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.
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Fine Arts Feast

Anderson Collection Set to Open in San Francisco

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Full House

Full House What does a family with one of the most spectacular private collections of postwar American art do when they run out of space? Give some of it away. June 12, 2014 9:30 AM | by Pilar Viladas There are people who live with art, and then there are Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. Better known as Hunk and Moo, the Andersons, who are 91 and 87, respectively, share their comfortable, unpretentious ranch house in Atherton, California,…

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Anderson Collection of 20th century American art, opens at Stanford on Sept. 21

When the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opens to the public on Sept. 21, it will be an anniversary of sorts. It was a half century ago almost to the day that a life-changing notion dawned on Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson while they visited the Louvre Museum in Paris for the first time. So utterly captivated were the Atherton couple by the modern works they viewed there–as well as at the nearby Jeu de Paume museum–th…

On Elite Campuses, an Arts Race

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Stanford’s Anderson Collection to host Nick Cave exhibition

A new exhibition at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University – Nick Cave – challenges the boundaries between multiple artistic and creative disciplines. BY ROBIN WANDER When the exhibition Nick Cave opens at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, visitors will encounter the intersection of visual art and performance in a collection of Cave’s Soundsuits, videos and a documentary film. The exhibition opens Sept. 14 and runs…

Stanford art museums, Frost Amphitheater begin to reopen

Elite Collection of Modern Masters to Anchor Stanford’s Growing ‘Arts District’

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Pollock’s stellar ‘Lucifer’ and impressive Anderson Collection

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…

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Stanford Builds Arts District With $36 Million Postwar Museum

Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella are some of the stars of the Anderson Collection of postwar American art, opening this weekend at a new $36 million museum at Stanford University in California. For Stanford, which first made its reputation as an engineering school, the building is the second of three projects to create an arts district around its flagship museum, the Cantor Center. The nearby $112 million Bing Concert Hall opened in…

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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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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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Top 10 art shows as rising rents force out S.F. artists

The dispersal of notable downtown San Francisco galleries by tech-driven rent spikes made 2014 a pretty bleak year on the contemporary art scene. The tenacity or successful relocation of a few could not offset the disheartening effect of seeing others, especially the irreplaceable Stephen Wirtz Gallery, expire. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art remains closed for another year, a temporary but very dark spot on a dimming artistic landscape,…

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Stephanie Syjuco Goes Full Color

Stephanie Syjuco Goes Full Color The politics of color photography explored in new exhibit There’s a colorchecker at the center of Stephanie Syjuco’s collage Pileup (Brass Bells). It’s 24 squares of color contained within a black frame. The artist arranges sheaves of paper, journals, letters and photographs around the colorchecker to create a disorderly narrative. If there’s a plot, the world’s greatest detective might be able to piece together…