List of Kennedy Center Honorees

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Throughout the years, the Kennedy Center Honors has upheld a tradition of recognizing the lifelong accomplishments and extraordinary talents of our nations' most-prestigious artists. Find out more about past honoress by clicking on a name below.

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2000's
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90's
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80's
1989 | 1988 | 1987 | 1986 | 1985 | 1984 | 1983 | 1982 | 1981 | 1980 |
70's
1979 | 1978

2007
- Steve Martin
- Diana Ross
- Leon Fleisher
- Martin Scorsese
- Brian Wilson
2006
- Andrew Lloyd Webber
- Zubin Mehta
- Dolly Parton
- Smokey Robinson
- Steven Spielberg
2005
- Tony Bennett
- Suzanne Farrell
- Julie Harris
- Robert Redford
- Tina Turner
2004
- Warren Beatty
- Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
- Elton John
- Joan Sutherland
- John Williams
2003
- James Brown
- Carol Burnett
- Loretta Lynn
- Mike Nichols
- Itzhak Perlman
2002
- James Earl Jones
- James Levine
- Chita Rivera
- Paul Simon
- Elizabeth Taylor
2001
- Julie Andrews
- Van Cliburn
- Quincy Jones
- Jack Nicholson
- Luciano Pavarotti
2000
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
- Chuck Berry
- Plácido Domingo
- Clint Eastwood
- Angela Lansbury
1999
- Victor Borge
- Sean Connery
- Judith Jamison
- Jason Robards
- Stevie Wonder
1998
- Bill Cosby
- Fred Ebb & John Kander
- Willie Nelson
- André Previn
- Shirley Temple Black
1997
- Lauren Bacall
- Bob Dylan
- Charlton Heston
- Jessye Norman
- Edward Villella
1996
- Edward Albee
- Benny Carter
- Johnny Cash
- Jack Lemmon
- Maria Tallchief
1995
- Jacques d'Amboise
- Marilyn Horne
- Riley B.B. King
- Sidney Poitier
- Neil Simon
1994
- Kirk Douglas
- Aretha Franklin
- Morton Gould
- Harold Prince
- Pete Seeger
1993
- Johnny Carson
- Arthur Mitchell
- George Solti
- Stephen Sondheim
- Marion Williams
1992
- Lionel Hampton
- Paul Newman
- Joanne Woodward
- Ginger Rogers
- Mstislav Rostropovich
- Paul Taylor
1991
- Roy Acuff
- Betty Comden
- Adolph Green
- Fayard Nicholas
- Harold Nicholas
- Gregory Peck
- Robert Shaw
1990
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Katharine Hepburn
- Rise Stevens
- Jule Styne
- Billy Wilder
1989
- Harry Belafonte
- Claudette Colbert
- Alexandra Danilova
- Mary Martin
- William Schuman
1988
- Alvin Ailey
- George Burns
- Myrna Loy
- Alexander Schneider
- Roger L. Stevens
1987
- Perry Como
- Bette Davis
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
- Nathan Milstein
- Alwin Nikolais
1986
- Lucille Ball
- Ray Charles
- Hume Cronyn
- Jessica Tandy
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Antony Tudor
1985
- Merce Cunningham
- Irene Dunne
- Bob Hope
- Alan Jay Lerner
- Frederick Loewe
- Beverly Sills
1984
- Lena Horne
- Danny Kaye
- Gian Carlo Menotti
- Arthur Miller
- Isaac Stern
1983
- Katherine Dunham
- Elia Kazan
- Frank Sinatra
- James Stewart
- Virgil Thomson
1982
- George Abbott
- Lillian Gish
- Benny Goodman
- Gene Kelly
- Eugene Ormandy
1981
- Count Basie
- Cary Grant
- Helen Hayes
- Jerome Robbins
- Rudolf Serkin
1980
- Leonard Bernstein
- James Cagney
- Agnes deMille
- Lynn Fontanne
- Leontyne Price
1979
- Aaron Copland
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Henry Fonda
- Martha Graham
- Tennessee Williams
1978
- Marian Anderson
- Fred Astaire
- George Balanchine
- Richard Rodgers
- Arthur Rubenstein