[Mar. 2, 2011] - Van Cliburn, the tall Texan who stunned the world in 1958 by scooping up the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow now has another badge to wear with pride: the National Medal of Arts, awarded to him yesterday at the White House by President Obama.
The 77-year-old pianist was among twenty recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. President Obama hailed Cliburn as "one of the greatest pianists in the history of music, and a persuasive ambassador for American culture." He has played for every American president since Eisenhower, including during a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to the Reagan White House. He has also helped propel numerous younger pianists to much wider recognition via the Cliburn Competition, held every four years since 1962 in Fort Worth.
Others recipients of the 2010 arts prize include jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, musicians Quincy Jones and James Taylor, and actress Meryl Streep, as well as novelists Harper Lee and Joyce Carol Oates, while among the humanities winners were novelist Philip Roth and cultural historian Jacques Barzun.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
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