Bruce Springsteen and Mindy Kaling to receive Biden’s National Medal of Arts

The National Medals of Arts recognize individuals who have “helped define and enrich our nation’s cultural heritage,” endowment chair Maria Rosario Jackson said in a statement.

Other winners of the 2021 National Medals of Arts include Kaling, the actress and comedy writer whose work was featured in NBC’s “The Office,” which was set in President Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Knight, the veteran singer who, the endowment says, has created music that “has inspired generations of artists.”

Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played the goofy vice president-turned-commander-in-chief on HBO’s “Veep,” is on the honoree list along with fashion designer Vera Wang; artist Judith Francisca Baca; the painter Antonio Martorell-Cardona; arts educator and LGBTQI+ activist Fred Eychaner; the musician José Feliciano; producer Joan Shigekawa; The Billie Holiday Theatre; The International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Also honored on Tuesday will be recipients of the 2021 National Humanities Medals, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose work, according to a statement, “deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience.”

Whitehead, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, will receive the Humanities Prize in addition to poet and author Richard Blanco, social historian Earl Lewis, novelists Ann Patchett and Amy Tan, writer Tara Westover, biographer Walter Isaacson, educator Henrietta Mann, Native America Calling, and anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole, former president of Spellman College and the first black woman to hold this title.

Elton John, one of Biden’s favorite musicians, is a 2021 recipient but received his medal when he performed at the White House last September.