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…

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…

Palette Cleanser: A new campus museum quietly serves up a visual banquet. By Lydia Lee It’s tempting for designers to try to turn art museums into works of art themselves. But what if the client’s directive is just the opposite? A new campus museum in the Bay Area by the New York–based firm Ennead Architects may disappoint those hoping for a bigger architectural statement. However, as designed to house the 121 works of the Anderson Collection,…

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…

A testament to the burgeoning arts scene at Stanford, the Anderson Collection is home to 121 paintings and sculptures created by some of the most prominent American modern and contemporary artists — several of them hailing from the Bay Area. Below are five of the most striking pieces on display at the Anderson Collection. 1. “The Beaubourg” by San Francis One of the only pieces housed on the first floor of the Anderson Collection, it is difficul…

The coming relaunch of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has lots of people buzzing in anticipation. But downtown San Francisco is not the only place where truly exciting things are happening on the visual arts front. Super-star artist James Turrell, for instance, is touching down in Palo Alto with a pocket-sized exhibition this week, ahead of a major retrospective of his work at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in late May. Turrell is…

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…

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…

Harry W. Anderson, a flat-topped dorm food distributor who, on the side, built one of the most valuable collections of American postwar art in private hands, has died. Anderson died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes Wednesday at his home on the mid-Peninsula, said his daughter, Mary Patricia Anderson “Putter” Pence. He was 95. A refreshingly unpretentious man in an art world known for its pomposity, Anderson was always called “Hunk” and…

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…

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…

By Robin Wander Wendy Red Star: American Progress on view at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University is a solo exhibition of works by the artist Wendy Red Star, who was raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana. With historical research, Stanford student collaborations, large-scale installations, and images of sovereignty, Red Star asks viewers to grapple with the layered complexity of American history. On view on the first…

American Progress: Wendy Red Star’s Exhibition at the Anderson Collection Lady Columbia floats from above, greeting museum visitors at the entrance to Wendy 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 noti…

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

Showcases for Art in Silicon Valley At Stanford University, an Arts District Grows By JORI FINKEL NOV. 13, 2014 PALO ALTO, Calif. — The birthplace of Yahoo and Google, Stanford University is now ramping up and showing off its cultural resources. Construction of a $235 million arts district near Palm Drive, the grand tree-lined campus entrance, is well underway here. Last year, the $112 million Bing Concert Hall opened. This year came th…

Contrary to popular belief, Stanford isn’t strictly a Silicon Valley trade school for Internet billionaires. It also trains Internet millionaires—as well as, believe it or not, thousandaire philosophers, journalists, and artists! Because aside from computer science and electrical engineering, Stanford offers degrees in a full range of humanities disciplines, including the fine arts. To that end, two months ago the university opened a small, gl…

Senate visits the arts district to discuss the humanities Richard Saller, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Debra Satz, senior associate dean for the humanities and arts, talked about the state of the humanities at Stanford. Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection, invited faculty members to collaborate with its staff and create new programs. BY KATHLEEN J. SULLIVAN Richard Saller and Debra Satz addressing the F…