And then I just want to say one more
10 thing, other than just thank you, thank you,
11 thank you.
12 But I am so thrilled that I am able to
13 stand in front of a Justice without feeling
14 guilty about anything. You knew what I was going
15 to ask her, didn't you? Wow, I'm sure you
16 thought of that.
17 Okay, they say that there's nothing
18 more American than baseball, hot dogs, and apple
19 pie. Yet, when you think of it, Germans gave us
20 frankfurters, Egyptians created pie, apple trees
21 were imported from Central Asia by way of Europe,
22 and baseball, even our national pastime, is the
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1 conflation of two English games, Rounders and
2 Cricket.
3 So what I'm really saying is that in
4 every way, we are the melting pot, a fusion of
5 the nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities that
6 make up this extraordinary stew that we call
7 America.
8 My mommy, Rosa Maria, heard that
9 America was a place that you could dream and your
10 dreams could actually come true, which is why she
11 packed a five-year-old me, Rosita Dolores
12 Alverio, along with four shopping bags, poor
13 people's matched luggage, and boarded a boat for
14 America, the ship, the SS Carabobo, translated
15 cara bobo, stupid face. I'm not kidding.
16 A ship with a name like that is not a
17 good omen. Of course, our best laid plans
18 usually end up on the floor of God's very large
19 editing room and almost as soon as we departed
20 Puerto Rico -- I knew there was one of you out
21 there, we have one Boriqua there.
22 Anyway, literally as soon as we left
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1 Puerto Rico, there were always things that
2 happened in God's editing room and almost as soon
3 as we departed, we hit a violent storm that threw
4 everyone into a state of collective panic.
5 Now, Latino people have many natural
6 talents but one area in which we particularly
7 excel is panicking. When it comes to panicking,
8 we are the envy of the world. It's part of our
9 world view.
10 We are profoundly passionate people,
11 pathologically passionate, everything in excess,
12 nothing in moderation. Where other cultures
13 believe in restraint and self-control, we believe
14 in the principle of constant combustibility.
15 When in doubt, flip out.
16 And so we spent that storm-tossed
17 passage to New York clinging to each other and
18 our four shopping bags, and it wasn't until the
19 morning of the sixth day that our voyage ended in
20 the safety of New York Harbor.
21 And suddenly, I look up and I see this
22 enormous green lady shooting straight up from the
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1 middle of the ocean to the very top of the sky,
2 wearing some kind of crown on her head and
3 holding out a huge flaming ice cream cone.
4 Mommy, “Quién es esa seňora tan grande?”
5 And my mommy tells me that lady is a
6 very special lady, that she is inviting everyone
7 from around the world to come to America, to come
8 and live here, to come and be citizens of Los
9 Estados Unidos, especialmente people who are
10 pobres, cansados, hambrientos, sin hogar -- poor,
11 tired, hungry, and homeless.
12 We are definitely overqualified, but
13 when I look up at that big green lady's face, all
14 I can think is, oh my goodness, a lady runs this
15 country.
16 So there you have it, two more
17 immigrants fleeing the poverty of a beloved
18 homeland no longer able to sustain them, welcomed
19 to America by a Frenchman's work of art, given
20 voice by the poetry of a Sephardic Jew.
21 “Not like the brazen giant of Greek
22 fame, here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall
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1 stand a mighty woman with a torch. Mother of
2 exiles, give me your tired, your poor, your
3 huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the
4 wretched refuse of your teeming shores, send
5 these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I
6 lift my lamp beside the golden door.” (Emma Lazarus- edited)
7 (Applause)
8 Every day of my childhood, Rosa Maria
9 walked me to school, then climbed the bus that
10 carried her from 181st Street and Wadsworth
11 Avenue to 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, the heart
12 of the garment district where every day she
13 pumped the treadle, wound the bobbins, and
14 chopped the hems.
