Poet John Ashbery and composer Gunther Schuller each received a Gold Medal, the highest honor of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, at the annual award and induction ceremony.
Ashbery was present; Schuller, traveling, sent his thanks from New Zealand for the honor.Louis Auchincloss, academy president, Stephen Sondheim and John Updike were among those presenting the awards, which totaled more than $700,000.
Inducted as honorary members were choreographers Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp, and photographer Harry Callahan, who did not attend. Japanese novelist and 1994 Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe was made a foreign honorary member.
Jazz composer Ornette Coleman and writer Studs Terkel were among six new academy members inducted. The others were writers Daniel Aaron, Philip Levine and Albert Murray and composer John Adams.
The academy's award for distinguished service to the arts was presented to Kitty Carlisle Hart by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who referred to her as "an intrepid warrior on the front line."
British novelist Margaret Drabble gave a keynote speech, "Living in the Pastoral." She described her subject as "the peculiar fascination some of the artists of our age seem to have with the past."
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was established in 1898 "to foster, assist and sustain an interest in literature, music and the fine arts."