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…

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:…

…estra: A humbly entertaining group show, easily overlooked within a dreary but clamorous local art economy, this commemorative event reopened a souful, nonprofit mainstay of the Dogpatch neighborhood shuttered two years earlier by the death of its founder, Bruno Mauro. The Plot Thickens: Fraenkel Gallery’s 35th anniversary show (through Jan. 31) honors the gallery’s outstanding success, but crucially it also celebrates looking, not commerce, as t…

…le.com Museum highlights Jason Linetzky, the Anderson Collection’s founding director, recommends allotting about 90 minutes for a visit. Here are just a handful of the museum’s highlights: “Jackson Pollock’s ‘Lucifer’ is something that people come to see. It previously hung over Putter’s bed, before moving to the dining room and before coming here.” “There’s an incredible Mark Rothko (‘Pink and White Over Red’) that’s just beautiful — a seductive…

…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…

…ferent 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 completed works will be on view through April 2018. Across the street from the Cantor and Anderson is Andy Goldsworthy’s “Stone River.” The 320-foot sculpture is made of sandstone from university buildings that were cas…

…lected Marks on Paper,” that features drawings, collages and paintings. These works, on display until Aug. 20, are not part of the original gift of 121 works to the museum, but are included in the private holdings of the Anderson Collection located at the Quadrus site on Sand Hill Road. According to Anderson Collection Director Jason Linetzky, the idea for the exhibition came after conversations with the Andersons, who “wanted to expa…

…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….

…folksy style, was the face of the operation, Moo was just as active in the partnership. “This has been a family affair from the beginning,” said Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection. “Moo led from the heart and was a lifelong learner, endlessly inquisitive, kind and generous.” Hunk Anderson died in February 2018 at age 95. The Andersons were married for 68 years. Mary Margaret Ransford was born Nov. 1, 1926, in Boston, where she g…

…intings were last shown in the Bay Area during the survey “Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection” from 2000 to 2001 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “These are two of the most coveted works by these influential artists still in private hands,” said Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection. “They were really the leaders of the Abstract Expressionists in New York.” The announcement comes less than a week after the dea…

…t of Center: Five Years of the Anderson Collection at Stanford University” presents something cohesive and communal—the unmistakable consciousness of the American West, and more often than not of California, in the mid to late 20th century. At a fifth anniversary celebration of the Anderson this past Saturday, I had walked inside to look for the LED sculptures in the contemporaneous Jim Campbell exhibit. But none of his blinking lights capt…

March 23, 2020 Click here for the latest changes to Stanford Art Museums programming. Please check back frequently for updates….

Exploring Art through Sound and Motion: Inspired by Nick Cave’s Soundsuits Because Stanford museums are currently closed, Second Sunday will be going virtual! Join the Second Sunday Crew in making and activating wearable sculptures inspired by artist Nick Cave. Museum educators will be presenting Second Sunday Live on July 12, 2020 via Zoom from 11AM-11:30AM PDT. You can download the activity guide prior to the event. Click here to regist…

…Jefferson.” The painting passed through several different hands, was included in a Park retrospective exhibition organized by the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California, that traveled to the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California, in the 1970s, and was finally acquired by Jantzen and Beth in 2016. Jantzen and Beth are thrilled that the painting is entering the Anderson Collection and becoming available to the community to enjoy. “We ar…

…relation with the abject and the taboo so as to meditate on the human body’s capacities as well as its fraught, complex gender and racial histories. In particular, Williams has developed a homespun repertoire of gestures—throwing, rubbing, patting, licking, whipping—to manipulate the material of soil. Sometimes these gestures comprise the content of a public performance; other times, they take place behind the scenes and are evident only as scul…

…yled to highlight popular fantasies associated with “ethnic” patterning and costume. The double-take required to comprehend the history and the commentary is where a perspective shift takes place. Stephanie Syjuco, “Cargo Cults: Head Bundle (Small),” 2016. Pigmented inkjet print. Edition of 15 + 2AP; 21 x 16 inches framed. (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York) For Linetzky…

…white, orange tulips that cast a neon light. Pictured suspended before death, the orchids lived for a few weeks after painting, some even blooming a little. These and other works play with processes of digital alteration. In Hard Light (the title refers to a Photoshop filter), white lilies are set against the checkered backdrop of a transparency layer. The subject of Chromakey Aftermath is an arrangement of protest leftovers (flags, barriers, br…