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.

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Pollock’s stellar ‘Lucifer’ and impressive Anderson Collection

…e stellar work in the Anderson Collection, an impressive new museum opening Sunday at Stanford University. Given the prestige of the university, founded in 1891, it is remarkable to realize that Stanford has never been home to a major art collection. The closest it has come is the group of 200 sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), mostly contemporary bronze casts, housed at the Cantor Arts Center adjacent to the new museum. Overnight, the Ande…

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Stanford unveils the Anderson Collection: New museum dedicated to renowned works of American art

by Sheryl Nonnenberg / Palo Alto Weekly “How did they fit all this art in their house?” That was the question of the day at the media preview for Stanford’s new Anderson Collection, which opens to the public with a grand celebration this Sunday, September 21. Being surrounded by museum-quality works by artists including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Richard Diebenkorn was a way of life for collectors Harry W. and Mary Marga…

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Palette Cleanser: A new campus museum quietly serves up a visual banquet

…owing interiors have a casual quality that is heightened by the daylighting. Obviously, none of the paintings at the Anderson Collection are exposed to direct sunlight: most of the light enters high overhead through the clerestories, which modulate the sun through mechanical louvers and frosted plexiglass. The arc of the ceiling is calibrated to bounce light down into the galleries. It is lowest at the top of the stairs (13 feet) and goes up to 2

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Stanford arts don’t take a break

The end of the calendar year is a time for first and last chances at the Cantor Arts Center, and the opportunity to revisit favorite works across campus. Loose in Some Real Tropics: Robert Rauschenberg’s “Stoned Moon” Projects, 1969–70 opens at the Cantor on Saturday, Dec. 20, and runs through Mar. 16, 2015. In 1969, American artist Robert Rauschenberg was invited by the NASA Art Program to document the launch of Apollo 11, the…

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The Anderson Collection: Top 5 pieces

…lines. Like many of his contemporaries, San Francis practiced loose, gestural mark-making, which can be seen in the multicolored drips and splatters that are strewn across “The Beaubourg.” It is interesting to note the contrast between these seemingly formless paint splatters and the geometric forms that crisscross the piece. 2. “Ocean Park #60” by Richard Diebenkorn “Ocean Park #60” is a product of Bay Area painter Richard Diebenkorn’s progress…

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Hot Art Bling the New Thing on the Peninsula

…h makes ancient Japanese art come alive in floor-to-ceiling digital animations.   From her vantage point to the south, Kimball looked on with some envy as Pace drew in 45,000 people in less than three months. “That teamlab animation is something to marvel at,” Kimball says. “It’s immersive. It’s so animated. There’s so much to look at.” Kimball insists she’s not really feeling competitive with Pace, though she wishes her organization had res…

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The Anderson Collection at Stanford University receives new gifts of art

BY ROBIN WANDER The Anderson Collection at Stanford University accepted 13 gifts of art into the museum’s permanent collection this academic year. These are the first acquisitions since the museum opened in 2014, originally as a non-collecting institution, and the first gifts not from the Anderson family. The new direction is a welcome one for students, faculty, the Stanford community, the Anderson family and beyond. Anderson Collection patr…

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New Gifts Expand the Anderson Collection at Stanford

he Anderson Collection at Stanford University accepted 13 gifts of art into the museum’s permanent collection this past year. These are the first acquisitions since the museum opened in 2014, and the first gifts not from the Anderson family. New to the collection is Bill Jensen’s watercolor and gouache Study for Denial, 1985-86; three sculptural works and eight works on paper ranging from 1958 to 1997 by Manuel Neri; and Mary Weatherford’s black…

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Harry ‘Hunk’ Anderson, modern art collector and philanthropist, dies at 95

…an Oliveira and David Park, and the UC Davis cluster, Wayne Thiebaud, Roy De Forest and Robert Arneson. In 1996, the Andersons donated 650 works of graphic art to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, to create the Anderson Graphic Art Collection. In 2000, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art showed off the Anderson holding in “Celebrating Modern Art: the Anderson Collection.” It was one of three shows of the Anderson art over the years, and a…

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Anderson Collection at Stanford marks fifth anniversary

The museum, located in the arts district on the Stanford campus, celebrates with three new exhibitions and an open house by Sheryl Nonnenberg / Palo Alto Weekly Artist Jim Campbell’s LED-based pieces often use a grid format with blinking lights or blurred black-and-white film backgrounds. Photo by Betty Noguchi/Anderson Collection. The Anderson Collection at Stanford will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Saturday, Sept. 21, with a ga…

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

…irt,” drawing on Mary Douglas’s ideas about how dirt transgresses established borders. In works that engage with the legacy of American Land art, I’ll often say “earth” or “soil.” A set of individual mud hands attached to vertical sticks inserted in the ground form a cluster outside. Installation view of Kiyan Williams, Reaching Towards Warmer Suns, Anderson Collection at Stanford University, July 29–December 5, 2021. Photo by Andrew Brodhead. Co…

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American Progress: Wendy Red Star’s Exhibition at the Anderson Collection

…Red Star’s exhibition “American Progress” at Stanford’s Anderson Collection… June 21, 2022 By ALBERTO QUINTERO This story is among a series written by CCSRE’s 2022 Public Writing Fellows. If you have ever entered a pool or a bathtub, you have probably noticed that as your body sinks, water overflows and spills over the sides. This reflects Archimedes’ principle, which, for over two thousand years, has explaine…

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A&E Digest

…udents win art scholarships, a film on feminist art screens at Stanford and international fashion designers sell their goods for a good cause. SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDENTS … The Mountain View-based arts nonprofit, Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA), has announced the names of 27 students who have been awarded scholarships for the continued study of visual art. The students, who range from first to eighth grade, come from Santa Clara and…

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

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

Exhibition

Jim Campbell

Exhibition

Reaching Towards Warmer Suns

News

Creations of Space and Light

By Anna Koster For The Daily News Pushing boundaries has been the life work of Robert Irwin. His six-decade exploration of perception as the fundamental issue of art has expanded ideas of what art can be and can do. Irwin will speak about his work on March 10 at Stanford’s Cemex Auditorium. Irwin, born in 1928, in Long Beach, started as a painter in the 1950s with an abstract expressionist style, but quickly began removing all that was not…

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Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson, art collector and generous friend of Stanford University, dies at 92

…oks and catalogs. BY BETH GIUDICESSI AND ROBIN WANDER Stanford donor Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson died Oct. 22 at her Bay Area Peninsula home surrounded by her family. She was 92. In 2011, Moo, her late husband, Harry “Hunk” Anderson, and their daughter, Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence, pledged the core of the family’s 20th-century American art collection to Stanford University. The original collection of 121 works by 86 artists housed…

Anderson Collection Set to Open in San Francisco