Welcome to the Anderson Collection
Stanford University's free museum of modern and contemporary American art
COCOON On view March 2 – April 4, 2016 Cocoon is the result of CEE32H: Responsive Structures, offered by Stanford Architecture. This design build course focused on the structural and spatial possibilities of welded wire mesh, for the design of a contemplation space. The installation encourages introspection and pause for students, passers-by, and visitors to the Anderson Collection. The progression of arches provides a spatial t…
…and then visiting those locations in New York, Virginia, and the US Virgin Islands. However, today many of those sites contain no physical evidence of my ancestors’ lives. I collected soil from the sites and used it in sculptures and performances, as the soil seemed to contain the only material traces of their lives. A mud hand attached to a stick is propped up by wooden sticks with a blue wheelbarrow behind it. Kiyan Williams on site at the Ande…
“I am interested in change of scale: how the observer affects the object of observation; space as a void; non-space existing in time. By altering the scale and context of the grid (as a scientific tool of measurement), the grid becomes an artistic tool of perception.” — Lita Albuquerque The most unprecedented, remote and isolated locations were used to host a global project, made an unconventional space for art installations in the t…
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…
Artist Wendy Red Star was usually a sleepy freshman during her 9 a.m. intro to art history class at Montana State University during the early 2000s. But one morning, her professor projected a slide of John Gast’s American Progress (1872) onto the lecture hall’s massive screen. It jolted her awake. The iconic painting is meant to promote the idea of Manifest Destiny, centering on an oversized Lady Columbia who illuminates a path for white settler…
The culminating project for the design-build seminar Responsive Structures is a 23-foot-high outdoor contemplation space installed in front of the Anderson Collection. Made of wood salvaged from a California wildfire, the structure is a testament to harmonious coexistence and the transformative power of design. Uni-no-Ki , or Tree Urchin, is open to the public through May 31, and small-scale process models built by students are on display in th…
Art collector and Stanford donor Harry “Hunk” Anderson dies at 95 The longtime friend of the university welcomed Stanford graduate students to study the art in his home and office, and then he and his family made the collection accessible to the world through a transformative gift. BY ROBIN WANDER Stanford neighbor, friend and philanthropist Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson died on Feb. 7 at his Bay Area Peninsula home surrounded by his family….
Jason Linetzky, Director, Anderson Collection at Stanford University Jason Linetzky has spent the better part of his 20-year career working with one of the world’s most coveted private collections of 20th-century American art: the Anderson Collection. The collection was built over the last 50 years by Bay Area residents Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, and by their daughter, Mary Patricia Anderson Pence. The core of the collection, pledged…
Mary Margaret ‘Moo’ Anderson speaks with technicians during the hanging of the collection. – ©L.A. Cicero This weekend Stanford will officially become home to the core of the Anderson Collection, one of the world’s most outstanding private assemblies of post–World War II American art. The collection is a gift from Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson and their daughter, Mary Patrici…
Palette Cleanser: A new campus museum quietly serves up a visual banquet. By Lydia Lee It’s tempting for designers to try to turn art museums into works of art themselves. But what if the client’s directive is just the opposite? A new campus museum in the Bay Area by the New York–based firm Ennead Architects may disappoint those hoping for a bigger architectural statement. However, as designed to house the 121 works of the Anderson Collection,…
Fall, a season experienced in other climates as crisp weather, woolly sweaters, crunchy leaves and autumnally-appropriate spiced drinks. Here in the Bay Area, September is much the same as August, except with more exciting visual art events on the calendar and a slight spike in temperatures. Don’t know where to start for a healthy dose of excellent art? Here are eight suggestions for not-to-miss exhibitions, installations, public art projects an…
The coming relaunch of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has lots of people buzzing in anticipation. But downtown San Francisco is not the only place where truly exciting things are happening on the visual arts front. Super-star artist James Turrell, for instance, is touching down in Palo Alto with a pocket-sized exhibition this week, ahead of a major retrospective of his work at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in late May. Turrell is…
Getting it down on paper A different aspect of the Anderson Collection on view by Sheryl Nonnenberg / Palo Alto Weekly Philip Guston’s untitled ink-on-paper work is featured at Anderson Collection’s latest exhibition. Image courtesy of Anderson Collection. Visitors to the Anderson Collection at Stanford University can experience a wide range of art movements (virtually every major development after 1945) and media. The museum…
