It awards annual prizes, called the Silvers-Dudley Prizes, recognizing outstanding writing, including the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism; the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Criticism; and the Grace Dudley Prize for Writing on European Culture. Prizes are in the amounts of $30,000 each for writers over 40, and $15,000 each for those under 40. The first prizes were awarded in 2022. Besides serving as a trustee of the New York Public Library, Silvers was "personally, and very discreetly, involved in the struggle to keep neighbourhood libraries open in the poorest precincts of New York." The annual Robert B. Silvers lectures at the New York Public Library were established by Max Palevsky in 2002 and are given by experts in the fields of "literature, the arts, politics, economics, history, and the sciences." The lectures have been given by Joan Didion, J. M. Coetzee, Ian Buruma, Michael Kimmelman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Nicholas Kristof, Zadie Smith, Oliver Sacks, Derek Walcott, Mary Beard, Darryl Pinckney, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Helen Vendler, and Paul Krugman. Honors and awards On November 15, 2006, Silvers, together with Epstein, received the National Book Foundation Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. With Epstein, he also received in 2006 the Award for "Distinguished Service to the Arts" from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The National Book Critics Circle honored Silvers with the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing for 2011, and in 2012, he was honored with the Hadada Prize by The Paris Review, and a "N.Y.C. Literary Honor" "for contributions to literary life" in New York City. At the N.Y.C. Literary Honors, readings were given, and, "in what may have been the most moving reading, [Silvers] excerpted architecture critic Martin Filler's rhapsodic review of the 9/11 Memorial designed by the young architect Michael Arad, which appeared in the NYRB last year." In 2013, the French-American Foundation honored him with its Vergennes Achievement Award. Also in 2013, he was awarded the 2012 National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama "for offering critical perspectives on writing. ... [H]e has invigorated our literature with cultural and political commentary and elevated the book review to a literary art form." Among other honors, Silvers was a member of the executive board of the PEN American Center, the American Ditchley Foundation and the American Academy in Rome; he served as a trustee of the New York