…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 Coast, met at college in upstate New York and were married in 1950. They began collecting art in the early 1960s after a trip to P…

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…

…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 child, Mary Patricia “Putter” Anderson Pence. Hunk attended Hobart College in N…

…ecided to narrow their focus. They would collect only post-World War II American art. That meant masterpieces by the likes of Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn, Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler. For quite some time the Anderson Collection has been considered one of the most important private assemblages of 20th-century American art anywhere. Now, Stanford has a gorgeous new showcase for the gift of 121 paintings and sculptures from the…

…’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 by some 86 artists,…

…of puppetry — in France, Twist believes puppetry is a marginalized and misunderstood art form. He explains that the intention of animating something — not just humanoid marionettes — makes a performance piece puppetry. Taking after the abstraction that defined American art in the 20th century, Twist strives to emulate pure color and pure shape in his work. He utilizes materials such as cloth, tinsel and paper to explore the concepts of form, sha…

…ot-to-miss exhibitions, installations, public art projects and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them shows in venues around the Bay Area that vary from major museums to tiny galleries. Tauba Auerbach, ‘Untitled (Fold),’ 2010. (Photo courtesy of the artist) Constructive Interference: Tauba Auerbach and Mark Fox Anderson Collection at Stanford University Sept. 9, 2015 – March 21, 2016 Stanford has not one but four — count ’em — four exhibitions opening on S…

  Sept. 17: How nice to start at the top of Mt. Tamalpais with Sound Summit, an annual concert sponsored by the Roots & Branches Conservancy for the benefit of fire prevention, water conservation and visitor services on Mt. Tam. The headliners are Wilco, fresh from a stint at the Fillmore, plus Los Lobos, the Stone Foxes, and Bill Frisell doing his album Guitar in the Space Age, which ought to sound very cool in the Mountain Theater aro…

…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…

…is experience becomes a joyful and subversive wake of silent, but collective, sharing. Art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to experience this wearable art in person. A collection of Cave’s evocative Soundsuits will be on exhibit at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University through Aug. 14, 2017, on loan from the Anderson family, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and private collectors. Cave, who now the director of the gradu…

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,…

…Nemerov. After multiple visits to the Anderson Collection, Valladares and Neverov approached the collection with the idea for Abstraction and the Movies. Left: Richard Diebenkorn, ‘Ocean Park #60,’ 1973. Right: Elliot Gould in ‘The Long Goodbye,’ 1973. Left: Richard Diebenkorn, ‘Ocean Park #60,’ 1973. Right: Elliot Gould in ‘The Long Goodbye,’ 1973. (Left: Courtesy Anderson Collection at Stanford University; Right: MGM/Pho…

…and artists in the collection.” The show, which is dedicated to Hunk Anderson (he passed away in February at the age of 95), is the first in a series of two exhibitions that will feature works on paper created by some of the most important artists in the collection. “Hunk, Moo and Putter (their daughter) place equal attention and value on ‘drawing’ and all were excited about exhibiting works from their collection that wou…