Remarks By
A. Thomas Young
Executive Vice President, Lockheed Martin

Thank you very much for that very gracious welcome. I also understand that thanks are in order for your support and leader ship that have been so significant to Colorado's vibrant and dynamic cultural arts tradition. [Mr. Young was speaking about Senator Tom Blickensderfer (R), Englewood, who introduced him.] Everybody recognizes what you've done for Colorado.

It's a real pleasure for me to have a chance to talk with such a distinguished group. When introductions were made it became obvious to me. I will share with you that it's a bit intimidating because many of you are possibly even more knowledgeable, and I suspect many are, of the subject we're going to talk about. I should admit right off, I'm an engineer, not an artist. And so I ask that you recognize that limitation. But probably given that limitation I'd like to discuss a topic that means a great deal to me personally, as a parent, as a business person and as someone who highly values the place where he lives.

People can readily understand why a parent, even a community enthusiast, may value the arts, but sometimes expect a bottom line businessman who is talking about the arts and support for the arts in much more skeptical fashion because it's not a natural, obvious aspect of the business world. That really brings me to a story about an arts critic who was given tickets to a performance of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. He couldn't go, so instead he gave the tickets to his publisher.

The next day the publisher handed him a memo outlining what he thought was wrong with the concert so that the art critic could use it in his further deliberations. First, for considerable periods the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their number clearly should be reduced. Second, all twelve violins were playing identical notes. This seems to be an extraordinary, unnecessary duplication. And finally, no useful purpose is served by repeating with horns the passage that has already been handled by the strings. The publisher finished by saying, "If Schubert had attended to these matters as a businessman would have paid attention to them, he could have reduced the symphony from two hours to twenty minutes then he might have had time to finish it!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, "that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." That's an elegant way of saying what Lockheed Martin and other companies have known for a long time. And that is supporting the arts is good for business.

It's good because the arts more fully develop the potential of our employees. I suspect not many of our aerospace defense or research scientists (and it's certainly true for me) also have a degree in art or music studies. Yet experience shows that the more well rounded and intellectually expansive a person is, the more value they contribute to and derive from life.

There's a book some of you may have read called A Kick In the Seat of the Pants by Roger Van Oech. In it, he says that many great ideas have come from people poking around in unfamiliar disciplines often the arts who apply what they find to their own field.

For instance, football coach Knute Rockne got the idea for Notre Dame's "four horsemen" formation while watching a dance performance. World War I military designers borrowed from the cubist art of Picasso to create more effective camouflage patterns. And the "unbreakable" U.S. military code used in World War II was based on the Navajo language. When you encourage people to "think outside the box," in a larger sense you are building a more effective organization.

Art also supports business through its impact upon a community's quality of life. Some years ago, the newspaper Midlands of England carried an article about the lack of punctuality of the bus service between the towns of Bagnall and Greenfields. Long lines of would be passengers would build up at each stop. Further, it seemed that there was a problem that drivers were passing the would-be passengers with a smile and a wave of the hand -- all without stopping. Responding to stinging criticism, a bus company official was quoted as saying, "It is impossible for the drivers to keep to their time schedules if they must stop for passengers." Now as any successful business leader can tell you, keeping to schedule is an important element of customer service but it doesn't necessarily guarantee customer satisfaction. Successful businesses do more than simply pass through a community. After all we share communities with some pretty important people who impact our families, our business and our own lives. We have a vested interest in living in an area where the quality of life attracts the very best employees, customers, suppliers and government, academic and civic leaders. It is inconceivable that such quality can exist wherever the arts are silent.

There's a third, much more practical reason why business benefits from its contributions to the arts.

For every dollar spent on the arts in America, approximately four dollars flows back into the local community in the form of restaurant, hotel, retail and transportation business. Here in Denver, in 1992, which is the latest statistics we have available, the arts had an economic impact of more than $1 million per day and ranked among Denver's largest private employers. Also in 1992, 7.3 million people visited local arts events, much more than the combined attendance of local professional sports franchises.

One of the most hotly debated topics in Washington today is federal funding on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Our national reverence for the arts is not a relatively new development. Thomas Jefferson noted the value of education and culture in a democracy when he said "a nation could never be ignorant and also be free." Recently in Washington I attend ed the opening of a special exhibit of Jefferson's original drawings and designs from the University of Virginia. It was striking looking at how this particular individual, and it was reflected in the design of the work we saw that night, had a really accomplished career as a statesman, as a businessperson and in the arts; and how effectively they blended together to represent being a graduate of the University of Virginia, one of his most significant accomplishments. It's also interesting to note that he wrote his own epitaph and he said that he wanted to be known for three things: the author of the Declaration of Independence, the second was the author of the bill on religious freedom in the state of Virginia, and the third was the founding of the University of Virginia. When he was asked what about being president of the United States, he said he treated it as a rather insignificant part of his life. Others could probably take example. Several decades after Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln said the arts are the net best thing we have to remind us why we all still agree to cohere as a people.

During one of our nation's darkest periods, in a time of great financial stress, the federal government made special provisions to ensure that the arts survived. The Federal Writers Project, the Federal Arts Project and the Federal Theater Project were testimony to the critical importance of the arts to the national spirit, confidence and motivation during the Depression. Among those authors who began their careers in these programs were Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow and Eudora Welty. There are those who would argue that today, the arts should be entirely self-supporting with ticket prices to match. Consider, though, what might happen at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cost of admission is seven dollars, not enough to cover the museum's budget. Ln fact, only 9.6 percent of the Museum's budget is derived from ticket sales. The rest comes from gifts, endowment income and government grants. If the government grants were to disappear, the price of admission to the Museum would undoubtedly have to increase. What would be the effect, for instance, of an admission price of $25 or even $50 compared to seven dollars? Surely access to the Museum would be economically stratified. It would undoubtedly be limited to those with the ability to pay premium prices. Many middle-income wage earners, and even more children, could not easily afford to do that.

Up until now, I have given you some of the more compelling reasons why there is a Business Committee for the Arts, and why I am privileged to serve as its national chairman. Perhaps the greatest value that the arts bestows is the special and individual meaning it has for each of us from our own perspective.

I am reminded that in Hamlet, Shakespeare described art as holding a mirror to nature. In my engineering career, I have had the honor of participating in several of our nation's awe-inspiring space missions, including the Viking landing on Mars in 1978. There was a haunting beauty in the first photographs as they were transmitted from the surface of Mars and in the other-world quality these pictures evoked in all of us.

It is an experience repeated many times for people all over the earth, whether the scene was an Apollo VIII orbiting the earth on Christmas Eve, Neal Armstrong's first steps on the moon or the bizarre close-ups of Venus' volcanoes.

To those who still question the value of supporting the arts, I offer this restatement of our nation's commitment captured in the words of John F. Kennedy and inscribed on the walls of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:

"I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well."

Congratulations to the Colorado Arts Consortium and to all of you here today for all you have been doing on behalf of a vibrant America. Thank you very much.