“Dedicating the new museum to ‘the cause of peace,’ FDR took up the theme that Barr had been pushing ever since his initial encounters with Nazism: the essential connection between modern art and liberal government. ‘The arts cannot thrive except where men are free to be themselves and to be in charge of the discipline of their own energies and ardors,’ Roosevelt said. ‘The conditions for democracy and for art are one and the same.’”
