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…

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…

…ink a little brandy and smoke cigarettes, and I’d stand here taking in the secondhand smoke. He was little bit of left and I’m a little bit of right, so it was interesting.” Pollock’s “Lucifer” hangs over the buffet in the dining room. “This is a room where you can have a feast without having a meal,” Hunk says. The room also bears major works by Clyfford Still and De Kooning as well as a tapered re…

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….

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,…

…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…

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 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…

…ists like Rothko. But seeing such pieces in a museum in front of you feels very different than looking at images online after Googling the artist. These large canvases and colors, though they are just large patterns, weigh on you, and that weight was calming. It almost had an aura that transcended my mind from my real life, making me not ponder about the events of my daily life for a bit. I was sitting down, and the painting on the wall next to i…

…— a seductive red painting.” “Robert Irwin’s untitled disk is capturing people’s attention. There’s this shadow quality — he was very interested in the transience of time and light. Hopefully you get lost in it a little bit.” “Agnes Martin’s (Untitled #21) is another work that I would hope people come and spend time with. There are just these subtleties to the painting, and the balance of the palette is really wonderful.” “David Park’s ‘Four Wom…