Lord of Tarzan
George McWhorter supports Tarzan collection with an endowed curator position
University of Louisville curator George McWhorter has a passion for all things Tarzan. He first became enamored with author and Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs when he was a child. It's an obsession that never left him.
Today the 77-year-old lords over the Edgar Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection in the Special Collections Department of UofL's Ekstrom Library. There are more than 100,000 items in the collection, including movie posters, vintage toys, rare books and rare paraphernalia of every imaginable type.
"This is one of the most unique collections of the UofL Libraries where we get visitors from around the world," says Hannelore Rader, dean of UofL Libraries. "We're very fortunate to have the collection."
To ensure the UofL Libraries has the funds it needs to keep the collection open to the public in perpetuity, McWhorter has bequeathed $1 million from his estate to fund the McWhorter Professor and Curator of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Collection.
"I want people to be smitten with the desire to read," McWhorter says. "And Edgar Rice Burroughs can do that."
Curator George McWhorter (inset) is a leading expert on Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of "Tarzan"
