Age is no object for Medal of Arts

Stage producer and director R. Craig Noel, who led San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre to national prominence, and Morten Lauridsen, a Los Angeles composer of oft-performed choral music and a longtime professor at USC’s Thornton School of Music, are among the nine honorees receiving the National Medal of Arts from President Bush and Laura Bush in ceremonies today at the White House.

Noel, 92, is only the fourth-oldest recipient on a roster of four nonagenarians, a centenarian and an upper-octogenarian. Roy Neuberger, a New York City art collector and patron who acquired works by important 20th century American artists, then donated hundreds of them to museums, is the senior medalist at 104. Then come Les Paul, the influential jazz guitarist and electric guitar designer, who is 2 1/2 months older than Noel, and music patron Henry Steinway, born two days before the Old Globe leader.

In the visual arts, medals will go to painters Andrew Wyeth, 90, the Pennsylvania-based creator of such iconic paintings as “Christina’s World,” and George Tooker, 87, a leader of the American Magic Realism movement.

Medalist N. Scott Momaday, 73, is a Kiowa Indian who won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize with his first novel, “House Made of Dawn.” Composer Lauridsen, at 64, is the baby among the honorees. The ninth medal goes to the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival, launched in 1967 to nurture young musicians.

-- Mike Boehm