Obama honors leaders in arts and humanities

President Barack Obama awarded the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal to 20 recipients, including singer Bob Dylan, actor and director Clint Eastwood, painter Frank Stella and Nobel laureate and author Elie Wiesel.

In the arts, the recipients were Stella, designer Milton Glaser, architect Maya Lin, soprano Jessye Norman, Charleston, S.C., Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, composer John Williams and actress and dancer Rita Moreno, who gave the president a big hug upon receiving her award and then an I-can't-help-it look to first lady Michelle Obama, who was seated in the first row. Dylan and Eastwood did not attend, but representatives of two groups that were cited for contributions to the arts did: the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the School of American Ballet. The humanities citations went to prizewinning authors and historians Robert A. Caro ("The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate"), Annette Gordon-Reed ("The Hemingses of Monticello"), David Levering Lewis ("W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963") and William H. McNeill ("Plagues and Peoples"). The list also includes speechwriter and lawyer Theodore Sorensen, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Philippe de Montebello and philanthropist Albert H. Small