…dersons in 2011 regarding their intention to give Stanford a significant portion of their prized art collection, they said: “Throughout our adult lives, we have always been closely associated with colleges and universities, and in making this gift to Stanford we anticipate the students, the public and the entire art community will have the opportunity to fully engage the collection. Hopefully, this gift makes a great university greater, and the w…

…thought of it?” Collecting art took them on an exhilarating journey to the new, and stretched their hearts and minds in ways it would not have been possible otherwise. The Gift of Inspiration Today they’ve donated 121 “irreplaceable” artworks to Stanford University, who built a standalone museum for the collection. “It became bigger than a family”, says Hunk Anderson, “it needed to be shared with the worl…

…ision. In some respects, the Stanford museum bids farewell to a vanishing culture — to a slower, more deliberate and more personal collecting style. The Andersons began collecting in the 1960s, when the art world was small and insular and museums weren’t defined by a philosophy of grow-or-die corporatism. Buying and selling contemporary painting and sculpture had not become the spectator sport they are today, dominated by international coll…

…houses the extraordinary collection of the late Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson. The result of a mutually beneficial relationship between the local couple and the university, the Anderson holds a world-renowned collection of post-World War II American art that once graced the halls of the Saga Corporation, (Harry Anderson was one of the founders) and later, the Quadrus office complex on Sand Hill Road in…

…d in Silicon Valley. Then you come to the driveway of a ranch house that stands pretty much as it was when built in the 1960s by Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson. From the unpretentious exterior, few would guess that inside the house a single painting in their collection is worth as much as one or even two of those neighboring estates. This is the home of people who not only live with art, they live for it, searching for “the best of the be…

…at Stanford University, stands between two new acquisitions, Willem de Kooning’s Gansevoort Street (c. 1949) on the left and Jackson Pollock’s Totem Lesson I (1944) on the right. (Image credit: Farrin Abbott) “By donating two of the most sought-after New York School paintings in private hands to Stanford, Moo Anderson continued to exemplify her strong conviction that art is to be shared and to be lived,” said Stanford University President Marc…