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.

Artwork

Barrier

News

Site-specific student projects now on view!

  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…

News

Forms That Don’t Yet Exist: Kiyan Williams Interviewed by Louis Bury

…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…

News

Hunk, Moo Anderson give modern art masterpieces to Stanford

Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson didn’t know much about art – they’d dabbled in antiques – before they first visited Paris in 1964 and made their way into the Louvre. “We became so enamored with the visual experience that on the way home, we looked at each other and said, ‘How could all this have been going on and we not have been a part of it?’ ” said Harry “Hunk” Anderson. The muse…

Stanford trustees visit new art collection, approve construction

Newsmaker Interview: Ennead’s Richard Olcott Designs a New Museum for Stanford University

Lita Albuquerque, “Stellar Axis”

News

Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson dies at 95

…d in an award-winning building designed by Ennead Architects in Stanford’s arts district opened to the public in 2014. The Anderson family has a long history with Stanford, dating back to their 1960s relationship with the Department of Art and Art History, including Nathan Oliveira, artist and professor; Albert Elsen, art historian and professor; and Wanda Corn, former chair of the department, all of whom were integral resources to the Andersons…

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

Mirroring Heaven on Earth: Stellar Axis South and 90 Degrees North

“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…

News

Jason Linetzky named first director of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University

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…

News

Palette Cleanser: A new campus museum quietly serves up a visual banquet

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,…

News

Instead of Changing Leaves, Peep Eight Bay Area Art Shows this Fall

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…

News

The Anderson Collection presents a solo exhibition of works by Stanford alum Stephanie Syjuco

The Anderson Collection presents a solo exhibition of works by Stanford alum Stephanie Syjuco Through various mediums, the artist provokes a shift in perspective on U.S. history and inclusion. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email By Robin Wander In the exhibition White Balance/Color Cast at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Oakland-based artist, educator, and Stanford alum Stephanie Syjuco uses photography, video, and ins…

News

“Stellar Axis” at the Anderson Collection draws connections between Earth and sky

Stepping into the Wisch Family Gallery at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University evokes a polar desert’s quiet and dangerous beauty. Centered amidst  large-scale photographs of a pristine white, icy environment, an otherworldly ultramarine-blue sphere measuring slightly over 3 feet in diameter rests on a bed of what appears to be snow. The sphere, representing Rigil Kentaurus, the third-brightest star in the night sky, is a key element o…

News

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

…y explained. The donation was the first from the Anderson family since they gave 121 works to open the museum in 2014. The new additions kick off a $10 million fundraising effort to enhance the exhibition schedule at the museum. The Anderson Collection at Stanford University is celebrating its fifth anniversary. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 2014 As part of the fifth anniversary celebration, the Anderson exhibition space — 16,000 feet on two f…

On Elite Campuses, an Arts Race

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…

News

Why Artist Wendy Red Star Centered Indigenous People in Her Abstracted Revision of the Iconic Manifest Destiny Painting ‘American Progress’

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…

News

‘Tree Urchin’ is grounded in design

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…