15 That was my mommy, the sweatshop
16 seamstress. It was backbreaking work, she knew
17 the pick of every pin. It was a job, it paid the
18 rent, we just got by. She made my clothes, she
19 made my costumes. I was her little cookie.
20 She put ribbons in my hair. This was
21 art, this was her art so that I could perform at
22 every bar mitzvah or wedding reception that would
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1 book an eight-year-old artiste. She even made me
2 a headdress with bogus fruit stitched on top that
3 made me look like a little miniature Carmen
4 Miranda.
5 My mommy, the sweatshop seamstress.
6 No, my mommy, the artist. It gave her joy. It
7 gave her joy, it made her proud, my mommy.
8 Costume designer to a star, the Rita Moreno
9 before I ever was. My fame is her fame.
10 I'm reminded that it's just a short
11 walk from right here, right here, to a very
12 special place and it gives me goosebumps just
13 remembering it, thinking of it.
14 That was a place where I stood on the
15 steps of a monument, a temple, in the shadow of
16 two great men on a blistering August afternoon.
17 One, seated, chiseled in stone by the
18 hands of an immigrant father and his six Italian
19 sons; the other standing, resolved but not
20 hardened, humbled but not bowed, the furrows on
21 his brow shaped by the labor pains of immense
22 struggle, not by a sculptor's will.
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1 The first, the prophet, proclaimed
2 that “Government of the people, by the people, for
3 the people shall not perish from the earth.” (Abraham Lincoln)
4 The second, a preacher, declares “We
5 refuse to believe that the bank of justice is
6 bankrupt, we refuse to believe that there are
7 insufficient funds in the great vaults of
8 opportunity of this nation so we have come to
9 cash this check, a check that will give us upon
10 demand the riches of freedom and the security of
11 justice.” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
12 To a congregation of over 250,000
13 souls, I added my voice that day: Hallelujah.
14 That was 56 years ago. Now both prophet and
15 preacher are effigies in stone but the truths
16 they spoke still live.
17 Sometimes in life we fight so hard to
18 get where we are going, we don't look back to
19 appreciate where we've been. We are so busy
20 striving to arrive that we lose sight of the
21 waypoints, the stops and starts along the path,
22 the hills and the valleys we've navigated.
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1 To forget those places, to lose our
2 history denies us the blessing of fully living in
3 our present. I think that it robs us of our best
4 and highest future. Just don't linger there too
5 long.
6 Had it not been for a casting call
7 that fundamentally changed how I felt about
8 myself, I would never have been on those steps in
9 1963.
10 Up until that time in my career, the
11 studios had cast me to play every kind of ethnic
12 role, Polynesian girl, Indian princess, Arabian
13 girl, or any dark-skinned girl they needed.
14 I hated those parts. I now refer to
15 them as my dusky maiden roles. I had to deliver
16 lines to my white lover like, “Why you no love
17 Ula no more?”
18 (Laughter)
19 And then my character, Ula, the Indian
20 maiden is so distraught when my lover summarily
21 rejects me that I fling myself off a cliff.
22 And you know, my long-term memory
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1 kicked in as I was recalling this story to tell
2 you and I remembered that at the end of that
3 scene in the movie, the director cut to the waves
4 lapping over Ula's lifeless body on the beach at
5 the bottom of the cliff, which in reality, of
6 course, was me.
7 And in that water were thousands of
8 tiny stinging jellyfish. I'm wriggling with
9 discomfort. The director barks, “Stop twitching,
10 damn it, you're supposed to be dead.” “But, sir,
11 I'm getting stung by jellyfish.” “Shut up and do
12 what I say.”
13 And there you have it, he sees me as
14 Ula. What was in the mind of these studio
15 executives and writers? The parts they were
16 creating for young minority actresses told a
17 story.
18 These roles objectified us, they
19 almost always portrayed us as ignorant,
20 uneducated, totally passive, unable to read and
21 write and morally bankrupt, usually some white
22 man's mistress.
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1 So, you may ask how does an Indian
2 princess speak, or an Arabian girl for that
3 matter? So I think to myself what can I do to
4 make these terrible parts better?
