…g about 90 minutes for a visit. Here are just a handful of the museum’s highlights: “Jackson Pollock’s ‘Lucifer’ is something that people come to see. It previously hung over Putter’s bed, before moving to the dining room and before coming here.” “There’s an incredible Mark Rothko (‘Pink and White Over Red’) that’s just beautiful — a seductive red painting.” “Robert Irwin’s untitled disk is capturing people’s attention. There’s this shadow qualit…

…dersons were captivated by an exhibition of the French 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 be…

…re I lived. I was inspired to create public artwork to acknowledge the obscured, erased, unacknowledged history. At the same time, public conversations were taking place about the role of — or critiquing — statues of Confederate 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 inspi…

By Robin Wander Wendy Red Star: American Progress on view at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University 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…

…especially in the Western states. “It’s Manifest Destiny,” she replied. Red Star later told me instead that she had been “pleasantly surprised in a horrible way” when she first realized how many tribes existed in the East. Ultimately, that is what Their Land seeks to inspire in spectators, a mix of surprise and horror by confronting us with our own failure in seeing what has always been there, but that our lapsed gaz…

A new solo exhibition of works by Sam Francis at the Anderson Collection celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the artist’s birth and highlights his 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…