…ackson 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 Light & Space. The collection was assembled over the course of 50 years by Bay Area collectors Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson along with their daughter Patricia Anderson Pence. The Andersons, originally from the East…

Stanford University’s decade-long, $227-million investment in an arts initiative will be in the limelight this month with the unveiling of the Anderson Collection. One of the most valuable gifts in Stanford’s history, the collection of 20th-century American art was assembled over the course of fifty years by Bay Area collectors Harry W. “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo Moo” Anderson along with their daughter Mary…

…“The Anderson Collection is absolutely, unquestionably world class,” says Jeffrey Fraenkel of Fraenkel Gallery, the prominent San Francisco dealer in photography, a genre not included in the Anderson Collection. “Museums all over the country had their eyes on it hoping to get it until Hunk and Moo made their decision in favor of Stanford.” The Andersons did not choose Stanford because they went there. They didn’t, and neither did their only chil…

…represented, among them Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Wayne Thiebaud and Joan Mitchell, joining Motherwell et al. The crown jewel is Pollock’s horizontal drip painting “Lucifer” (1947), one of his most important works. The Andersons are said to have turned down an offer of $50 million for “Lucifer,” made in the mid-1990s by music mogul David Geffen. The canvas that once hung over Putter’s girlhood bed is easily…

…n Mario Botta’s original concept for SFMOMA, now under siege as a result of that museum’s expansion, the building is simple and unpretentious, Most importantly, it provides a tasteful showcase for the art – the majority of which is installed on the expansive second floor – while not overshadowing it. Clerestories allow for filtered natural light on either side of a central staircase that has a curved ceiling above it; best of all, an…

…th different media, Twist acquires a vocabulary of visual effects that he can incorporate into his performances. The stage, then, becomes Twist’s playground. Twist concluded his presentation by giving a live performance of his puppeteering. With Rothko’s “Pink and White over Red” as his backdrop, Twist commanded the floor, armed with a translucent white expanse of silk cloth. Puppeteering is an art form that engages the entire body, as Twist quic…

…San Francisco Sept. 18, 19 and 22, 2015 (see website for hours) After four months of scavenging materials from the Recology dump, resident artists Jenny Odell, Chris Sollars and student artist Roger Ourthiage Jr. present three solo exhibitions over the course of one weekend. Odell’s The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a fictional archive of things once used, now discarded, includes scanable QR codes, collages and information gathered by the artist…

…en Gustave Flaubert and the cross-dressing proto-feminist George Sand. Kimberly King and Michael Ray Wisely play the authors in this new production. It’s not really a romantic tale. Sand was 20 years older, and they never met. But director Joy Carlin told me audiences are loving it. “It seems to pack a wallop, it’s just people reading letters, but people seem to get very emotional over it.” Details here. Robert Hawkins entertains the Comedy Day…

…world saw on video, beaten Rodney King. Cave’s first Soundsuit was a kind of safe haven, fully concealing the identity of the wearer at a time when the artist felt profoundly unsafe. The suits still hide, and have the potential to protect, the person inside one of these intricate pieces made from dismissed or cast-off objects such as plastic toys, pipe cleaners, and varicolored faux-fur. But over the years, Cave’s project has expande…

…nd-me-downs passed to him from his six older siblings. Cave created his first soundsuit in 1992 as a response to the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the subsequent riots. This suit was made from fallen twigs gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park. He drilled holes in each twig and then sewed them together. His intention was not to create wearable art, but it was only after he slipped the suit of twigs over his head and heard the sound o…

Over the past decade, many university leaders and donors have come to the same conclusion: investment in the arts is essential to building a competitive institution in an increasingly global world. This year, around half a dozen new museums and arts centres are opening on campuses across the country, from Columbia University in New York to Rice University in Texas. They come on the heels of recently completed projects at Stanford in California,…

…nderson Collection at Stanford University; Right: MGM/Photofest) “Unexpected angles reveal fresh visions of what these works were and are,” Valladares writes in the exhibition text. He describes the selections as “openly personal,” rooted in his own love of film. Pairings include Mark Rothko’s Pink and White Over Red (1957) and the fiery poster for Vincente Minelli’s 1958 drama Some Came Running. Behind dramatic illustrations of a young Shirley M…

…e 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 color punctuated by tiny flashes of white that remind one of fireworks over the ocean. Linetzky said that the second exhibition, which w…

The Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University miss seeing you. We are eager to welcome you back to campus, share art and connect over ideas. Now through August 31, 2020, we are offering all Stanford graduates in the class of 2020 one year of free Ambassador membership ($100 value*) to both museums. Each membership covers up to two adults and children within a single household. To get your FREE membership, fill out t…