5 We were given no dialect coaches and
6 the Directors never seemed to care so I decided
7 to solve the problem myself. I gave accents to
8 these characters that I thought they should have.
9 Well, a while back I found a couple of
10 my own movie clips on YouTube and started
11 laughing out loud because the accents I created
12 all sounded the same.
13 If she was Arabian, she sounded “like
14 this.” If she was American Indian, she sounded
15 “like this.” Hawaiian, “like this.” I had created a
16 universal ethnic accent. Not my finest hour but,
17 hey, you have to pay the bills.
18 Unbelievable that at that point in my
19 22-year career, I had yet to encounter a single
20 role model for a girl like me. They simply did
21 not exist.
22 To my absolute surprise, it was Anita
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1 in West Side Story who became my exemplar. She
2 had precisely all the qualities I so longed to
3 portray in films and desired to be a part of my
4 life and character. She had a sense of dignity
5 and of self-respect. That girl kicked ass.
6 (Applause)
7 That girl took names. I had never,
8 believe it or not, played a character, Hispanic
9 or otherwise, until then who had any of those
10 qualities ever.
11 It was Anita who taught me that I
12 could actually be a person of strength, I could
13 choose what was best for me, I could chart the
14 course of my career. Come to think of it, I was
15 at the march that day because of an artistic
16 encounter.
17 I learned that I could engage my
18 energies in things that matter, I understood I
19 was part of a much bigger picture and I decided
20 to shoulder my part of the responsibility to help
21 others, or at the very least to raise awareness.
22 And as Sonia told you, I'm 87 now and
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1 in the third act of my life but that hasn't
2 changed me one bit.
3 (Applause)
4 Tonight in this sanctuary of the arts
5 we celebrate, tomorrow we charge the Hill.
6 That's it. And we say open the vaults of
7 opportunity for all people and cash some checks
8 for the arts.
9 Now, it's usually at this point when
10 someone raises their hand and says, come on,
11 Rita, why should the government do for people
12 what the government can do for themselves? Hey,
13 listen, you did well enough on your own. You and
14 your mommy made it just fine.
15 After all, the arts have become the
16 foie gras of the elite. They're for coast-
17 dwellers, California, New York, Hollywood,
18 Broadway.
19 Yeah, right. Tell that to every
20 parent all over this country that's worked a bake
21 sale, held a car wash, sold a raffle ticket or
22 worked a silent auction, to travel a choir, stage
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1 a play, equip an orchestra or uniform a band.
2 They get it, the people get it, that the arts are
3 a critical part of education, of personal
4 development.
5 (Applause)
6 Education, personal development,
7 social development, and not just for their own
8 little Johnny. The arts build a community with
9 a capital C and it rhymes with D and that's
10 stands for dough.
11 The arts need dollars, moolah, green
12 backs, bread, smackers, lettuce, benjamins.
13 Organizations like Americans for the Arts are
14 critical for shaking the trees and all of us need
15 to help advocates on the Hill like Congresswoman
16 Bonamici and Stefanik of the Congressional STEAM
17 Caucus to turn a trickle of arts education funding
18 into a river.
19 (Applause)
20 It is public funding of the arts that
21 first made programs addressing early childhood
22 development possible on television. Think PBS,
23 Mr. Rogers, I did that show as a guest once, The
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1 Electric Company.
2 Do you know that when my show business
3 colleagues found out I was offered The Electric
4 Company, they were alarmed? Don't do it, Rita.
5 You go on a children's television show and you'll
6 never work as an adult again.
7 It happened to a lot of actors.
8 Education, teaching kids to read in an
9 entertaining way and on television? What a high
10 calling.
11 Sometimes your heart tells you to take
12 a risk. Mine did and so I took it. And for the
13 next five years, those were some of the most
14 fulfilling and my happiest.
