…Squares: Contemporary California Quilts Oakland Museum of California Sept. 12, 2015 – Feb. 21, 2016 OMCA starts the fall season with the work of five Bay Area female quilters, showing 20 quilts from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Seeking orderly patterns and demure fabrics in your textiles? This show is not for you. Working with full denim pant legs, velvet and glittery polyester, Angie Tobias, Arbie Williams, Mattie Pickett, Rosie Lee Tompk…

Stanford University’s decade-long, $227-million investment in an arts initiative will be in the limelight this month with the unveiling of the Anderson Collection. One of the most valuable gifts in Stanford’s history, the collection of 20th-century American art was assembled over the course of fifty years by Bay Area collectors Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo Moo” Anderson along with their daughter Mary…

…en Gustave Flaubert and the cross-dressing proto-feminist George Sand. Kimberly King and Michael Ray Wisely play the authors in this new production. It’s not really a romantic tale. Sand was 20 years older, and they never met. But director Joy Carlin told me audiences are loving it. “It seems to pack a wallop, it’s just people reading letters, but people seem to get very emotional over it.” Details here. Robert Hawkins entertains the Comedy Day…

One of HUNK ANDERSON’s favorite observations about the remarkable artwork that once hung in his dining room, including Jackson Pollock’s Lucifer and Willem de Kooning’s Woman Standing – Pink, among others, is that one could enjoy a feast in the room without ever having a meal, thanks to the rich visual display. The feast proved moveable and equally rich when the paintings were relocated to the campus over the summer and served to the Stanford co…

Lucifer has risen at Stanford University. That is, Lucifer, the celebrated 1947 Jackson Pollock painting now hangs against a white background. It sits opposite Mark Rothko’s Pink and White Over Red, completed 10 years later. Both together constitute just two of 121 works by 86 artists in the Anderson Collection at Stanford, located in a brand new building just north of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Designed by Ric…

…of art,” says Linetzky. “And this was just eye-opening to Hunk and Moo.” With tutelage from Elsen and Oliveira, the Andersons turned their attention to the New York School, or Abstract Expressionism. Oliveira also introduced them to his fellow contemporary California artists, whose works the Andersons have collected in depth. Over the years, the couple read books, visited museums and galleries, and developed relationships with collectors, curato…

…weet tooth! Wayne Thiebaud is well known for his images of food, ranging from lollipops to display cakes. During the early 1960s, he was identified with Pop Art—a connection he was quick to disclaim. Yet his own background in commercial art affect the way he handled subject matter. In Candy Counter, he heightens the intensity of the color so that orange and green candies seem to vibrate with an improbable brightness, suggesting the chromatic enha…

…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 collection has grown through gifts from other members of the community. Head and hands collection Harry W. Anderson was bor…

…by Richard Olcott of Ennead Architects, on the Stanford campus. “They consider themselves custodians of the work they collect,” says Jason Linetzky, the director of the Anderson Collection at Stanford. But, he adds, “they’re very down-to-earth and casual about how they live with the art.” A Renoir was moved from Putter’s room to make way for the Pollock. In the living room, Sam Francis’s 1955 Red in Red has pride of place above the fireplace; o…

…d more than 80 of his paintings, drawings and prints between 1969 and 1990, of which three paintings are part of their gift to Stanford. (The others are Ocean Park #60 and Girl on the Beach.) Active in the Bay Area Figuration movement, the artist moved from abstraction to figuration and back to abstraction over the course of his career. David Park Courtesy of Hackett/Mill, Representative of the Estate of David Park A pioneer of the 1950s Bay Area…

For the past 44 years, a pivotal painting in the evolution of American Modern art in the exhausted aftermath of 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 pa…

…1; Advertising —– Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson, who have art in every corner of their ranch house near San Francisco, including an Ed Ruscha over the fridge, wanted the public to have that kind of immediate relationship with these masterworks. When they decided to donate a significant portion of their collection, they worked out a deal with Stanford to house it in a stand-alone building, aiming to recreate their o…

…is on view. The exhibition presents a range of images, from formal portraits to candid shots that shed light on the practices and creative processes of their influential subjects. In the mid-1980s, the Andersons commissioned Leo Holub (1916–2010), a beloved Stanford professor who had founded the university’s photography program in 1969, to take photographs of the artists whose work was then featured in the family’s collection. Over t…

…hes in the foreground. Homegrown artist Mark Tansey’s near-photographic precision in his painting contrasts with the general trend of abstract works being featured in the Anderson Collection. The artist’s decision to paint “Yosemite Falls” entirely in icy blue creates an ominous, otherworldly vibe by detaching the viewer from reality and into Tansey’s world of perception. 4. “Pink and White over Red” by Mark Rothko An American painter and, like P…

…yes to Your Feet But that’s changing, says chapter co-chair Kathy Kenyon. “I think it’s real exciting what they’re doing here with this whole arts section, with the Anderson Collection, and bringing over the art department so that it is directly connected with the museums here is a huge thing,” Kenyon says. And all of Stanford’s art collection is available to the public for free. There’s more to the scene than the high profile glamour of St…

…and eight works on paper ranging from 1958 to 1997 by Manuel Neri; and Mary Weatherford’s black painting, 2017. The new acquisitions are in keeping with the original collection of 121 works of post-World War II modern and contemporary American art by 86 artists given to Stanford by Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson and their daughter, Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence, the Bay Area family which has been collecting art for over…