In less than a month, Stanford University will unveil one of the largest and most valuable gifts in its history, the blue-chip Anderson collection—121 mostly Abstract Expressionist works by 86 artists—including paintings by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ellsworth Kelly, to name a few. There are also a number of works that represent movements in California art, including Bay Area Figurative and…

A new start for art at Stanford: Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection reopen Sheryl Nonnenberg 7-8 minutes After more than a year of closure, Stanford University’s major art museums — Cantor Arts Center and the Anderson Collection at Stanford — are open again. A visit to campus reveals that, while some things have remained the same (the venerable Rodin sculpture collection, for example), there have been some significant c…

Formed & Fired: Contemporary American Ceramics, which will be on view at the Anderson Collection upon Stanford’s museums’ reopening, presents the work of four groundbreaking contemporary artists who push the boundaries of their medium and explore questions of value, identity, materiality, and the body: Kathy Butterly, Kahlil Robert Irving, Simone Leigh, and Brie Ruais. While distinctly different from each other, they share a reverence for ce…

…aces are related to questions of Diasporic embodiment. I think of them as an alternative archive, as evidence of lived experience for people whose lives elude traditional documentation. LB You’ve told me that sometimes you give yourself rules or guidelines in the creative process. KW I have rules to help me develop forms and shapes that don’t reproduce a colonial visual grammar. One of my rules is to avoid making a square or rectilinear shape. I…

Artist Wendy Red Star was usually a sleepy freshman during her 9 a.m. intro to art history class at Montana State University during the early 2000s. But one morning, her professor projected a slide of John Gast’s American Progress (1872) onto the lecture hall’s massive screen. It jolted her awake. The iconic painting is meant to promote the idea of Manifest Destiny, centering on an oversized Lady Columbia who illuminates a path for white settler…

To the Andersons, their art is family—and so is Stanford, its new caretaker. September/October 2014 The Collection of a Lifetime To the Andersons, their art is family—and so is Stanford, its new caretaker. ©Henrik Kam 2014 The striking centerpiece of the new Anderson Collection building is a grand staircase ascending to the main gallery spaces—airy, open, graced with natural light—and their cornucopia of art. When the collection opens on Septemb…

Stanford University’s riches keep accumulating but, this time around, rather than an announcement of a staggering increase in their endowment or the construction of a sports arena worthy of a prince, they’ve received the core of what many consider one of the finest privately-held collections of 20th-century post-war art. The Anderson family, who live in an affluent neighborhood near the university, has given Stanford 121 primo works…

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…

This past Friday, the Anderson Collection hosted a talk entitled “Animating the Inanimate,” during which artist Basil Twist spoke about his abstract experiments in puppetry and visual arts. Twist is a San Francisco-born, New York-based puppeteer brought in by the Stanford Arts Institute as part of the Mohr Visiting Artist Program. He is acclaimed for performance pieces, including “Symphonie Fantastique” and “The Rite of Spring,” which is a balle…

About twice a month, Mary Margaret Anderson pays a visit to the museum on the Stanford campus that bears her last name. Moo, as she is better known, usually chats with the staff before declaring, “I’m off to see my friends.” Those friends are the more than 100 works of art, including paintings and sculptures, that she and her husband, Harry (“Hunk”), along with their daughter, Mary Patricia (“Putter”) Anderson Pence, gave to the university sever…

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…

BY ROBIN WANDER Five years ago, on Sept. 21, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opened to the public. What was true then is true now: The remarkable collection that is anchored in the New York School and Bay Area Figuration, and incorporates key modern and contemporary artists collected in depth and across media, is a breathtaking survey of post-World War II American art. Jason Linetzky, director of the Anderson Collection at Stanfo…

Exploring Art through Sound and Motion: Inspired by Nick Cave’s Soundsuits Because Stanford museums are currently closed, Second Sunday will be going virtual! Join the Second Sunday Crew in making and activating wearable sculptures inspired by artist Nick Cave. Museum educators will be presenting Second Sunday Live on July 12, 2020 via Zoom from 11AM-11:30AM PDT. You can download the activity guide prior to the event. Click here to regist…