The University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum, has created a new endowment to honor Robert De Niro.
In appreciation of his support of the center, the endowment is known as the De Niro Curator Film and it “will support the ongoing work to preserve film history and inspire the next generation of filmmakers,” per Harry Ransom Center director Stephen Enniss.
The Harry Ransom Center also announced today that it will celebrate a 65th anniversary with a gala event, A Celebration of Film, on Sept. 24 at Austin’s AT&T Hotel and Conference Center with De Niro on board to attend. The event will serve as a fundraiser for the new endowment to preserve and expand the collection.
“I strongly believe in and support what the Harry Ransom Center does to open the creative process of filmmaking to students and the community,” said De Niro, who donated his personal film archive in 2006 with additional contributions of materials through the present. “The center has done a remarkable job curating a breadth of collections underscoring the history of the art form and the business.”
Added Enniss: “It is a privilege to welcome Robert De Niro, a great friend of the Ransom Center and ardent supporter of the arts, to Austin as we celebrate 65 years of archiving important American cultural history.”
More information about the event can be found here. The Harry Ransom Center maintains extensive collections of disciplines like literature, photography, film, art and the performing arts through nearly 1 million books, more than 42 million manuscripts, 5 million photographs and 100,000 works of art.
