|09/20/14

When the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opens to the public this Sunday, visitors will be rewarded with a breathtaking introduction to one of the world’s most important private collections.

The long-anticipated institution, adjacent to the Cantor Arts Center, features a formidable cache of modern and contemporary art and certifies the Bay Area’s growing international stature as a destination for lovers and scholars of 20th and 21st century visual arts.

The new museum tracks half a century’s effort – stunningly successful – at self-education in art by Peninsula collectors Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson and their daughter Mary Patricia Anderson Pence.

The Bay Area has glimpsed other outstanding private collections recently, but in level of ambition and accomplishment, only the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art‘s Donald and Doris Fisher Collection – set to debut in full in 2016 – can rival the Stanford trove.

Even then, the Anderson Collection has an edge in historical importance with key works by Clyfford Still (a towering influence on midcentury Bay Area art), Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Richard Diebenkorn and, most significantly, Jackson Pollock – his 1947 “Lucifer” being probably the most coveted object the family has ever collected.

There are only about 100 modern and contemporary artworks in the two-story, 33,500-square-foot structure, but the galleries offer an uncongested view of the Anderson family’s magnificent gift of 121 pieces to the university.

Soon after you enter the campus building, a striking illusion occurs.

A long staircase – its gentle slope making for a comfortable ascent – leads the eye directly upward to Still’s “1957-J No. 1,” a 12-foot-long abstract painting that appears expansive as a movie screen.

The building’s designer, Richard Olcott of Ennead Architects, has made the stairway taper as it rises, exaggerating its length optically and enhancing the Still’s illusional effect of opening wide in a long view and folding in on itself when seen up close.

No one has engineered this experience, yet it wonderfully sets a pattern for the presentation of this collection.

“Lucifer” holds a central place in the section devoted to so-called New York School painting and its aftermath, but a visitor has to wander the second floor a little to find it. The Anderson Collection’s curatorial staff has sensibly chosen instead to give Still’s painting, a tissue of torn-looking forms in black, brown, yellow and white on bare canvas, pride of place.

Still, who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, had a decisive – though not always supportive – effect on Diebenkorn, David Park and Frank Lobdell, whose works hang nearby.

Subjectively, as affirmed by the illusion of Still’s painting changing proportions and accessibility, artworks respond to all sorts of cultural echoes and other influences that we can seldom pinpoint easily.

The Still at the top of the stairs prepares us to notice throughout the Anderson Collection fluctuating impressions made by artworks that initially seem foursquare and fully defined.

Such an experience of art’s mutability is a key into the psychology of collecting as the Anderson family has pursued it.

At many points in the galleries, along sightlines that stretch across the central staircase through well-ordered gaps in interior vertical walls, artworks transmit echoes of homage or other aesthetic kinship.

Stand behind David Smith‘s silver sculpture “Timeless Clock” (1957) – not that it really has a back side – and on a wall opposite, you see a startling family resemblance in Kline’s similarly choppy 1952 painted composition “Figure 8.”

Neither the collectors nor the curators suggest that the later work was made – or acquired – with such a linkage in mind. But the creative pursuits of art making – and of collecting, done right – generate such telling patterns.

Another occurs in a nearby corner space where a cruciform black-on-black square “Abstract Painting, 1966” by Ad Reinhardt flanks Kelly’s “Black Ripe” (1955), in which a bulbous, central, flat black form swells nearly to the edges of a nearly square white canvas. It is almost as if Reinhardt had completed a thought broached by Kelly.

Again, the collectors undoubtedly forged the affinity between the two works more than the painters themselves did, but it persuades the observer immediately.

The Anderson Collection staff refers to the building’s interior ceiling as “the belly of the whale” because it curves gradually from its perimeter toward its center, like a huge canopy.

This structure permits a clerestory of frosted windows to enfold the space completely, letting in a computer-modulated mix of daylight and artificial light. The clerestory makes light seem to buoy the ceiling.

The opening collection display is clustered according to the Andersons’ multiple interests – in California art, including experimental materials, Bay Area Figuration and Funk, and abstract expressionism – and by endlessly debatable affinities among works themselves.

The building’s first floor holds a small orientation gallery, containing photographic portraits of many artists represented in the collection, a resource center accommodating a large portion of the Andersons’ art library, and nonpublic office and storage spaces.

Having hosted a graduate student internship in art history for many years, the Andersons were keenly aware of their new project’s value as a teaching museum.

So if – as is likely – the Anderson Collection at Stanford does occasion endless debate among students, teachers and other companionable visitors, everyone will be well served.

Another occurs in a nearby corner space where a cruciform black-on-black square “Abstract Painting, 1966” by Ad Reinhardt flanks Kelly’s “Black Ripe” (1955), in which a bulbous, central, flat black form swells nearly to the edges of a nearly square white canvas. It is almost as if Reinhardt had completed a thought broached by Kelly.

Again, the collectors undoubtedly forged the affinity between the two works more than the painters themselves did, but it persuades the observer immediately.

The Anderson Collection staff refers to the building’s interior ceiling as “the belly of the whale” because it curves gradually from its perimeter toward its center, like a huge canopy.

This structure permits a clerestory of frosted windows to enfold the space completely, letting in a computer-modulated mix of daylight and artificial light. The clerestory makes light seem to buoy the ceiling.

The opening collection display is clustered according to the Andersons’ multiple interests – in California art, including experimental materials, Bay Area Figuration and Funk, and abstract expressionism – and by endlessly debatable affinities among works themselves.

The building’s first floor holds a small orientation gallery, containing photographic portraits of many artists represented in the collection, a resource center accommodating a large portion of the Andersons’ art library, and nonpublic office and storage spaces.

Having hosted a graduate student internship in art history for many years, the Andersons were keenly aware of their new project’s value as a teaching museum.

So if – as is likely – the Anderson Collection at Stanford does occasion endless debate among students, teachers and other companionable visitors, everyone will be well served.

 

If you go

The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, 314 Lomita Drive, Stanford. Opens Sunday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Monday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday. Free with timed tickets available online.

Kenneth Baker is The San Francisco Chronicle‘s art critic. E-mail: kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kennethbakersf