Robert Brustein, Meryl Streep, James Taylor Among National Medal of Arts Honorees

Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and theater producer and critic Robert Brustein are among the 2010 National Medal of Arts honorees, according to a report in The Washington Post. The White House is expected to award the prizes on Wednesday.

Streep’s stage credits include Trelawny of the Wells, Secret Service, The Cherry Orchard, Happy End, The Seagull, and Mother Courage and Her Children. She is a two-time Oscar winner for Kramer Vs. Kramer and Sophie’s Choice, In addition, she won the Emmy Award for HBO’s film version of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

Brustein, long-time artistic director of American Repertory Theatre and Yale Repertory, is the author of such books as Revolution as Theatre: Notes on the New Radical Style, Who Needs Theatre: Dramatic Opinions, and Cultural Calisthenics: Writings on Race, Politics, and Theatre. Among his plays are adaptations of such classics as Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV. Among his original plays are Spring Forward, Fall Back and Demons, and Nobody Dies on Friday. In addition, he has served as critic for The New Republic.

Also among the 2010 National Medal of Arts Honorees are pianist Van Cliburn, painter Mark di Suvero, poet Daonld Hall, writer Harper Lee, jazz musicians Sonny Rollins and Quincy Jones, and songwriter and performer James Taylor, as well as the organization Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival.

Along with the news of the National Medal of Arts Honorees, the individuals who will receive National Humanities Medals have been announced. The honorees include novelists Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth, as well as Daniel Aaron, founding president of the Library of America; Bernard Bailyn, award historian; Jacques Barzun, historian and cultural critic; poet and environmentalist Wendell E. Berry; Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, scholar of Hispanic literature; Stanley Nider Katz, president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies; Arnold Rampersad, biographer of Langston Hughes and Jackie Robinson and others, and Gordon S. Wood, author and editor of 18 books on U.S. history.