…Harry Anderson told A.i.A., “thinking that art was somebody we would play golf with.” Bowled over by the aesthetic experience of great art but novices in connoisseurship, he added, “We had to go from minus 10 to plus 100.” Naiveté about the challenge of building a top-notch art collection played in their favor. “We didn’t know it couldn’t be done,” Harry admits, “so we just went ahead and did…

…nderson Collection at Stanford University miss seeing you. We are eager to welcome you back to campus, share art and connect over ideas. Now through August 31, 2020, we are offering all Stanford graduates in the class of 2020 one year of free Ambassador membership ($100 value*) to both museums. Each membership covers up to two adults and children within a single household. To get your FREE membership, fill out the form available via this link….

…ms — in other words, from accurate depictions of real objects to compositions based entirely on geometric shapes and patterns. In this piece, Diebenkorn plays with composition, lines and color. The artist is known for decomposing scenes from life into conglomerates of lines and shapes, as he does in “Ocean Park #60.” Diebenkorn uses a subdued, cool color palette, alluding to the ocean, though he adds depth to his composition by superimposing red…

…n the assemblage of marine debris surrounding the horse. And finally, I thought that the Wisch Family Gallery on the first floor of the Anderson Collection would be the perfect place to view this sculpture. Linetzky: For me, the announcement of the Doerr School presented an exciting opportunity to celebrate the founding of the new school through the presentation of contemporary works by artists who feel compelled to engage with and address pressi…

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…

…f World War II has hung in a private home in an affluent San Francisco suburb — first in a child’s bedroom and then over a dining room credenza. Jackson Pollock’s “Lucifer” (1947) is the canvas in which the artist’s tentative experiments with a revolutionary new way of painting first took flight. Now the painting is going public. “Lucifer” is the stellar work in the Anderson Collection, an impressive new…

…meal,” says Mr. Anderson, referring to the art that once hung there. How did they become Hunk and Moo? Mr. Anderson, now 91, got his nickname when assistant football coach Heartley “Hunk” Anderson replaced Knute Rockne at the University of Notre Dame, and friends started calling him Hunk. On a date, Mr. Anderson introduced Mrs. Anderson to a friend as “Murma”—what her parents called her—and someone at the end of the…

…have a standard or correct color locked into the image,” she says. But when photography was invented, she adds, the color bars were skewed. “This might sound like a leap or a metaphor but I’m trying to make the case that photography is like any other medium. It’s biased because of its racist structures.” Stephanie Syjuco in conversation with Stanford art historian Kim Biel at the Anderson Collection White Balance/Color Cast delves into the histo…

The Anderson Collection opens to the 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 visito…

…Still’s painting changing proportions and accessibility, artworks respond to all sorts of cultural echoes and other influences that we can seldom pinpoint easily. The Still at the top of the stairs prepares us to notice throughout the Anderson Collection fluctuating impressions made by artworks that initially seem foursquare and fully defined. Such an experience of art’s mutability is a key into the psychology of collecting as the An…

A&E Digest: Student scholarships, fashion for a cause and more This week’s A&E news by Elizabeth Schwyzer / Palo Alto Weekly Twenty-seven student artists from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties have been awarded scholarships for by the Community School of Music and Arts. Photo courtesy of CSMA. This week, students win art scholarships, a film on feminist art screens at Stanford and international fashion designers sell their goods…

…eum, art history has been obliterated, sometimes for the better creating a more inclusive, more diverse purview, and sometimes for worse by diluting the museum’s voice to having no coherent point of view. In this one might compare the Museum of Modern Art under Alfred Barr to its present incarnation, crowded and thronged with attendees but much less powerful of an experience. As a result (and perhaps for tax reasons I don’t know about), we have s…

…Kahlil Robert Irving’s work resonates with me right now in a very contemporary way. He looks at what’s discarded and hand crafts it, with great care, into a beautiful object that’s given a different life,” said Aimee Shapiro, director of programming and engagement at the Anderson Collection. “He’s a young artist whose work addresses issues of police brutality and racism – issues that have existed for a long time and came to the forefront this yea…

…alumnus. Keith Jantzen and his husband, Scott Beth, ’82, donated Untitled (Portrait of Tom Jefferson), 1957, by the Bay Area artist David Park (1911-60). The painting will be on view when the museum reopens on Sept. 22, 2021. “I am extremely grateful to Keith Jantzen and Scott Beth for their generous gift to the Anderson Collection,” said Jason Linetzky, director of the museum. “The addition of this work focuses renewed attention on David Park,…

…ach inkblot, a large chaotic dark shape on a white background. Like Rorshcach, who asked people to tell him what they were seeing in his famous inkblots, I questioned how to interpret this painting and thought about what was going on in the artist’s mind. Was he going through a chaotic period in his life? Is it fear he is trying to draw? Anger? I went up to read the description of “Figure 8” by Franz Kline, and learned that he was capturing the e…