No Bernstein as Bush Gives Arts Medals

With Leonard Bernstein boycotting the event, President Bush presented the National Medal of the Arts today to 11 Americans and one corporation for their contribution to the nation’s culture.

“Congratulations for your achievements, for the passion you bring to the arts. You’ve honored this country,” Bush told a White House gathering, making no reference to the Bernstein flap that clearly overshadowed the event.

Bernstein, 71, the first American-born musician to become music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, had been selected by the White House as one of the recipients.

But earlier this week, Bernstein said he would refuse to accept his medal to protest the pulling of federal funds for an art show in New York City about AIDS that had been deemed obscene.

On Thursday, the National Endowment for the Arts, bowing to pressure from angry artists, reversed itself and restored a $10,000 grant to the show, “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,”

By then, however, it was too late for Bernstein, who initially agreed to accept the award, to change his mind again. The White House had selected a replacement recipient, pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who recently died.

In addition to Horowitz, other recipients of the arts award were John Updike, Dizzy Gillespie, Robert Motherwell, Alfred Eisenstaedt, writer Czeslaw Milosz, Leopold Adler, a Savannah, Ga., preservationist; Dayton Hudson Corp. of Minneapolis; Katherine Dunham, St. Louis dancer-choreographer; Martin Friedman, Minneapolis museum director; Leigh Gerdine, St. Louis arts patron, and sculptor Walter Hancock.