President Barack Obama is scheduled to present medals to 20 honorees, including A-list actress, Merryl Streep, singer-songwriter, James Taylor and author, Joyce Carol Oates.

According to Reuters, a ceremony will be held at the East Room of the White House on Wednesday where Obama will honor ten recipients each for 2010 National Medal of Arts and 2010 National Humanities Medal.

With Taylor, Oates and Streep are other artists in the entertainment industry, including composer and producer Quincy Jones, jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins and "To Kill a Mockingbird" author, Harper Lee, who had earned a Pulitzer Prize for the literary piece.

The star of “The Bridges of Madison County” has confirmed she will not be attending the ceremony.

Meanwhile with her arts medal, Oates now will be joining the roster of Humanities medalists which also include three Pulitzer laureates: -- "Portnoy's Complaint" novelist Philip Roth and author-historians Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn. Oates is a National Book Award winner credited for her 50 novels, short stories, poetry and non-fiction

Reuters enumerated other recipients of the 2010 medalists are: playwright-producer Robert Brustein; pianist Van Cliburn; abstract expressionist sculptor Mark di Suvero; poet Donald Hall and the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.

It also include librarian Daniel Aaron, cultural historian Jacques Barzun; writer Wendell E. Berry; Hispanic literary scholar Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria; biographer and literary critic Arnold Rampersad; and Stanley Nider Katz, longtime president of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Established by Congress in 1984, the National Medal of Arts is considered as the highest award given by the government to artists and patrons. The National Humanities Medal began in 1997.

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