15 Listen to this, I love this. Even my
16 husband's Tanta Shirley learned how to read
17 because of The Electric Company. She said to me
18 one day, she called me and she said, “Rita,
19 darling, I'm reading from a can of peas.”
20 She called me from the supermarket.
21 In that wonderful season of my career, I also had
22 a whole new set of fans.
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1 One time I was having dinner at
2 Sardi's in New York City and I had to go powder
3 my nose.
4 So there I am sitting on the commode
5 with my knickers to my knees when this tiny
6 little gentleman wearing a three-piece suit and
7 tie appears looking up at me from the opening
8 below the stall door.
9 “Hi.” “Well, hello, hello there.” Hey,
10 you guys. That's right, that's certainly true.
11 And at that point, thank goodness, his mother
12 rushes in, apparently frantic, and she says,
13 “Jordy, there you are, come on.”
14 And as he's leaving he says, “I can
15 wash my hands.” He was so cute, three-piece suit,
16 tiny little tiny man.
17 Another time I was going up the
18 escalator at Bloomingdale's and a little girl is
19 staring at me while she's holding her mommy's
20 hand all the way to the top, just staring at me.
21 And when I step off, she's still
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1 staring and she says, “electric cup of tea.” And I
2 said, “That's right, honey.” And then she says,
3 “How did you get out?”
4 (Laughter)
5 I was just charmed and I tried the
6 best way I could to explain in a way that perhaps
7 a little girl could understand.
8 And I said, well, honey, you see,
9 there is a big room with bright lights called a
10 studio and they have a camera, like when your
11 mommy takes pictures of you but only this is a
12 big camera and it takes pictures that move.
13 And they take pictures of me and then
14 they send the pictures on a special telephone
15 wire to a big antenna up on the hill that sends
16 the pictures to your TV in your house, and you
17 see the picture of me in the box.
18 “But how did you get out?”
19 Great art is powerful, it's
20 transcendent, it lifts beyond the physical realm,
21 it supercedes the moment. It does something
22 special to your soul.
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1 Even today as people pass that
2 enormous green lady that welcomed my mommy and me
3 all those years ago, “…they don't see oxidized
4 copper in a museum, they see freedom, they see a
5 beginning, they see a new life.” (Jeff Goins)
6 Art. Art broadens perspective, fosters
7 appreciation for beauty, lifts us above
8 ourselves, enables us to project beyond our
9 circumstances and gives us a common language to
10 explore disparate ideas.
11 Art fosters creativity, stretches our
12 imagination, makes us laugh, elicits tears,
13 excites, surprises, shocks, soothes, and
14 sometimes makes us uncomfortable. Art confronts
15 us with our humanity and introduces us to our
16 better angels.
17 In it, we experience harmony, discord,
18 resolution, and sometimes it leaves us in the
19 air, right in mid-air. Art can paint stories in
20 the movement of a score, the dialog of a play,
21 the choice of a word, the selection of a color,
22 the electricity of a dance.
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1 Art invites us out of our enclaves to
2 talk across division, to tear down walls. It
3 teaches us the discipline of listening.
4 Art claims the dulcimer of Appalachia,
5 the cello of Yo-Yo Ma, it's the poetry of Whitman
6 and the rap of Chance, the step ball change of
7 jazz and the on point of ballet, it's the opera
8 of the Met and the Grand Ole Opry, the movie of a
9 Spielberg and the play of a Tony Kushner. It's a
10 Louisiana gospel and a Chancel Choir uptown.
11 The arts provide a smorgasbord of
12 choices from high tea to a cup of joe. The
13 hallelujah chorus and we shall overcome. Art is
14 nourishment for the soul, it's a mirror held up
15 to show us who we are and who we can become.
16 Temples and sanctuaries are places of
17 spiritual transformation but for me transcendence
18 happened near a cathedral.
19 It didn't have massive stone columns,
20 flying buttresses or soaring spires, it sat on a
21 side table in our apartment in the Heights. Our
22 sofa was the pew that faced a table radio in the
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1 shape of a cathedral, remember those?
