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.

News

A new start for art at Stanford: Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection reopen

…s they have been incredibly supportive and encouraging.” Mitchell, who served on staff-led committees that addressed the work culture at the museum, noted, “These experiences have helped me thoroughly understand the challenges faced by the museum team in their daily work, and areas in which staff want the museum to grow and flourish.” And how do they plan to address the issues raised last summer? “We are working closely wi…

News

New acquisition by David Park on view at the Anderson Collection

…rtists in San Francisco took a surprising turn away from Abstract Expressionism, which dominated progressive art in New York and California, by reintroducing recognizable subject matter into their painting…David Park, who was teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Arts Institute), initiated this embrace of the figure in 1950.” The untitled oil on canvas painting measuring 24 5/8 x 8 5/8 inches joins another work by…

News

Contemplations on modern art

…f colors. One of them, covering almost the entire wall, was simply a large pattern of burgundy, black and white. However, there was something very calming about looking at it. I used to criticize such artworks a lot, not understanding the value placed on artists like Rothko. But seeing such pieces in a museum in front of you feels very different than looking at images online after Googling the artist. These large canvases and colors, though they…

Exhibition

Jim Campbell

Exhibition

Wendy Red Star: American Progress

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford University to be displayed in an elegant new home

…eached another on-schedule milestone in the trek toward beginning construction this summer and opening its doors in 2014. The Stanford Board of Trustees approved Ennead Architects‘ building design at their meeting this week. The Anderson Collection is one of the largest and most outstanding private collections of post-World War II American art in the world. The collection has been built over the last 50 years by Bay Area residents Harry W….

News

Full House

…little housecleaning: Last year, they gave 121 pieces to Stanford University. The Anderson Collection will open in September in a new gallery, designed 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 Reno…

News

Stanford: The New Art Place To Be

Many in the art world have been anticipating the opening on Sept. 21 of the collection of Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson at Stanford — even from afar. In 2011, the couple donated 1 21 works of contemporary art, filled with paintings by the likes of Pollock, Diebenkorn, Rothko Elsworth Kelly, de Kooning, Joan Mitchell (Begin Again IV at left), and Elizabeth Murray, to name a few, to Stanford on the condition that it build galleries to house the…

News

Anderson Collection has a new home

…Woman Standing – Pink” (1954-55), a lush, pastel-toned oil of a voluptuous nude who looks like she’s in the clutches of a garbage compactor. The art is organized loosely into about a dozen sections, such as Dumb Objects, California Funk, Geometric Abstraction, (the distinctly L.A.) Light & Space/Finish Fetish and The Shaped Canvas. The latter is where Frank Stella’s elephantine “Zeltweg” (1981) doesn’t so m…

News

Stanford Opens a Museum Highlighting American Art

…3,500-square-foot building to house the Anderson Collection, 121 contemporary artworks donated by the Andersons, including major artwork by Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn and Ellsworth Kelly, among others. The couple married in 1950. During an around-the-world trip in 1964, they were overwhelmed by the Impressionist art on view in Paris. “On the way home, we may have had a glass of wine too much, but we decided to put together a great…

Stanford trustees visit new art collection, approve construction

News

Senate visits the arts district to discuss the humanities

… Anderson Collection at Stanford University, the Faculty Senate gave members the opportunity to visit the newest addition to the university’s growing arts district and to take guided tours of the galleries. “I hope one thing that gets accomplished this afternoon is that you have the chance to see – for those of you who don’t spend time in this area – just how much the arts district is blossoming,” said Richard Saller, dean…

News

Honing the art of observation, and observing art

…he course. The clinical portion of the course drew Cartmell, but so too did the opportunity to see the treasures in the Cantor Center and the Anderson Collection. Two of those treasures, Lucifer (1947), by Jackson Pollock, and Red in Red (1955), by Sam Francis, in the Anderson collection, made Cartmell see how works of art “can be made up of numerous small elements, coming together to form a larger image, much like cells coming together to form a…

News

Anderson Collection a modern art trove not to be missed

…t bug. “The Andersons didn’t study art history, and they’re not classically trained as art historians or experts in the arts,” says Jason Linetzky, the Anderson Collection’s founding director. He began working with the family around 2001, providing exhibition assistance as well as installation and curatorial support. “They just started looking and collecting, without much direction, until they met two people on (the Stanford) campus: Al Elsen and…

News

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

…ch Impressionists. They bought their first works, by Picasso and Matisse, and started building a collection that included American Modernists Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove. In 1969, they made a switch from the Impressionists and Modernists to postwar American art. The timing was perfect. There wasn’t as much competition to drive up the prices and they went straight for the best in the New York school — Jackson Pollock, Mark Ro…

News

“Reaching Towards Warmer Suns”: A Q&A with artist Kiyan Williams ’13

…s the role of public art,” “what is the role of monuments to white male war criminals.” Given all of that, I was inspired to create a public artwork, a monument rooted in a different aesthetic and conceptual framework. TSD: Could you go more into depth about why you choose to use soil in so much of your artwork, and especially in conveying your different messages both historically and politically? KW: When I was an undergrad, I took a class with…

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Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star creatively engages with the Stanford community

…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 floor of the museum through Aug. 28, the exhibition is informed by Red Star’s cultural heritage and engagement with many forms of creative expression. She addresses the racism, displacement, a…

News

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

…g with the buffalo series. In Red Star’s own words, these pieces are meant to “build a legacy for her daughter.” In Four Generations, for example, the Apsáalooke artist depicts her grandmother, her father, herself and her daughter, all around the same age in a piece that weaves their genealogy together. “We, as federally recognized Native people, are the only people in the U.S. that have to carry around cards. How much blood quantum we have. And…

News

The Anderson Collection celebrates the 100th anniversary of Sam Francis’ birthday

…the French tradition of color and light – as embodied in the work of Matisse, Bonnard, and Monet – had a lasting influence on his practice. While abroad, he forged a style that was unmistakably his own, as evidenced in Red in Red, and became one of the most well-known American artists of his generation in Western Europe and Japan, where he first traveled in 1957 and would come to spend significant periods of his later life. “The addition of Red i…