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.

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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…

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Up Close: One Painting Tours With Artists

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…

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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…

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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…

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

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

How the Stanford Arts District grew from a midair inspiration

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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…

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Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…The Chicago artist’s creations are part sculpture and ornament, armor and instrument and are often worn as costumes and performed in. The energetic vibration of each single, insignificant article is magnified by how Cave chooses to bind them together. Each found object is transformed through the combination of color, history, function and sound. They force a reaction based on the viewer’s personal history. There is something familiar…

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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…

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Stanford Builds Arts District With $36 Million Postwar Museum

Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella are some of the stars of the Anderson Collection of postwar American art, opening this weekend at a new $36 million museum at Stanford University in California. For Stanford, which first made its reputation as an engineering school, the building is the second of three projects to create an arts district around its flagship museum, the Cantor Center. The nearby $112 million Bing Concert Hall opened in…

On Elite Campuses, an Arts Race

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Hot Art Bling the New Thing on the Peninsula

…says Rhyena Halpern, who oversees the city’s public investment in the arts as assistant director of Palo Alto’s Community Services Department. “Because the cost of living is so high, and the cost of doing business is so high.” But the very same economic boom has created more people in a position to invest in art. Pace, Halpern says, could well be the harbinger of things to come. “That they took this risk to come here to see what they could do, s…

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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…

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A private art collection becomes a Stanford collection on Sunday, Sept. 21

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…

Construction on Anderson Collection art museum begins

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Anderson Collection pieces lock in a home at Stanford

…ly child, Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence. Hunk attended Hobart College in New York, where he co-founded a company to manage the school’s cafeteria. He then came West to establish Saga in Menlo Park, a national company distributing dorm food to college campuses across the United States. Museums far and wide courted the Andersons, but, logically, the art collection paid for by college cafeteria food belongs on a college campus. The deal, str…

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

…igned with dramatic twisting wings. Between that piquant project and the heavy Greek Revival meal next door, the comparatively neutral Anderson Collection will undoubtedly serve as a palate cleanser. Lydia Lee is a San Francisco–based journalist who writes about architecture, design, and urban development. Size: 33,500 square feet Project Cost: $36 million Completion Date: September 2014 Architect: Ennead Architects 320 West 13th Street New York…