National Medal of Arts

National Medal of Arts,
founded by President Reagan (1985) and placed under the control of the National Endowment for the Arts. Each year the Medal is given to a number of persons in a variety of the arts. Awardees include: Ralph Ellison (1985), Eva Le Gallienne, Lewis Mumford, Eudora Welty (1986), Howard Nemerov, Robert Penn Warren (1987), Saul Bellow (1988), Czeslaw Milosz, John Updike (1989), George Abbott (1990), Stephen Sondheim (1992, refused), Stanley Kunitz, Arthur Miller, William Styron (1993), and Richard Wilbur (1994).