Endowed Scholarship and Matching-Gift Challenge, Totaling $2 Million, to Honor RBS Founding Director Terry Belanger

Rare Book School is proud to announce that it has received a $1 million commitment from bibliophiles, collectors, and RBS supporters Cathy and Glen Miranker to honor the legacy of our founding director and long-time course instructor Terry Belanger by increasing scholarship access for RBS students.

To maximize the Miranker Family’s generosity, we are endeavoring to raise an additional $1 million for the Terry Belanger Endowed Scholarship before 30 September 2026, coinciding with the year of Terry’s 85th birthday. Each dollar raised toward this amount will be matched dollar for dollar, doubling the impact of each gift received.

Few have contributed more to bibliographical and book-historical education than Terry Belanger, a lifelong effort he pioneered with the founding of the Book Arts Press at the Columbia University School of Library Service (SLS) in 1972. A decade later, in the summer of 1983, Terry organized the first series of offerings that would become Rare Book School and created the signature hands-on teaching method that has defined RBS for more than 40 years.

In 1992, when Terry accepted an academic appointment as University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia, the School moved to Charlottesville, where it continued to flourish with widespread institutional support. By the time of his retirement in 2009, RBS courses had grown to more than 25 offerings annually in Charlottesville and at partner institutions in Baltimore, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

No RBS course instructor has taught more courses, and thus more students, at RBS than Terry Belanger. He has led an iteration of his course Book Illustration Processes nearly every year since 1983, sometimes teaching two or three times in a single summer, and he continues to influence thousands of students of the book worldwide.

For more information about the scholarship and the matching-gift challenge, please visit rarebookschool.org/support/belanger-scholarship or contact Adam Miller, Director of Development, at 434-243-1010 or adam.miller@virginia.edu.