In 1997, in a widely reported act, Ms. Adrienne Rich declined the National Medal of Arts, the United States government’s highest award bestowed upon artists. In a letter to Jane Alexander, then chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts, which administers the award, she expressed her dismay, amid the “increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice,” that the government had chosen to honor “a few token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.” Art, Ms. Rich added, “means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.”