Looking at this year's Texas Medal of Arts honorees

Some of the brightest stars on the Texas cultural scene will show up in Austin on Tuesday, March 1, for the annual Texas Medal of Arts Awards.

Started in 2001, the event has honored 59 leaders, luminaries and corporations. This year, 10 more people will join the honor roll, along with Houston's Alley Theatre and corporate donor H-E-B.

Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" will be the emcee for the awards show, where medals will be presented by Gov. Rick Perry. Afterward, Dale Watson and his Lone Stars and Will Taylor and Strings Attached will perform at an after-party.

Here's a look at some of the honorees.

Barbara Smith Conrad, lifetime achievement, mezzo-soprano

Barbara Smith Conrad was a gifted young singer from East Texas when she landed at the University of Texas in 1957, among the first African American students to be admitted after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the university to desegregate.

Conrad also landed in a highly publicized chapter of civil-rights history when members of the Texas Legislature pressured UT to remove her from the leading female role in "Dido and Aeneas," opposite a white male student. The controversy attracted national attention. Conrad's life was threatened. Harry Belafonte offered to bring her to New York.

Despite the harassment, Conrad persevered and, after finishing her studies at UT, went on to a successful opera career, singing with the Metropolitan Opera and numerous European companies.

Now, the mezzo-soprano returns to UT regularly to teach master classes and to give concerts, and she gave her archive to the university's Briscoe Center for American History. "Music is the expression of what's inside you," she said during a visit to Austin last year. "And that's a gift to share."

— Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Thomas F. Staley, art education

"It's chess, not checkers," Thomas F. Staley said once about the complex art of acquiring the archives of famous writers for UT's Ransom Center, where he has been director since 1988.

From the papers of playwrights Arthur Miller and Tom Stoppard to those of novelists Don DeLillo and Norman Mailer, and the massive collection of Watergate papers accumulated by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Staley has brought the archives of more than 100 literary lights to Texas.

As information goes digital, the rarity of the archive Staley helped build — with its revealing secrets — will be even more unique for future students and scholars.

— J.C.v.R.

Sarah and Ernest Butler, individual patrons

No two arts patrons have given more to Austin arts, with as little fanfare. Their $55 million gift to the University of Texas music school, now named in their honor, is only the largest example of their informed largesse. They've donated millions — and expert advice — to the Long Center for the Performing Arts, Austin Lyric Opera, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Austin Museum of Art, Ballet Austin and others. No surprise: The ballet's education center downtown is named for the Butlers.

Yet the Butlers, who romanced over the arts at Baylor University, could not be less pretentious. The retired doctor and his wife live modestly in their longtime Northwest Austin home and travel frequently, but on a strict budget.

One can see them out most weeks, he tall and thin, she smiling and stylish. In any conversation, one finds that they are better informed about how the arts are structured, governed and financed than almost anyone else in town.

"We have learned to look at giving to a nonprofit in many ways that we look at a business for investment," says Ernest Butler. "First, learn as much as you can about the nonprofit: Investigate before you invest. Does the nonprofit have a competent board willing to work hard or a board there for its ego? What has the board donated to the organization and to its endowment? Does the nonprofit have competent, long-term management that does not waste money and makes practical decisions? Does the nonprofit have a clear outreach to the community? And one needs to keep on learning, as times change for all organizations. There is nothing more satisfying to us than to see an organization grow, serve more of the community and challenge us to grow with it as well as encourage us to reinvest."