Welcome to the Anderson Collection
Stanford University's free museum of modern and contemporary American art

Open Wed - Sun

11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Advance reservations not required.
Click here for group visits.

News

Hunk, Moo Anderson give modern art masterpieces to Stanford

…rst 15 years together were consumed with the business and parenthood. In 1962, Saga partners decided to relocate company headquarters to Menlo Park. By the time the Andersons moved from Oberlin, Ohio, Saga Foods – as the company came to be called – served 136 institutions and was a financial success. When the Andersons discovered their passion for collecting in 1964, they started with French and American Impressionists – Claude…

News

Creations of Space and Light

By Anna Koster For The Daily News Pushing boundaries has been the life work of Robert Irwin. His six-decade exploration of perception as the fundamental issue of art has expanded ideas of what art can be and can do. Irwin will speak about his work on March 10 at Stanford’s Cemex Auditorium. Irwin, born in 1928, in Long Beach, started as a painter in the 1950s with an abstract expressionist style, but quickly began removing all that was not…

Hostile Terrain 94
Exhibition

Hostile Terrain 94

Exhibition

Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra

News

Stanford unveils the Anderson Collection: New museum dedicated to renowned works of American art

…h only three colors of paint (red, black, white) applied thickly with a palette knife. Its jagged forms and bold composition are confrontational and somewhat unsettling. Look to the left, however, and the eye takes in the cheerful swirls and bright pastels that comprise Joan Mitchell’s “Before, Again IV.” Gaze right, and Richard Diebenkorn’s evocative seascape, “Ocean Park #60,” immediately produces a sense of…

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford solidifies Bay Area’s art stature

…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…

News

The Anderson Collection at Stanford: An Uplifting Experience

The Anderson Collection at Stanford: An Uplifting Experience Posted: 09/24/2014 2:51 pm EDT  Updated: 2 hours ago Visiting the newly-opened Anderson Collection at Stanford requires taking everything — your body and your expectations — up a level. After entering the building’s main lobby — which will cost you nothing as the Anderson is free — you will ascend a grand staircase that plateaus at the building&#8217…

News

The Magic of The Anderson Collection

Pollock’s Lucifer now resides at Stanford University and is welcoming visitors. The news is of significance to everyone for reasons described in this article. Lucifer, the crown jewel of the Anderson Collection, moved to Stanford with a retinue of 120 colorful accomplices he’s befriended while living at the Andersons’ residence. The whole gang is now happily installed in a custom-designed museum on the Stanford campus. With ro…

News

A New Museum for Stanford—and a New Neighbor for Us!

On September 21, the Anderson Collection building opened at the Palo Alto campus of Stanford University—our frequent partner-in-crime when it comes to celebrating the West. Designed by the same team that created Stanford’s stellar Bing Concert Hall, the structure houses 121 works of modern and contemporary American art, all donated by Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. Of course, we’re most excited about the pieces that have a Western flavor:…

News

Top 10 art shows as rising rents force out S.F. artists

The dispersal of notable downtown San Francisco galleries by tech-driven rent spikes made 2014 a pretty bleak year on the contemporary art scene. The tenacity or successful relocation of a few could not offset the disheartening effect of seeing others, especially the irreplaceable Stephen Wirtz Gallery, expire. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art remains closed for another year, a temporary but very dark spot on a dimming artistic landscape,…

News

A&E Digest

…y Twenty-seven student artists from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties have been awarded scholarships for by the Community School of Music and Arts. Photo courtesy of CSMA. This week, students win art scholarships, a film on feminist art screens at Stanford and international fashion designers sell their goods for a good cause. SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDENTS … The Mountain View-based arts nonprofit, Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA), has…

News

Anderson Collection a modern art trove not to be missed

…visit. Here are just a handful of the museum’s highlights: “Jackson Pollock’s ‘Lucifer’ is something that people come to see. It previously hung over Putter’s bed, before moving to the dining room and before coming here.” “There’s an incredible Mark Rothko (‘Pink and White Over Red’) that’s just beautiful — a seductive red painting.” “Robert Irwin’s untitled disk is capturing people’s attention. There’s this shadow quality — he was very intereste…

News

Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…ht-provoking and challenging suits are constructed in ways that refuse to reveal gender, age or race. They offer complete anonymity. To imagine yourself in them is to turn the collective sharing of memories into a personal epiphany. The Anderson exhibit includes eight Soundsuits, three video works and a recently completed documentary about Nick Cave titled “Here.” There also is an interactive felt wall where visitors to the gallery ca…

News

A new lust for art takes hold in Silicon Valley

…ferent areas,” he says. For three days, May 24-26, New York-based Hope Gangloff — the first Diekman Contemporary Commissions Program artist — will be intermittently painting large-scale portraits in the Cantor’s atrium. Gangloff’s completed works will be on view through April 2018. Across the street from the Cantor and Anderson is Andy Goldsworthy’s “Stone River.” The 320-foot sculpture is made of sandstone from university buildings that were cas…

News

Getting it down on paper: A different aspect of the Anderson Collection on view

…s the same bold, black, gestural strokes that can be seen in his paintings. Richard Diebenkorn’s carefully composed use of geometry and muted, cool colors relates directly to the evocative “Ocean Park #60” at the top of the steps. On the other hand, Ad Rhinehart’s “Untitled”, a gouache on paper, is a complete surprise. Unlike “Abstract Painting, 1966,” which consists of subtle gradations of black to…

News

The Museum of Hunk, Moo & Putter: The Anderson Collection at Stanford will Rock You

…Mary Patricia Anderson Pence (“Putter”) could have led post-World War Two lives of suburban white privilege and comfort – thanks to the financial success of the Saga food service company Hunk co-founded that supplied many colleges (including Stanford) and for which they moved from the East Coast to the West. However, in the early 1960s, before their daughter was born, the Andersons traveled to Paris and had a life-changing visit to the Louvre….

News

Mary Margaret ‘Moo’ Anderson, modern art collector and benefactor, dead at 92

…wo partners had started a venture to improve dormitory food service and it soon expanded across the country. The company, Saga Corp., moved to Menlo Park, which is what brought the Andersons west in 1964. The company went public in the 1970s and was eventually acquired by Marriott. Neither Anderson had ever studied art but during a trip to Europe, they were simultaneously swept away by the French Impressionists. Their first purchases were by Pica…

News

Works by Pollock, de Kooning donated to Stanford’s Anderson Collection

…intings were last shown in the Bay Area during the survey “Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection” from 2000 to 2001 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “These are two of the most coveted works by these influential artists still in private hands,” said Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection. “They were really the leaders of the Abstract Expressionists in New York.” The announcement comes less than a week after the dea…

News

Up Close: One Painting Tours With Artists

…hout the United States and Europe. She has recently been featured in group exhibitions at the San Francisco Arts Commission, Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), and Parts & Labor (Beacon). Semo had three gallery solo shows in 2019: one at Marlborough Contemporary (New York) in January, one at Jessica Silverman Gallery (San Francisco) in March, and one at Ribordy Thetaz (Geneva) in November. She opened her first solo museum exhibition…

News

The Cantor and Anderson Collection offer free membership to Class of 2020

The Cantor and Anderson Collection offer free membership to Class of 2020…