…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…

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…

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…

A project of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University Hosted by art historian and the associate director of ITALIC at Stanford, Kim Beil, the micro-video series “Up Close: One Painting Tours with Artists” focuses on a single object in the Anderson Collection, sparking dialogue with a guest artist. This project is made possible by a grant from Stanford Arts and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. Artist Rebekah Goldstein explor…

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

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…

…t a preview — is part of a developing campus “arts district” designed to show Stanford’s commitment to the arts. It offers a nice complement to the Cantor, which has its own notable collection of 20th century American art. (The Cantor is also displaying 10 Pop Art paintings borrowed from the Andersons’ collection at the shuttered San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.) The Anderson Collection and the Cantor now make a c…

…torate in 1962 and was working full time, “my wife and I would go to the art fairs at Foothill College and buy a little tiny thing,” he says. “One thing led to another.” Engineering led to venture capital. Art fair posters have led to an apartment stuffed with the likes of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud in a luxury retirement community on Stanford land. Burt McMurtry joined the board of trustees in 1997, and after f…

I got a preview Tuesday of a coming arts district and curriculum at Stanford University and the truly drool-worthy collection of modern art that will help anchor it. Jason Linetzky, director of Stanford’s Anderson Collection, led a small group of journalists around the collection at an office complex just off Sand Hill Road. Harry Anderson and his wife Mary are donating 121 paintings and drawings plus a small art library to Stanford, including w…

…n by John McLaughlin rightly establishes painting as the launching pad for the genre’s perceptual clarity. Committing every sin of “good” composition on the way to achieving its sublime ends, the beautiful painting is the perfect setup for an exquisite, lacquered acrylic disk by Robert Irwin. The disk, divided horizontally by a shadowy gray bar, is bathed in ambient light that appears to carve visual space as if it were a solid…

…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…

…Rose moved into their historic Palo Alto home, their art was essentially limited to Pottery Barn and Z Gallerie buys. It was interior designer Jon de la Cruz who suggested the couple consider elevating their acquisitions. Four years later, the walls of their 1905 Craftsman are decorated with contemporary works from the likes of John Chiara, Gabriel Orozco, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra and Hiroshi Sugimoto. “We started buying a few pieces, learning…

…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….

…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…

…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…

…Anderson Collection. “They were really the leaders of the Abstract Expressionists in New York.” The announcement comes less than a week after the death of Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson, who has been the main benefactor of the collection since the death of her husband, Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson, in February 2018. Moo Anderson had committed the gifts months ago, in honor of the fifth anniversary of the Anderson Collection. She had been scheduled to a…

…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…

…oward 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 e…

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:…