President Barack Obama took time out from his healthcare summit Thursday to pay tribute to the arts.

In a White House ceremony, President Obama honored 19 artists, including singer Bob Dylan and actor-director Clint Eastwood, with the National Medal of Arts.

Neither Dylan nor Eastwood attended the ceremony.

Clint Eastwood became famous with anti-hero roles in such films as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” and “Dirty Harry,” but his directorial projects in recent years have been more complex examinations of heroism. He won an Oscar in 1993 for “Unforgiven,” and again in 2005 for “Million Dollar Baby.” The White House hailed him as “the essence of what it means to be American.”

“Blown’ In the Wind,” “The Times, They Are A-Changin’,” and other protest ballads Bob Dylan wrote in the 1960s and 1970s became the counterculture’s soundtrack. He was cited as “an icon of youthful rebellion and poetic sensitivity.”

Other artists honored at the afternoon ceremony included film composer John Williams, architect Maya Lin, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, actress Rita Moreno, speechwriter Ted Sorenson, painter and sculptor Frank Stella, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis, biographer Robert A. Caro, and Charleston mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr.