…opened at the Palo Alto campus of Stanford University—our frequent partner-in-crime when it comes to celebrating the West. Designed by the same team that created Stanford’s stellar Bing Concert Hall, the structure houses 121 works of modern and contemporary American art, all donated by Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. Of course, we’re most excited about the pieces that have a Western flavor: three lovely Diebenkorns, a Thiebaud “Candy Counter…

…ry on its past and insight for the future are presented in Formed & Fired: Contemporary American Ceramics at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. An exhibition of ceramics highlights artists who are reshaping ceramics in concept and craftsmanship. The exhibition – which features 11 works by Kathy Butterly, Kahlil Robert Irving, Simone Leigh and Brie Ruais – was postponed from spring 2020 and will be on view upon the museum’s reopen…

…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…

When the Anderson Collection at Stanford University opens to the public on Sept. 21, it will be an anniversary of sorts. It was a half century ago almost to the day that a life-changing notion dawned on Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson while they visited the Louvre Museum in Paris for the first time. So utterly captivated were the Atherton couple by the modern works they viewed there–as well as at the nearby Jeu de Paume museum–th…

…’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…

…sidence Exhibitions: Jenny Odell, Chris Sollars and Roger Ourthiage Jr. Recology 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 discar…

…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…