To solicit gifts for the new endowment for the Fogg Museum’s Department of American Art, curator Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. said he often approached known patrons of American art who had no prior connection to Harvard and were his own friends.

While the six other branches of the Fogg Museum received funding from the University’s budget, the Department of American Art, which was established in 2002, was surviving on year-to-year private donations.

But in a four-year campaign orchestrated mainly by Stebbins, the department raised $10.5 million that will now be allocated for American art, the Harvard Art Museum announced on Friday.

“It’s a great thing because it means that the department will exist for a long time, for 100 years or 300 years,” said Stebbins, whose position as the department’s curator is now permanently funded.

Stebbins was appointed as the distinguished fellow and consultative curator of American art at the Fogg in 2000 and began serving as the curator of American art when the department was established in 2002.

Part of the money raised will go to the establishment of two new curatorships: the Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Curatorship of American Art, as well as the Diane and Michael Maher Assistant Curatorship of American Art. The endowment will also contribute to the Benjamin Rowland Fund for American Art, which will fund ongoing operations.

Stebbins said his method for fundraising was “being very, very nice to people.”

Donors included Stebbins’ friends Diane and Michael Maher, who gave a gift to establish the assistant curatorship—a position now held by Virginia M. Anderson ’93.

“This means that there will always be a curator of American art at Harvard University and that there will be galleries devoted to American art, which we’ve never had before,” Anderson said.

These galleries are projected to open in 2012 when the renovations of the Fogg are finished.

According to Stebbins, the Harvard Art Museum had been collecting American art almost since the University’s establishment, when it began its tradition of commissioning local artists to paint portraits of University presidents.

The Department of American Art now holds about 3,000 American and Canadian paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the 17th to 20th centuries, according to the department Web site.