Bush to Cite Arts Medal Recipients : Ceremony: Robert Shaw and Robert Venturi are among 13 to receive medals today.

Choral director Robert Shaw, who serves as principal guest conductor of the San Diego Symphony, was chosen to receive the 1992 National Medal of Arts, along with architect Robert Venturi, who designed a proposed addition for the La Jolla-based Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. President Bush will honor this year’s recipients today at a White House ceremony.

Medals will also be presented to film director Robert Wise, opera singer Marilyn Horne, actor James Earl Jones, American Indian sculptor Allan Houser, Grand Ole Opry performer Minnie Pearl, television producer and museum director Robert Saudek, banjo player Earl Scruggs, jazz pianist Billy Taylor, architect Denise Scott Brown, AT&T; and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund.

The President, with the help of the National Endowment for the Arts, chooses individuals and corporations that enhance the arts in America for the honor. Earlier this year, author Wallace Stegner and composer Stephen Sondheim turned down the medal to protest recent actions at the NEA. In a letter sent to the endowment, Sondheim denounced a climate of “censorship and repression.”

The refusal by Sondheim and Stegner came shortly after Anne-Imelda Radice, the arts agency’s acting chairwoman, overruled an advisory body’s recommendation to provide grants to two art exhibitions because they depicted genitalia. It was the latest in a series of controversies over federal support of provocative art and performances that has plagued the NEA in recent years.

“I’m accepting the national medal in honor of the entire history of the arts endowment and with the conviction that the endowment and all artists can transcend ideological controversies,” Jones said.

“This award is very meaningful to me,” said Wise, whose films include “The Sound of Music.” Wise, who was on the National Council on the Arts from 1970-76, said he is “a strong supporter of the NEA and a strong supporter of the value of the work it does.” Although he said he found some of the NEA’s recent decisions “questionable,” he doesn’t “feel strong enough to turn (the medal) down. By turning it down, I would be putting it down. I’d rather get in and fight.”

Saudek, founding director of the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City, said he was “enormously pleased and proud to be in the company of those receiving the award.”

“I abhor any political censorship in the arts,” Saudek said. “But this award is between the country and individual. It seems to me that I wouldn’t affect any usefulness in rejecting this honor.”

The medal was authorized by Congress in 1984. The President gives the award to individuals or groups for outstanding contributions “to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts in the United States.” Past winners have included writers Saul Bellow and John Updike, film director Frank Capra, composer Aaron Copland, painter Georgia O’Keeffe and dancer-choreographer Martha Graham.