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.

News

Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson dies at 95

…amily’s remarkable collection go to a place that would curate it in perpetuity, so that it could be used, shared and seen, reflected his philosophy that art can and should inspire all of us. All of us at Stanford will always have the deepest affection for Hunk as a generous, big-hearted man.” To date, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University has been seen by nearly 250,000 visitors. Every work in the museum is viewable online and the collec…

Previewing the Anderson Collection at Stanford University

News

Stanford Opens a Museum Highlighting American Art

…ract expressionism—”the first really great American art movement that had international acceptance,” as Mr. Anderson says. “And we wanted to be a part of it.” It took two years of “wooing and wining and dining” various collectors and dealers to get Jackson Pollock’s “Lucifer.” They also bought pieces by Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Franz Kline. “This collection is built without a cura…

News

Meet Manuel Neri’s Muses: ‘Assertion of the Figure’ highlights the models behind the sculpture

…wn as his “alborada patina” (alborada meaning “dawn” in Spanish). Does knowing that Neri and Brown were married for a time influence the impact or meaning of the work? The drawing features a more recognizable woman, with a round belly and shoulder-length, stringy dark hair. He gives her a right eye and a nose but then blends the cheek down to the neck without making an attempt to draw in the lines of a mouth or her lips. T…

News

Forms That Don’t Yet Exist: Kiyan Williams Interviewed by Louis Bury

Kiyan Williams is not afraid to get dirty in quite literal ways. From a performance in which they emerged from a trash bag beside a New York City dumpster (Trash and Treasure [2014]) to a sculpture of uplifted, zombie-esque arms made from soil and installed without permission on the riverbank of a colonial-era slave dock site (Reaching Towards Warmer Suns [2020]), their art places them in intimate relation with the abject and the taboo so as to…

News

Why Artist Wendy Red Star Centered Indigenous People in Her Abstracted Revision of the Iconic Manifest Destiny Painting ‘American Progress’

…pon the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869; that spike, which is inscribed with Stanford’s name among others, is now in the university’s Cantor Arts Center collection. Red Star has recreated Stanford’s golden last spike as part of a carved foam sculpture where it pierces a buffalo skull. It is inscribed with the Crow insult “You are without relatives,” but more closely means that an individual is nothing without family or communi…

How the Stanford Arts District grew from a midair inspiration

News

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…

News

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

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

News

Full House

…dersons, collecting has always been an evolutionary process. At the time they brought the Pollock home, they had almost no place to hang it because, as Putter recalled, the more public rooms of the house were already filled with her parents’ earlier acquisitions, by artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and Frederick Carl Frieseke; a Renoir was moved from Putter’s room to make way for the Pollock. The collecting bug bit them in 1964, on…

News

Opening gala for Anderson Collection at Stanford draws artists

…ctors past and present: Connie Wolf of the Cantor Arts Center, Neal Benezraof the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, former Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco director Harry Parker and its current director, Colin Bailey, and Jason Linetzsky, head of the Anderson. The museum, open to the public for free, was intended to help in “cementing relationships across cultures,” Hunk Anderson said, and, he added, “make a great university a little bit grea…

News

A Dorm-Food Fortune Has Funded the Best New Museum in Silicon Valley

…ol: abstract expressionists here, minimalists there, and so on. Moving from gallery to gallery, you can feel the Andersons developing their eyes as collectors: the abstract-expressionist work is spectacular—I was particularly taken with an Adolph Gottlieb, two Motherwells, and, happily, the red-orange Rothko I remembered from college—but there is also a sense of checking off names on a must-have list. The choices from there become a bit less perf…

News

A new lust for art takes hold in Silicon Valley

…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 a little bit more and discovering some more artists,” Allison Rose says. “It just kind of snowba…

News

Contemplations on Sam Francis’s art

…I was looking at a painting that covered an entire wall, when two older women walked into the room, immersed in a conversation about his color choices. I wanted to participate: There is something easy about conversations with older people. As I attempted to come up with a question about Francis’s work, one turned to me and asked: “Isn’t it too abstract? What do you think?” “Yes, it’s a bit too abstract for me. I am not very into modern art. This…

Exhibition

Manuel Neri: Assertion of the Figure

The Catalogues

Family Programs

News

Anderson Collection opens to public on Sept. 21

…public at its new Stanford University home this Sunday, Sept. 21, in a freestanding pavilion next to the Cantor Arts Center in the University’s growing arts district. Members of the Cantor Arts Center and the Anderson Collection can also attend a special preview of the museum on Sept. 20. Opening day festivities will include food trucks, music, activities and digital tours. Admission is free, and while visitors can reserve timed tickets online a…

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford solidifies Bay Area’s art stature

When the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opens to the public this Sunday, visitors will be rewarded with a breathtaking introduction to one of the world’s most important private collections. The long-anticipated institution, adjacent to the Cantor Arts Center, features a formidable cache of modern and contemporary art and certifies the Bay Area’s growing international stature as a destination for lovers and scholars of 20t…

News

A&E Digest

…ra and San Mateo County Schools, and were nominated by their classroom teachers based on their talent, hard work and demonstrated interest in art. The stduetns will be invited to take part in CSMA art programs. Those interested in learning more can go to arts4all.org or call 650-917-6800. FEMINIST ART ON FILM … On Thursday, April 30 at 6 p.m., the Anderson Collection at Stanford University will host a free screening of filmmaker Lynn Hershm…