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 Dorm-Food Fortune Has Funded the Best New Museum in Silicon Valley

…eir daughter, Mary Patricia Anderson Pence—or Hunk, Moo, and Putter, the nicknames by which they are referred to in the museum’s catalog. Back in the 1980s, when I was an undergrad at Stanford taking a stray art-history class, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Anderson home, which isn’t far from the campus. (Saga itself was headquartered on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, long before it was a mecca for tech-oriented venture capitalists…

Museums by Moonlight

REPORT: Stanford

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The Magic of The Anderson Collection

Pollock’s Lucifer now resides at Stanford University and is welcoming visitors. The news is of significance to everyone for reasons described in this article. Lucifer, the crown jewel of the Anderson Collection, moved to Stanford with a retinue of 120 colorful accomplices he’s befriended while living at the Andersons’ residence. The whole gang is now happily installed in a custom-designed museum on the Stanford campus. With ro…

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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…

Become a member!

News

Anderson Collection pieces lock in a home at Stanford

…hey’re not the irreplaceables. The irreplaceables are here (at Stanford).” The irreplaceables The irreplaceables include work by Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, and the Frank Stella now coming up the elevator in a wooden crate. The “Zeltweg” story is indicative of how the Andersons built their collection. As Hunk tells it, the acquisition began with a doubles match at the Menlo Circus Club in Atherton. Stella and San Francisc…

News

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

…s 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, a choice selection of postwar A…

News

Fashion statements: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits come to Stanford

…ns. Each item he finds holds a story — the energetic imprint from every previous owner, which he assembles into his Soundsuits. In that way, it can be said that Soundsuits are formed from memories. The Chicago artist’s creations are part sculpture and ornament, armor and instrument and are often worn as costumes and performed in. The energetic vibration of each single, insignificant article is magnified by how Cave chooses to bind the…

News

Getting it down on paper: A different aspect of the Anderson Collection on view

…ts. It is said that she initiated the practice of pouring thinned-down oil paint onto unprimed canvas, resulting in a fusion of surface and color (which later would be called “color-field painting”). Her “Monotype VII” has the same energetic feeling as “Approach” upstairs. In the painting, the staining is applied sparingly, so as to create more perspective space. The monotype, however, is a joyous expanse of co…

News

Anderson Collection at Stanford marks fifth anniversary

…llock, Mark Rothko, Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn. The challenge to this and other single-donor museums, however, is how to keep the momentum going once visitors have seen the permanent collection. “The collection is not fixed to the initial gift (121 pieces). It has grown, and our hope is that, in a very thoughtful way, the collection will continue to grow,” Executive Director Jason Linetzky said. “We are always trying…

News

A&E Digest

…County Schools, and were nominated by their classroom teachers based on their talent, hard work and demonstrated interest in art. The stduetns will be invited to take part in CSMA art programs. Those interested in learning more can go to arts4all.org or call 650-917-6800. FEMINIST ART ON FILM … On Thursday, April 30 at 6 p.m., the Anderson Collection at Stanford University will host a free screening of filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s…

News

Contemplations on modern art

…een to wake up to the colors and the lines of “Lucifer” everyday. There was a piece that looked like a Rorschach inkblot, a large chaotic dark shape on a white background. Like Rorshcach, who asked people to tell him what they were seeing in his famous inkblots, I questioned how to interpret this painting and thought about what was going on in the artist’s mind. Was he going through a chaotic period in his life? Is it fear he is trying to draw? A…

Hostile Terrain 94
Exhibition

Hostile Terrain 94

Presidential Residency on the Future of the Arts 2020-2021

News

Stanford Gets “Left of Center”

…ks like Robert Motherwell’s Italian Summer, Franz Kline’s Figure 8 and Frank Stella’s Zeltweg. In addition to the pleasure of spending time with the paintings themselves, any Art History 101 class would benefit from a field trip to the gallery. There are smart curatorial pairings that make the mind’s associative powers kick in. Mark Rothko’s Untitled (Black on Gray) hangs directly adjacent to Ad Reinhardt’s Abs…

News

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

…sense of self, particularly through natural processes of growth, transformation, and decay. LB It’s fascinating how you play with dirt’s positive and negative meanings. KW I move between the terms “dirt,” “soil,” and “earth” because they each have different connotations. The range of meanings is what draws me to the material. In works that critique hegemonic institutions, I often say “dirt,” drawing on Mary Douglas’s ideas about how dirt transgr…

News

Stephanie Syjuco: White Balance/Color Cast | Anderson Collection at Stanford University

…juco, Cargo Cults: Head Bundle (Small), 2016. Courtesy the artist, Catharine Clark Gallery, and RYAN LEE Gallery In 2019 Syjuco spent two weeks at the Missouri Historical Society looking for photographs of the Philippine Village at the 1904 World’s Fair. Block Out the Sun is set apart from the main show, down a short hallway, but the click that punctuates each new photograph in the video sounds throughout the gallery. (An earlier version of this…

Exhibition

Left of Center

The Lost Birds