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

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

…istrict 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 of the School of Humanities and Sciences. “The outcome of the last campaign, in terms of new programs, new facilities and, in some areas, new faculty, has…

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

Hot Art Bling the New Thing on the Peninsula

…Donovan. Then came a blockbuster by a Japanese group called teamlab, which makes ancient Japanese art come alive in floor-to-ceiling digital animations.   From her vantage point to the south, Kimball looked on with some envy as Pace drew in 45,000 people in less than three months. “That teamlab animation is something to marvel at,” Kimball says. “It’s immersive. It’s so animated. There’s so much to look at.” Kimball insists she’s not really…

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…

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

…onfederate criminals throughout the United States, and so there was a public conversation happening about, “what is 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 conv…

News

Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star creatively engages with the Stanford community

…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 floor of the museum through Aug. 28, the exhibition is informed by Red Star’s cultural heritage and engagemen…

News

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

…the things that were literally falling off the edge of the canvas.” In the painting, as the white settlers enter into the frame by the East and expand westward, with domesticated animals and cutting-edge technology, hordes of Native Americans flee along with the bison and other wild animals before heading into the edge of the painting (and history) into oblivion. However, displacement of one body by another is accompanied by a corresponding resis…

News

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

…multifaceted connection to the Palo Alto community and the Anderson family. On view through March 3, 2024, this intimate presentation of works in the Wisch Family Gallery is anchored by two large-scale paintings from the museum’s permanent collection, Red in Red (1955), an early work created while Francis lived in Paris, and The Beaubourg (1977), made after his return to California. The balance of the works on view is devoted to unique works on…