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

Hunk, Moo Anderson give modern art masterpieces to Stanford

…Ransford, which is what my parents called me. And a guy at the end of the bar said, ‘Moo Moo? What a funny name.’ So we shortened it to Moo.” During his senior year in college, Hunk and two close friends (who would become his lifelong business partners) sold Hobart College on the idea of providing its meals for students not living in fraternity houses, a service that was costing the school excessively. “On Nov. 22, 1948, w…

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

Up Close: One Painting Tours With Artists

…and its traditions through the intersections of gender, race, and ethnic identities. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth, UK; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA to name a few. Permanent collections include: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Museum of Contemporary Photograph…

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…

News

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

…ment. The list of participating artists — too lengthy to mention here — is an impressive one, including off-site commissions by Constance Hockaday and Jenifer K. Wofford. The exhibition spans media and generations, documenting the important projects that occupy space in the world, merging politics and social commentary with everyday life. Jenny Odell, ‘ITEM 048: bicentennial Seven-Up cans’ from ‘The Bureau of Suspended Objects.’ (Photo by Jenny…

News

Creations of Space and Light

…pends on impeccable installation: precise color of the gallery wall and exact placement of four spotlights. When properly displayed, the disk is otherworldly. It appears to be floating. The disk blends with its shadows, which in turn seem to take on substance and merge with the disk. Prolonged gazing can make a viewer feel that he or she is levitating along with the work. Advertisement One work in this series commands its own wall at the Anderson…

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

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

…t on a dimming artistic landscape, looking ever less hospitable to creative adventure. Other local institutional programs, meanwhile, provided a spectrum of diversions to the wider public. High: By any reckoning, the year’s high point had to be the opening of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, permanent access to a cache of defining postwar American artworks. Low: Bay Area Now 7, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ triennial survey show…

News

A&E Digest

…ers sell their goods for a good cause. SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDENTS … The Mountain View-based arts nonprofit, Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA), has announced the names of 27 students who have been awarded scholarships for the continued study of visual art. The students, who range from first to eighth grade, come from Santa Clara and San Mateo County Schools, and were nominated by their classroom teachers based on their talent, hard wo…

News

Anderson Collection a modern art trove not to be missed

…arts,” says Jason Linetzky, the Anderson Collection’s founding director. He began working with the family around 2001, providing exhibition assistance as well as installation and curatorial support. “They just started looking and collecting, without much direction, until they met two people on (the Stanford) campus: Al Elsen and Nathan Oliveira.” According to Linetzky, Elsen, who was a professor of art history, encouraged the Andersons to look at…

News

Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…ories 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 can help create a trio of two-dimensional soundsuits. Public programs supporting the exhibition will continue throughout the year. This fall, there will be pop-up family activities in Studio 2 and a mobi…

News

A new lust for art takes hold in Silicon Valley

…of connection there between a very innovative creation of the 19th century and a very innovative creation of the 21st century.” Tiews’ department is also bringing “artists to campus across the board, in many different 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 complete…

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

…. Collectors who have spent decades assembling their collections and have enjoyed living with the art in certain combinations, want to share that experience. To them the paintings are part of a narrative, perhaps belonging to the art, perhaps just their own. Regardless of their background, or the depth or breadth of their collection, they have a fundamental belief in art history, in a historical progression of work that can be grouped by time, st…