President Joe Biden presented National Medals of Arts and National Humanities Medals to dozens of recipients in a White House ceremony Monday.
Twenty people, including filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee and Ken Burns and singers Missy Elliott and Queen Latifah, received National Medals of Arts. Two of the arts medals were awarded posthumously: one to late singer Selena Quintanilla and one to late artist Ruth Asawa.
The arts medals are given “to individuals or groups who are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts in the United States.”
Biden was also honoring 19 recipients of National Humanities Medals, including playwright-screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and historian Jon Meacham. Late chef-author Anthony Bourdain received a posthumous humanities medal.
“Above all, you are the masters of your craft that have made us a better America with all of you have done,” Biden said at the White House ceremony.
Biden took a brief detour in his remarks to give a shout-out to Vice President Kamala Harris’ run for the White House.
“I know the power of the women in this room to get things done” and boost the next generation, he said, adding that the female winners were “proving a woman can do anything a man can do, and then some, and that includes being president of the United States of America.”
The line drew a standing ovation.
Biden also told the winners that the moment was a “very consequential time in the arts and humanities in America” because “extreme forces are banning books, trying to erase history, spreading misinformation.”
Actors Idina Menzel and Eva Longoria, producer Bruce Cohen and musicians Leonardo “Flaco” Jimenez and Herbert I. Ohta also received arts medals, along with photographers Randy A. Batista and Clyde Butcher, artists Carrie Mae Weems, Alex Katz and Mark Bradford, arts leaders Jo Carole Lauder and Bruce Sagan and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Other humanities winners included former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, actor-literacy advocate LeVar Burton, cartoonist Roz Chast and philanthropists Wallis Annenberg and Darren Walker. The humanities medals honor “an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history or literature, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources.”
The arts medals are managed by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the humanities medals by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
