Robert Redford gives the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture at the Kennedy Center Tuesday night. Redford “the iconoclast, the Hollywood director who founded the Sundance Institute to raise new generations of filmmakers outside the corrupting influence of the studios and commerce, has the most sweetly arcane ideas about art and artists. He believes, for instance, that art is good for the soul, that it can keep kids off the streets, and that it can correct the ill drift of society. He knows Hollywood puts money before art, but is consoled by the fact that without art they can’t make money. He’s also impatient with efforts to silence artists, with the ridicule heaped upon those who express political views when they should know that such talk is better left to highly paid, professional, partisan political pundits.”