2 Yes, we watched a radio.(Laughter) We saw
3 the Joe Lewis fight, we saw it. Mommy and I would
4 attend service listening to shows like Dragnet,
5 the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Edgar Bergen, Charlie
6 McCarthy, and the Ave Maria Hour.
7 Sometimes I would stretch that cord of
8 the radio as far as I could and move that magical
9 box up close to the window. I would open the
10 window, use a can of Café Bustelo for a step up
11 and climb over the sill onto the fire escape.
12 I loved that fire escape, especially
13 the fire escape at night. I would take my
14 blanket, spread it over the steel rungs like a
15 magic carpet, and that was my place to dream.
16 I had listened to the artists of my
17 day, Miguelito Valdes -- now that's a handful for
18 you, I've got more -- Tito Puente -- really? --
19 Celia Cruz, Xavier Cugat. These were my Shakira,
20 my Ricky Martin, my Pitbull, my Gloria Estefan.
21 But, hey, I was already a convert, an
22 American for the arts because my favorite was a
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1 group called the Pied Pipers, a bunch of white
2 guys and Joe Stafford. And when I lied down and
3 closed my eyes, I'm transported, I can go
4 anywhere, I can be anybody.
5 I want so badly to be somebody,
6 somebody special. And suddenly, it's as though
7 the sky is filled with every star in the
8 universe.
9 (Singing Performance)
DREAM “Dream. When you're feelin' blue Dream. That's the thing to do Dream while the smoke rings rise in the air You'll find your share of memories there So dream. When the day is through Dream. And they might come true Things never are as bad as they seem So dream, dream, dream.”
10 (Standing Ovation Applause)
11 MS. MURACO: Double wow. Wasn't that
12 a magnificent program tonight? So moving, so
13 poignant, and so funny. Thank you so much for
14 being here tonight.
15 Thank you, Rita, for a truly inspiring
16 and personal speech, appropriately titled: “A
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59 17 Temple, A Sanctuary, A Cathedral, Reviving:
18 America's Soul Through the Arts.”
19 And after that moving speech, our
20 souls are stirred and exalted and don't we all
21 need a whole lot of that right now?
22 Good evening, everyone, my name is
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1 Julie Muraco and I'm the Chairman of Americans
2 for the Arts Board of Directors. I'm so proud of
3 the work of this organization, of our board, of
4 our staff, and all the great work accomplished on
5 behalf of the arts in this country.
6 It is my great pleasure to once again
7 thank all of our speakers tonight, beginning with
8 Bob Lynch who has led this organization for more
9 than 30 years.
10 (Applause)
11 And to Brian Stokes Mitchell, our Americans
12 for the Arts Board Member, and Tedd Firth for an
13 amazing musical performance.
14 And of course, to our two
15 trailblazers, women, whose rich, cultural heritage
16 from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico lifted us
17 off of our seats tonight; Supreme Court Justice
18 Sonia Sotomayor; and the incomparable Rita
19 Moreno.
20 Please give them another round of
21 applause.
22 (Applause)
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1 And finally, I want to thank all of
2 you for joining us here at the 32nd Annual Nancy
3 Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy.
4 For those of you who would like to
5 watch this lecture over, it will be available on
6 Americans for the Arts YouTube channel next week.
7 And for the hundreds of arts advocates
8 in the audience tonight who have traveled long
9 distances from across the country to participate
10 in Arts Advocacy Day tomorrow, thank you for your
11 passion, thank you for your commitment, and I
12 want you to know that the nation thanks you for
13 standing up for the arts.
14 (Applause)
15 We wish you all good luck and much
16 success tomorrow. Goodnight.
17 (End of recording.)
18
19
20
21
22
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C E R T I F I C A T E
MATTER: Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture
DATE: 03-04-19
I hereby certify that the attached transcription of pages 1 to 63 inclusive are to the best of my belief and ability a true, accurate, and complete record of the above referenced proceedings as contained on the provided audio recording.
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